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Broiled Double Porterhouse Steak
Select a porterhouse steak of about three pounds in weight, cut thick, and broil over a rather slow fire (a charcoal fire is preferable) for ten minutes on each side, and serve garnished with watercress.
Four lines of text that assume a great deal: a butcher who will cut to order, a live charcoal fire, and a cook who knows what a steak looks like when it is done. The gaps are worth filling in.
- What a "double" steak isNot two steaks but one cut roughly twice the usual thickness — probably around two inches, which is about what gets you to three pounds on a porterhouse. Ask the butcher for a two-inch cut off the short loin with both the strip and the tenderloin lobes intact, and specify the thickness rather than the weight.
- The hinge: a slow fire"Rather slow" is deliberate and is the whole method. A two-inch steak over a searing fire chars before the centre warms. Build the charcoal to a medium bed — you should be able to hold a hand at grate height for four or five seconds — or use a two-zone fire and finish the steak on the cooler side.
- Ten minutes a side, checkedTwenty minutes total over a moderate charcoal bed will bring a two-inch steak to rare or the low end of medium-rare. Cook to temperature rather than the clock: pull at 120-125F for rare, 130F for medium-rare, measuring into the thickest part of the strip side and avoiding the bone, which reads cool.
- Under a broiler insteadIf you are broiling indoors, put the rack so the meat sits about four inches from the element and expect a longer time, since a domestic broiler is a weaker heat than charcoal. A hot cast-iron pan with an oven finish is another indoor route.
- Seasoning, which is not mentionedThe recipe says nothing about salt; whether it was assumed or simply omitted is not recorded. Salt generously on both sides, ideally 40 minutes to an hour ahead so it has time to penetrate, and grind pepper on after cooking so it does not scorch over live coals.
- Rest itTen minutes loosely tented before carving, which the original omits and a thick steak badly needs. Carve the strip and the fillet away from the bone, then slice each across the grain.
- The watercress is functionalPeppery cress laid on the hot platter wilts slightly in the meat juices, and it was a common garnish for grilled beef in this period. Lemon wedges and a pat of maitre d'hotel butter are in the same vein if you want more than the garnish.
- YieldThree pounds bone-in serves two generously or three modestly — this was written as a steak for a table to share, not a single portion.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893, and the thick porterhouse for two is the signature of that era of American hotel and chophouse cooking, when a steak's prestige lay in its size and in the fact that it was cut and cooked to order for a particular party. "Porterhouse" is generally traced to the porter houses of early nineteenth-century New York, taverns serving porter and beer along with cheap cuts of beef, the name later attaching to the large short-loin steak containing part of the tenderloin. The preference for charcoal here is not nostalgia: hotel kitchens of the 1890s used coal ranges and charcoal broilers, and a bed of charcoal gave a steady radiant heat with less smoke and soot than raw coal.