Page 26 - March & April

24 MYROUSESEVERYDAY MAY | JUNE 2013
a strip on one side and a fillet on the other, especially if it’s been
dry-aged. Make sure to look for the dry-aging cabinets located in
eight Rouses stores.
Not that other steaks have escaped my affection. Hangar steaks
have a fantastically bold richness that I love, and even a modest
skirt steak, a wonderful and inexpensive cut, makes a fantastic
addition to salads or fajitas. I also adore a good sirloin steak, which
is filled with flavor, although not quite as fatty as its more expensive
cousins. Sirloin is perfect for grilled steak kebabs, a lovely treat for
a backyard BBQ. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention flank steak,
marinated overnight, then grilled and sliced thinly across the grain,
another beautiful (not to mention inexpensive and healthy) cut.
Whatever I choose for my steak celebration, I always make sure
to have a good conversation with my Rouses butcher before I
make a decision. Remember: butchers always know best, and
Rouses knowledgeable butchers are true, trustworthy friends of the
carnivorously inclined.
STEAK: A Love Affair
I remember my first real steakhouse experience. At the tender
age of thirteen, my parents finally felt I was old enough for my
very own cut of prime beef at a respectable establishment, Ruth’s
Chris on Broad.The following meal looms huge in my memory every
time I find myself in a steakhouse to this day. I remember hearing
my steak, a petite filet cooked to a perfect pink medium, sizzling and
popping in melting butter as the waiter carried it to our table. Then I
tasted it, and a lifelong love affair with steak began in earnest.
As a proud meat eater, it surprises some when I say that I don’t
eat steak every day, or every week, for that matter. Steak, for this
carnivore, should be a special occasion, a meal that deserves – even
demands – attention and respect, and I treat it accordingly.
When it comes to cuts of steak, my father is a diehard aficionado of
the filet, which is cut from the tenderloin, known as the “backstraps”
in hunting parlance. (The butchers at Rouses on Tchoupitoulas
know my father – and the cut he wants – very well.) The filet has
an incomparable, buttery softness prized by many. Every year, on
our family vacation, my mother marinates and grills a whole beef
tenderloin, and it’s a marvelous occasion, indeed. A filet, however,
is also relatively lacking in fat, and, as we all know, fat means flavor.
When I’m looking for that wonderful, deep “steaky” flavor, I seek
out two cuts in particular: the rib eye and the strip. While the strip
comes from the short loin, the most prized and expensive primal
cut of beef, the ribeye is found, shockingly, in the rib section of the
cow. Both of these cuts are known for their intense marbling – the
rich webbing of fat running through the meat – that gives a steak
its deep, savory beef flavor, and helps it stay moist as you cook it.
And if I really want the best of all steak worlds, the “king of cuts,”
I look no further than a porterhouse, which is a T-bone steak with
by Scott Gold
Scott Gold is a
national food writer
and author of the
book The Shameless
Carnivore.
About the Writer
Beef dry aging in
meat locker.