Beef eaters unite! The Flat Iron is for you!

I like steak. No, I love steak. The problem is that my wallet is highly allergic to the cost of steak. A good ribeye can easily cost upwards of $8 to $9 per pound. Go for a New York Strip, T-Bone, or Porterhouse, and you just about have to take out a mortgage. At prices like that, the closest our family usually comes to steak  is tube steak. For those of you not versed in the various cuts of steak, "tube steak" is a more refined name for hotdog.

One day, we received a giftcard for Longhorn's Steakhouse. I forget the occasion, but that really doesn't matter for this story. On the particular day we decided to use this giftcard, Sissy was otherwise occupied, so it was just Neva, Joseph, and me. We had $50 dollars on this card and Joseph was determined we are going to have steak. I made it clear to everyone that we could each spend $13 dollars, leaving just enough on the card for tips. Needless to say, we didn't walk into the restaurant with very high hopes. We walked in, and, before being seated, asked for a menu. It was starting to look like chicken that night when I spotted one steak within our price range. We were staying.

The steak we decided to try was a flat iron steak. I had never heard of it before. It came out in an 8oz portion, about one inch thick. It is supposedly called a flat iron steak because it resembles the old fashioned flat irons of old. Much to my surprise and delight, it came out absolutely delicious. It was tender, like a filet, but still had the taste of a ribeye. This steak was definitely a winner.

Unfortunately, I could not find the flat iron in any stores. It turns out that this cut of meat is more popular, therefore, easier to find, out west. Just as I was about to give up hope, I was looking through the meat department at my local Kroger, and saw this long strip of vacuum sealed beef. Upon closer inspection, it was labeled as a flat iron steak. Even more importantly, it was about $9.50 for a two pound strip. That was just $4.75/lb. I convinced Neva that it was a necessary item for the grocery cart, and started salivating over the thoughts of grilling it. A few days later, that steak was sectioned into four 8oz pieces, and slapped on the grill. Below are the results.

Isn't that one tasty looking slab of beef!?! Trust me when I tell you that it tasted just as good as it looks. Now, don't go jumping down my throat, complaining about me putting way too much sour cream on my potato. My family does try to occasionally eat right. We stopped eating sour cream quite a while ago. What you see on that potato is plain Greek yogurt. It's taste is very close to that of sour cream, but without all of the fat. The steak is genuine though ... fat and all.

Update: A good friend of mine (we'll call her Melinda...because that's her name) told her that her butcher recommended the chuck eye steak as an inexpensive alternative to those pricier cuts of beef. I decided to check it out. It turns out that the chuck eye steak is cut from the part of the beef chuck that enters the rib cage and connects to the part of the cow where ribeyes come from. In fact, they are often called the "Poor Man's Ribeye" because they resemble ribeyes in taste and tenderness, without the cost. The main thing that distinguishes chuckeyes from ribeyes is that the chuckeye steak definitely has more connective tissue running through it. At $5.99/lb, I was certainly willing to try. I found a pack of six. I marinated them for half an hour in a mixture of butter and a thirty minute steak marinade.

After grilling these things, I can see why the butcher is so reluctant to let his customers know about them. He can only get 3-5 chuckeye steaks per cow, and he wants to keep them all to himself.

There, you have it. Two excellent alternatives to the more expensive cuts of meat; flatiron and chuckeye steaks. Enjoy your steaks, and stay fiscally sound.

Move over, Ruth's Chris. There's a new joint in town!

Anybody who reads my blog regularly, and knows who Ruth's Chris is, is probably wondering what this entry has to do with smoked turkey. It is true that my famous last words were, "Next up, smoked turkey." Okay, they really were "Y'all come back soon!', but I'm hoping you won't mind me taking a little artistic license with what were really the next to last words. I'm also hoping you won't mind this little detour into the land of beef, while we are on the way to turkey.

Anywho! I digress. For those who don't know, Ruth's Chris is a chain of very highfalutin steak houses. It's one of those restaurants where you have to take out a mortgage for a meal that will have you swearing you are sitting at the great banquet table on high. The worst part is that you will feel it was worth every penny...as you tuck yourself into your brand new cardboard box for the night.

We don't eat steak often at our house. It's not that we don't like it. I think my above description of Ruth's Chris pretty much puts that fallacy to rest. There are a few reasons. After years of trying (not too successfully, I might add) to eat healthy, and focus more on poultry, fish, and pork, my stomach has become pretty sensitive to beef. Please don't force me to go into detail. Now, I'm one of the lucky one's who takes one of those daily stomach pills, which also takes care of the sensitivity to beef. The main reason, we don't eat steaks much is price. Once you've been spoiled by the best, you just don't want to go home with one of those scrawny little supermarket steaks. Especially, since even the cheap paper thin steaks cost an arm and a leg...AND I have to buy two family packs because I have a family of four, and the supermarket (whom shall remain nameless...KROGER) thinks every family unit contains three members. Now, if the cheap steaks that are cut so thin that they almost classify as carpaccio, are expensive, just imagine how much the good ones cost!

Like I said. We don't eat steak often at our house. Imagine my surprise when I was walking by the meat clearance section of that nameless supermarket, and I happened upon a pack of four (Not three!!) 11oz ribeye steaks. These things were absolutely gorgeous, and were begging me to take them home. $26 is a lot to spend for one pack of meat, but that really only comes to $6.50 per 11oz steak. You can't get that type of price on a ribeye at your cheap gristle and chicken restaurants. Besides, I had this wonderful new wood pellet grill being delivered that needed to be properly tested. Into the basket the steaks went...after a few minutes of begging with the wife.

This was going to be a good test. One of the chief complaints about wood pellet grills is, while they do an excellent job at low and slow cooking, they just don't get hot enough to provide a proper sear to a steak. What is so important about a sear? On a piece of meat that is going to be cooked at a high temperature, and can quickly lose it's precious juices, searing is needed to basically "cauterize" the wounded flesh. Sounds kinda gross, but that really is what searing does. It cauterizes the meat, and locks in the juices. Anyone who has had the misfortune of eating a dry steak can attest to just how important that is.

One of the reasons I purchased a Sawtooth pellet grill, is because Doug (remember him from my previous post?) promised me it would get hot enough to sear. That means it had to reach a minimum temperature of 450 degrees, preferably 500 degrees or higher. When I was ready to cook, the temp gauge was reading just above 450. I remembered that on a previous test the surface temperature proved to be about 20 degrees hotter that the top of the dome, where the temp gauge is. It is quite possible the grill could have gotten hotter, but I was satisfied with 500. I wanted to sear...not burn.

My first test was to be a grilled summer salad. What!?! You heard me correctly. It is amazing how much the flavor profile of a standard green salad changes when you grill it. I took thick 1/2 inch slices of red onion, brushed them with olive oil, and sprinkled both sides with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper. I then placed those onion slices on the grill. After 8-10 minutes, I flipped them over for another 8-10 minutes. I also cut some romaine hearts in half, lengthwise, and brushed the flat surface with olive oil, followed by a sprinkling of kosher salt. During the last two minutes of cooking for the onions, I placed the romaine on the grill, flat side facing down. Two minutes at high heat was just enough to provide a little char on the surface of the lettuce, without completely wilting it.

Take the lettuce and onions, give them a rough chop, mix in some grape tomatoes, then drizzle with a small amount of your favorite salad dressing. Joseph and I like to make dill pickles in the summer. Our favorite dressing is a simple mixture of the leftover pickle juice from a jar of pickles, mixed with enough mayonnaise to just about fill the pint jar. The final grilled summer salad is below. Please excuse the bluriness, I was in lala land, and didn't notice that I still had the camera on manual focus.

Next up...the whole reason for cranking up the grill this night. I had just slathered the steaks in a mixture of oil and butter. The butter adds flavor, and the oil both helps the kosher salt to stick, as well as allowing the surface of the steak to get even hotter. Just before slapping the steaks on the grill, I sprinkled one side liberally with kosher salt. Since kosher salt granules are larger, they don't dissolve in liquid as easily as regular table salt. This ensures little bursts of flavor as you are eating your steak. I honestly feel that a properly salted and peppered steak NEVER needs steak sauce. While you don't want to pour the entire salt mine on the steak, you do want to be liberal with the salt, as much of it will fall off in the grill. I placed the steaks on the grill grates salted side down, then proceeded to salt the other side. I closed the lid, then after two minutes, I turned the steaks a quarter turn, and cooked for another four minutes. I then gently flipped the steaks, and cooked them for another four minutes on the other side. After pulling the steaks off the grill, I placed them in a dish and covered with foil, so they could rest while we ate our salads. When it came time to eat our steaks, all four of us had juicy medium-rare steaks...just the way we like them!.

While eating our steaks, I did make the comment that while seared properly, the grill grates that came with the Sawtooth grill did not produce proper grill marks. I believe the response I got from Joseph was, "Who cares!?! These are good!" I think that's what he said as he continued to stuff meat into his mouth.

Next year I might invest in a set of GrillGrates. These are a set of grill grates that can either rest on top of your current ones, or replace them. They provide the same type of "infrared" grilling that Charbroil is providing on their newer grills. It is supposed to be an excellent way of searing, and providing those beloved grill marks. Then again, maybe not. After all, who can argue with...

"Who cares!?! These are good!"