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Broiled Beef Steak
Wipe and trim a sirloin or porterhouse steak cut 1½ inches thick, cut both ways, lay in a piping hot skillet, sear on one side, turn the steak and sear on the other; broil 10 or 15 minutes, turning often. Have ready a heated platter with 1 tablespoon melted butter, 1/4 teaspoon salt and ⅓ teaspoon pepper; take steak from fire, turn it from one side to the other in the batter and seasoning; place on a heated serving platter and serve at once.
This is pan-broiling, not broiling under a flame: the steak cooks dry in a very hot skillet with no added fat until the finish. A few of the instructions are garbled in the original printing.
- "Broil" means the skilletThe whole recipe happens in the pan. Use heavy cast iron, preheated until a drop of water skitters and vanishes, and add no oil to the pan itself. Open a window and turn on the hood before you start; a dry skillet at that heat smokes freely.
- "Cut both ways"This probably means slashing the fat rim at intervals on both edges so the steak does not curl as the fat contracts, though the phrase is obscure and other readings are possible. Cuts about an inch apart, through the fat but not into the meat, are enough.
- "Turn it in the batter"A typesetting slip for butter. The steak is turned in the melted butter and seasoning pooled on the hot platter, which is the sauce.
- The pepper measure"1/½ teaspoon" is not a real fraction; it is most likely a broken ½, though ⅛ is also possible. Read it as ½ teaspoon, or less if that seems heavy beside the ¼ teaspoon of salt.
- TimingTen to fifteen minutes with frequent turning will take a 1½-inch steak to medium-well or beyond by current tastes. Cook to an instant-read thermometer instead: 130-135F for medium-rare, 140F for medium, which on a hot skillet is usually 8-10 minutes total.
- SaltThe period habit of seasoning only at the end works, but salting the surface 40 minutes ahead, or immediately before the sear, gives better crust and seasoning through the meat. Then cut the platter salt back to a pinch.
- Rest itThe recipe sends the steak straight to the table. Turning it in butter on the hot platter does give it a minute or two of rest; give it five, then slice across the grain.
- YieldA 1½-inch sirloin or porterhouse runs roughly 1½ to 2 lb and serves three to four, with the porterhouse's tenderloin side divided among them.
Pan-broiling was a common American treatment for a thick steak in the era of coal and wood ranges, when broiling often meant holding a wire gridiron over live coals and a closed range top offered a hotter, steadier surface. Cookbooks of the period were careful to distinguish it from frying: no fat in the pan, pour off any that renders, and let the meat's own surface brown. The finishing platter of butter, salt and pepper does the work a compound butter or pan sauce would do now, and it explains the insistence on a heated platter, since cold china would set the butter and chill a steak that has no sauce to carry it. The recipe's brevity assumes a cook who already knew the technique and needed only the proportions.