Last night, nearly for the first time since early in the COVID-19 pandemic, my wife and I ate a decent New York strip steak. Saturday night is steak night in our household—nearly every Saturday we have steak, one of only two times a week we eat beef. The other time I prepare burgers.
But the steaks haven’t been very good. For well over a year the steaks have been tough, stringy, and lacking in flavor but last night’s was excellent. Not to mention expensive. Some of the credit might be due to the new (to me) way of preparing the steak. Here’s what I’m doing.
I season the steak and then sauté it in a non-stick pan. I cook it for two minutes, then flip it, cook for two more minutes, and repeat until the desired degree of doneness. For us that’s medium rare to rare which takes about 10-12 minutes. Something depends on the thickness of the steak.
If anyone is concerned about our health, my wife and share a small steak&mmdash;4 oz. per person. Same with the burger: 4 oz. I weigh practically everything that goes into our mouths. Over the period of the last two years my daily calorie intake has been about 1,400 calories/day. We mostly eat fish, chicken, and vegetables (eggs don’t agree with my wife).
Chimpanzees hunt and eat meat, raw of course. So even the ancester of us and chimps probably ate scavenged meat. That’s about 8 million years of meat eating by our prehuman ancestors and us. Enjoy.
Of course, eating grains only goes back 10,000 years, and that only applies to ancestors of the Anatolian farmers. East Asians have about the same history with grains, Amerindians and Africans got farming much more recently.
There’s some evidence that we and our ancestors have been cooking meat for at least 1 million years.
We’re fortunate to have a an excellent butcher shop right around the corner. We’re a filet household (our oldest daughter still gets teased about the time we took her with us to a fine steakhouse when she was 4 and she ordered a petite filet- we warned her now husband that she has expensive taste.) Our favorite way to cook them is on the Big Green Egg.
Regarding eggs….about 4 weeks ago I took did a food sensitivity test and learned that my sensitivity to eggs is off the charts. Hoping that an elimination diet will allow me to avoid sinus surgery. Figuring out a good breakfast options with enough protein has been a real challenge.
A few years ago I started to cook steak sous vide and have never looked back. It’s very difficult to overcook unless you mess up the post sous vide sear and poor quality meat can be made better with a longer cook time.
We do burgers once a week as well, but steak less often. With 5 of us (two of them ravenous teenagers), steak dinners get expensive.
Prefer the grill but have recently been doing sous vide. It is pretty reliable.
Steve
Sous vide provides other options. Many of the braising recipes can be adapted for sous vide and will let you use less expensive cuts with very good results I’m told.
I had to laugh at CS’ comment. We took my daughter at a young age to a Mortons and then Peter Luger many years ago. And that was that. If you are willing to seek out the places servicing the restaurant trade they continue to have good meat.
Eggs a problem? This is my breakfast:
Mixed greens heavy on spinach. Broccoli. Asparagus or brussel sprouts. Blueberries. Green onions. Red and yellow peppers. Sometimes red cabbage. Sometimes dandelion. Into a blender and all cut with beet juice.
How does it taste? Like shit. But its very good for you and very low calorie.
No, thanks, Drew. I was treated to such concoctions almost 70 years ago. My mom was an Adelle Davis fan.
I know. I know. But I do feel better using this, and I don’t think its placebo effect. I can get by on two meals a day. However, it will, though, uh, er, provide lots of fiber. Lots of fiber……..
Seriously, it was this very blog that caused me to investigate alternatives to the thermodynamic weight control paradigm.
Yeah, weight control is complicated. I still don’t understand “set points” (certain weights at which your body tends to remain) but I’m convinced they’re real.
I was one of those kids except that I would order King Crab legs at any restaurant that had them. My parents were not amused.