Beef
Barbecue University™
The Cold Grate Method for Grilling Steaks
If your idea of a perfect steak is crusty on the outside, grilled to a uniform rare to medium-rare, masterfully seasoned with a hint of wood smoke, and tantalizingly juicy when you cut into it, listen up. There’s a new grilling method you’ve probably never heard of. The secret? A cold grate. I was first introduced to this singular technique by David Parrish, the founder of Adrenaline Barbecue Company (aka, ABC) of Concord, North Carolina. David,...
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Must-Have Recipes for Grilled or Smoked Prime Rib
The English call it roast beef, and for untold generations, a rib roast rotating on a spit in front of a wood fire has represented not just gustatory bliss, but material and spiritual comfort. So essential is roast beef to the British sense of well-being, a special breed of dog was developed in the sixteenth century to turn a treadmill attached to the rotisserie spit. (Before that, the task fell to scullery lads, and later, elaborate clockworks.) Rotisserie Prime Rib with Horseradish Cream is one of...
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On A Roll: A Quartet of Roast Beef Sandwiches
Sometimes, it’s beef you crave. Not chicken, not seafood, not “the other white meat.” You want brawny, sanguine, iron- and nutrient-rich, blood-building beef. Preferably on a crusty roll with enough strength to hold a mouth-stretching payload of grilled or smoked red meat. Yeah. Debris Sandwich (aka Po’ Boy): Let’s begin the regional tour in one of America’s most food-obsessed towns, New Orleans, where a gravy-soaked debris sandwich can pick...
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Raising the Steaks: The Grass-Fed Beef 1LB Challenge
For several years, Steven has been beating the drum for grass-fed, pasture-raised beef, recommending it in his books and featuring it on his TV shows, Project Smoke and Project Fire. So he was very receptive when Strauss Brands, a leader in ethical and sustainable livestock practices, recently launched its “1LB Challenge” consumer awareness campaign. The challenge is a simple one: Simply replace 1 pound of your weekly beef purchases with grass-fed beef raised in the...
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Use Your Christmas Tree on the Grill: Spruce-Grilled Steaks
Though I am constantly thinking about various cuts of beef and new ways to cook them, the busy month of December traditionally brings Spruce-Grilled Steak to mind over and over again. Why might I focus on this recipe each year, you ask? The answer is simple: the scent of freshly cut Christmas trees brings me back to the aroma of spruce smoke and a sizzling rib eye steak. Created by my friend and the editor of my French-Canadian books, Pierre Bourdon,...
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The Only Recipe You Need for Whole Beef Tenderloin
When you want to make a gesture of generosity or opulence this holiday season, nothing beats the long cylindrical, supernaturally tender muscle cut from the inside of the steer’s ribcage, beef tenderloin. Yes, it’s an extravagance. And yes, tenderloin may lack some of the rich flavor of prime rib or brisket, but it’s guaranteed to delight the carnivores in your family or circle of friends. I’ve published many recipes for this luxurious cut of meat over the years,...
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How to Grill the Perfect Steak
Thousands of students have graduated from Barbecue University, the intense hands-on course in live-fire cooking I’ve been teaching since 2001. And nearly all have a common goal: to learn how to grill the perfect steak—crusty on the outside, juicy and sanguine on the inside, and deftly seasoned. Even among intrepid grillers, the fear factor is high with beefsteak. Miscalculate the cooking time by mere minutes, and you’ve potentially devalued your investment—which is usually substantial—and...
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The New Veal
After decades of pariah status, veal is making a comeback. Outrage in the 1980s at the cruel conditions under which young calves were raised made Americans lose their appetite for veal. It all but disappeared from restaurant menus and meat counters. Annual per capita consumption dropped from four pounds to about a third of a pound, the equivalent of one measly dinner of wienerschnitzel or veal Parmigiana or osso buco—literally too little to graph. ...
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The Matter of Meat: Responsibly Raised Steak and Brisket
This post is brought to you by Nebraska Star Beef, which provided advertising support. As Steven has said time and time again, where your food comes from and how it was raised matters as much as how you grill it. Nebraska Star Beef shares this belief, and has tailored their business to follow this tenet. With a focus on traditional methods of raising, aging, and butchering cattle, the result is a high quality meat with a trustworthy...
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In Time for Father’s Day: 5 Great Recipes for Grilled Steak
George Stephens, Sr. fabricated the first prototype of his iconic Weber kettle grill in 1952. My family didn’t get the memo until the 1970s, meaning that all the steaks that ended up on our table were cooked on a grill with a lidless shallow fire pan. I recall the grill grate could be raised or lowered via a crank-operated center stem over the coals, but only by a couple of inches. Consequently, everything was direct grilled. And my father did steaks one way and one way only—hot, fast, and well done, seasoned...
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