Planked Steak
I steak 2 inches thick
Butter
Duchess potatoes
Chopped parsley
Various kinds of cooked vege- Salt tables
Paprika
Trim the fat and make outline of the stean even. Sear it on both sides on a hot griddle or pan, using no fat. Cook fifteen minutes, turning frequently. Oil a heated plank, place the steak on the plank, and arrange border of Duchess potatoes around it. Arrange other cooked vegetables, such as stuffed tomatoes or green peppers, small boiled onions, peas, string beans and cubes of carrot or turnip, around the steak, also, so that the board is entirely concealed. Place the plank in the oven until the potato border is browned and all the vegetables are heated through. After removing it from the oven, spread the steak with butter into which has been rubbed finely chopped parsley, salt and paprika. Send to table upon the plank.
A whole thick steak finished on a hardwood plank and surrounded by piped potato and cooked vegetables, meant to arrive at the table on the board itself. The technique still works, but a few of the assumptions behind it need translating.
- The plank itselfUse untreated hardwood — oak, maple, or hickory — at least an inch thick, never construction lumber, plywood, or anything sealed or pressure-treated. Season a new plank by rubbing it with oil and heating it slowly in a low oven before its first use, and set it on a sheet pan in the oven so any scorching does not drip.
- The steakA 2-inch cut means a porterhouse, sirloin, or thick rib steak of roughly 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 lb, serving four to six. "Trim the fat and make outline even" is about presentation on the board; leave a thin cap for flavor.
- Searing and donenessFifteen minutes of dry searing with frequent turning, plus oven time, will take a 2-inch steak well past what most cooks now want. Sear hard for color, then judge by an instant-read thermometer — 130-135F at the center for medium-rare — remembering the steak keeps cooking on the hot plank.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. The oven is only there to brown the potato border and reheat the vegetables, so a hot oven for a short spell — something in the region of 425-450F — will do the job; the steak should already be nearly done when it goes in.
- Duchess potatoesMashed potato enriched with egg yolk and butter, stiff enough to pipe through a star tube. Made too loose it slumps on the plank; it should hold a defined ridge before it ever sees the oven.
- Concealing the boardThe instruction to cover the plank entirely is structural as well as decorative — bare hot wood scorches and smokes. The potato border also helps hold the meat juices on the board.
- Maitre d'hotel butterParsley butter -- The butter rubbed with parsley, salt, and paprika at the end is a compound butter, close to a maitre d'hotel butter but without lemon; best made in advance and chilled so it melts slowly over the cut steak rather than running straight off.
- ServingSet the plank on a heatproof tray or trivet at the table. The wood holds heat far longer than a platter and will mark a finished surface.
Plank cookery came into American restaurants and then home kitchens in the late nineteenth century, generally traced back to the practice of cooking split shad and other fish nailed to a board before an open fire — a method that predates the stove entirely and was well established along the Atlantic seaboard. By the time Butterick issued this collection, planked steak and planked whitefish were fixtures of hotel dining rooms, and planks were sold as household goods. The dish belongs squarely to the era's taste for the composed platter: a single piece of meat ringed with piped potato and neat cubes of carrot and turnip, arranged so no wood shows. Its appearance in a Butterick book, published by a pattern company for the woman running her own household, suggests that a restaurant showpiece was by then thought worth attempting at home.