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Buffalo Broil
Julian Salomon, who wrote Indian Crafts and Indian Lore, recommends Buffalo Broil for an Indian meal. For this he uses steaks from the white man's cow, since buffalo is no longer available for the purpose. The steaks are cut an inch thick. Build a fire of hardwood and let it burn until you have a three inch bed of live coals (this is the most important procedure). Throw the steak right onto the coals. Sear one side, then turn it and broil 5 minutes on each side. Have butter melted in a pan; dip the steak into the butter, salt it and eat it between slices of bread or in a flat roll. 2 EGGS
This is dirty steak — meat laid straight on the coals with no grate. It works, but only if the fire is right, and the recipe says as much.
- The coal bed is the whole recipeHardwood burned down to a three-inch bed of glowing, ash-grey coals with no flame and no smoke. Charcoal briquettes with binders can taint meat laid straight on them; lump charcoal or hardwood logs burned down for 30-45 minutes are safer bets.
- Knock the ash offFan or blow loose ash from the coal bed just before the steak goes on. Loose ash is what makes coal-cooked meat gritty; the coals themselves cling far less than people expect.
- Timing and donenessSear plus five minutes a side on live coals will take a one-inch steak well past medium. For medium-rare, sear each face 60-90 seconds and then go by feel or an instant-read thermometer — 130-135F at the centre, rested five minutes.
- Cut to useA one-inch steak that can take direct radiant heat: ribeye, strip, sirloin. Anything thinner burns before the middle warms; anything much thicker needs to finish beside the coals rather than on them.
- Buffalo is available againFarmed bison steaks are sold widely now, unlike in Salomon's day. Bison is leaner than beef and cooks noticeably faster — cut the time by roughly a third and do not take it past medium-rare or it dries out.
- The butter dipMelt the butter in a pan set at the edge of the fire, not over the coals, or it will brown and separate. Dipping rather than basting also rinses off any last ash.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the trailing '2 EGGS' belongs to the next entry on the page. Reckon one steak per person, served in bread as a sandwich.
Julian Harris Salomon's The Book of Indian Crafts and Indian Lore (1928) was a standard reference for scout troops and summer camps for decades, and this entry reflects how camp cooking of that era borrowed a Plains-Indian frame for what is essentially a beefsteak. Salomon's own aside — that buffalo is no longer available, so use the white man's cow — reflects the period: the wild herds had been reduced to a few hundred animals by the late 1880s, and commercial bison ranching would not become widespread until late in the twentieth century. Cooking meat directly on coals rather than on a grate is far older than either the book or the campfire-craft movement, and it survives today under the name dirty steak or caveman steak.