Home › Meats › Broiled Beefsteak
Broiled Beefsteak
Lay a thick tender steak upon a gridiron well greased with butter or beef suet, over hot coals; when done on one side have ready the warmed platter with a little butter on it, lay the steak, without pressing it, upon the platter with the cooked side down so that the juices which have gathered may run on the platter, quickly place it again on gridiron, and cook the other side. When done to liking, put on platter again, spread lightly with butter, season with salt and pepper, and place where it will keep warm (over boiling steam is best) for a few moments, but do not let butter become oily. Serve on hot plates. Many prefer to sear on one side, turn immediately and sear the other, and finish cooking, turning often; garnish with fried sliced potatoes, or with browned potato balls the size of a marble, piled at each end of platter. - Mrs. W. W. W.
A charcoal-grilling method from the days before thermometers, and most of its logic still holds. Two instructions carry the whole recipe: never press the steak, and catch the juices that escape.
- The gridironA gridiron is a grate of iron bars set over live coals — a charcoal grill grate is the direct equivalent. A ridged cast-iron grill pan over high heat works indoors, though you lose the smoke.
- Hot coalsCoals, not flames. Wait until the charcoal is ashed over and glowing, and spread it in an even bed. Live flame from dripping fat will soot the meat rather than sear it.
- Do not pressThe instruction not to press the steak is the hinge of the recipe. Pressing with a spatula or tongs drives out the juices the author is at pains to collect on the platter.
- The platter trickSetting the steak cooked-side-down on a warm buttered platter between turns catches the juices, which stay with the steak when it goes back onto the platter to be served. Warm the platter well; a cold plate stops the cooking dead and congeals the butter.
- "Thick tender steak"Read this as 1 to 1 1/2 inches — a strip, ribeye or sirloin. Anything thinner overcooks before it colours, and the turn-and-rest sequence described here becomes pointless.
- DonenessThe book has no way to say it, so: 125F at the centre for rare, 135F medium-rare, 145F medium, measured off the heat with an instant-read thermometer. Carryover will add a few degrees.
- Butter that turns oilyHolding the finished steak over steam keeps it warm without melting the butter to grease. The recipe says a few moments, and that is the right order of magnitude; longer and the meat greys through and the point of the sear is lost.
- Turning oftenThe alternative method given at the end — sear both sides, then turn frequently — is close to a common modern grilling practice, and frequent turning is generally held to cook more evenly than one long turn per side.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a single thick steak of this kind would serve about two.
Broiling in nineteenth-century American kitchens meant cooking over coals on a gridiron, not under a gas or electric element, and cookbooks of the period treated it as the test of a cook's judgement: no dial, no timer, only the look and feel of the meat. The Dixie Cook Book belongs to a family of compiled community cookbooks — generally traced to Estelle Woods Wilcox's Buckeye Cookery and its many regional reissues — in which recipes were gathered from contributors and printed over their initials, as here with Mrs. W. W. W. That format explains the conversational shape of the text, with its aside that "many prefer" the quick double sear: it is one household's practice set down beside another's rather than a single authoritative method. The insistence on a warmed platter and unpressed meat reflects a period preoccupation with keeping the juices in the beef, at a time when a good steak was an expense not to be squandered.