Home › The World's Kitchen › Porterhouse Steak with Smothered Onions
Porterhouse Steak with Smothered Onions
Procure a nice, tender one-and-a-quarter-inch-thick porterhouse steak. Lightly flatten and trim all around. Mix on a plate a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and tablespoon oil; repeatedly turn the steak in the seasoning, arrange it on a broiler and broil on a brisk fire for twelve minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, place the smothered onions over the steak and serve.
A straightforward broiled steak whose only real problem is the clock. Everything else translates directly to a modern broiler or grill.
- The timing is the hingeTwenty-four minutes total will take a 1¼-inch porterhouse well past well done and into grey. On a hot grill or under a preheated broiler that thickness reaches medium-rare (125-130F) in roughly 4-5 minutes a side; work by an instant-read thermometer rather than the clock.
- "A brisk fire"Means the coals or grate at their hottest — a modern broiler element fully preheated for 10 minutes, or a grill you cannot hold a hand over. The book gives no temperature at all, presumably because the cook was expected to judge the fire by feel.
- "Lightly flatten"A few taps with the flat of a cleaver to even out the thickness so the tail and the loin cook at the same rate. Do not pound it thin; a porterhouse is bought for its texture.
- Seasoning in oil on a plateThis is a marinade only in the loosest sense — the point is even coverage of salt, pepper and fat before the steak meets the fire. Salting well ahead, or immediately before cooking, is generally reckoned better than the window in between, when surface moisture has been drawn out but not yet reabsorbed; the timings are rules of thumb, not fixed rules.
- Rest itThe original sends the steak straight to the hot dish. Give it 5-8 minutes loosely covered before the onions go on, or the juices run out onto the platter.
- The smothered onionsReferred to as though already known, so presumably a preparation given elsewhere: onions sliced and cooked slowly in butter or drippings, covered, until soft and deep gold — 25-30 minutes, started before the steak. Have them ready and hot.
- YieldA porterhouse of this thickness runs roughly 1½-2 lb with the bone and serves two generously, three at a table with other dishes. Carve the strip and the tenderloin off the bone and slice across the grain.
The porterhouse is generally said to take its name from the porter houses of the early nineteenth century — taverns selling porter and plain hot food — though the story is contested, with rival claims attaching to a New York porter house and to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The American steakhouse trade made the cut, a loin steak carrying both strip and tenderloin either side of the bone, the standard of generous eating by the time this book was compiled. Smothered onions are cheap and slow-cooked, and dress a plainly grilled piece of meat.