Porterhouse: The King of Steaks

Summers here, and summer is vacation time. So if you’re staying home this summer, take a vacation anyway”a food vacation. You’ve been careful all year to eat less meat and more legumes. Now that summer is here, get out the grill and enjoy your steaks. The news people are advising us to take a stay-cation. Well, turn your stay-cation into a steak-cation! And who is the king of the steaks? King! Porterhouse.

This cut of steak has lots of marbled fat so that it is juicy and flavorful and, most important, tender. Porterhouse is probably the most tender cuts of beef. Picture the porterhouse steak in your head. Its that perfect, thick triangular steak with the bone down the middle. The bone splits the steak into two neat sections. The larger one is what you expect from a porterhouse, a treat to eat. But the smaller one is the prize. It is even more flavorful and juicy. If someone divides the steak and gives you the choice of pieces, follow your mothers etiquette instructions and take the smaller piece. And that leaves the bone. Meat processors these days always want to take out the bones. Supermarket meat departments dont give us half the bones that our parents could buy. But you know where the flavor is. Next to the bone. You know not to chew on the bone in a restaurant (Moms etiquette again), but if you are in your backyard, anything goes! Chew! Gnaw! Lick! Slurp! Savor every atom of flavor on that porterhouse bone.

There are a couple of schools of thought when it comes to cooking steaks. The first is gas grill versus charcoal grill. The second is marinated versus gloriously naked.

This is just what I think, but, if you’re going to cook on a gas grill, you might as well broil your steak in the kitchen. You wont have to fight the flies, mosquitoes, and yellow jackets, and the steak will taste pretty much the same. I know, you put the lava rocks in the bottom of the grill. Supposedly, the fat drips from the steak, hits the rocks, and gives the steak a grilled flavor. But, to me, it doesn’t work. A charcoal fire is a lot more bother, but it is worth every bit of the extra labor. You absolutely have to be sure to take the time for the fire to die down to ash-covered embers, and you need to have a handy spray bottle of water to put out the licking flames, but the result is an aroma that will call hungry carnivores from hundreds of feet and a flavor like no other.

The second question is to marinate or not to marinate. In my opinion, the natural flavor of the charcoal-grilled steak is so satisfying that adding other flavor via a marinade detracts from the perfection of the pure steak flavor. So, sprinkle on a little salt (go on, salt it”its vacation, remember?) and maybe a little pepper, but that’s all the perfect porterhouse needs.

Last 5 posts by Chuck R Stewart

• Eight Easy Ways to Make Your Steak Taste Delicious - July 7th, 2009
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• Porterhouse: The Best Kept Secret - June 29th, 2009
• Wax Packaging: Todays Perfect Packaging Solution - June 27th, 2009
• If You're Not Going Away This Summer, Have a Steak-cation - June 23rd, 2009