To Broil a Steak
"Uncle John," S. C.
Have your gridiron hot. Wipe the steak clean. Put it in a dish with melted butter, and then put on the hot gridiron and broil ten minutes. Turn it twice, and season with salt, pepper and butter.
The whole art in four lines: a screaming-hot gridiron, a clean steak, a bath of melted butter, and a close eye.
- Gridiron = grill grateA gridiron is the ridged iron rack set over live coals — the direct ancestor of the modern grill grate or a ridged cast-iron grill pan. Get it fully hot first so the steak marks instead of sticking.
- “Broil” the American wayIn American usage broil means to cook over or under intense direct heat — on a grill or beneath an oven broiler — what the British call grilling.
- Ten minutes is a guide, not a lawTen minutes suits a thick steak to medium; thinner cuts want less. Judge by feel or temperature: 125–130°F for rare, 130–135°F for medium-rare.
- Turn, don’t stabTurning twice is fine; use tongs rather than a fork so you don’t pierce the meat and bleed off its juices.
- Butter, then seasonThe melted-butter dip helps browning and keeps the surface from drying; salt, pepper, and a final knob of butter go on at the end.
Broiling on a gridiron is one of the oldest cooking methods there is — meat laid on iron bars over glowing coals — and for centuries it was how a beefsteak was properly cooked. Georgian and Victorian London even had “beefsteak clubs” where gentlemen grilled and ate steaks with clubby ceremony. The word grill itself traces through French gril to the same Latin craticula, “small gridiron,” that gives us griddle. This spare little recipe, signed by “Uncle John” of South Carolina, distills that long tradition down to its essentials.
From page 19 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
