And we won’t even talk about chicken-fried steak, cuz I don’t want the drool to short out my keyboard.
I seem to remember a rather unconventional method of cooking steak (from The Book Of Sheer Damn Manliness). It involved coating a steak in a paste of mustard and rock salt, wrapping it in layers of (black and white) newspaper, dipping it in water, and then grilling it until the paper burned off. After that, scrape off the paste and serve.
It’s been a while, so the method might not be quite as described. I just remember that rock salt, mustard and newspaper are involved.
I do not care for entire chicken-fried steaks, but I like making steak fingers. I get the little tiny flat round steaks that say “para milanesa” on them (I haven’t a clue what they’re called - I buy them based on the fact that they are small, round and thin), and I cut them into narrow strips, add salt and pepper, then dip them into the following substances in the following order:
- Flour seasoned with a couple types of pepper
- A mixture of milk and egg
- Back in the flour
Then pop them in the Fry Daddy until they float and look golden-brown. T3H YUMM0RZ
Ok, I’m gonna buy my steaks, and some mushrooms, tonite on the way home from work.
My plan is to rub the steaks with some pepper, garlic and a brush on some light olive oil. Then I’m goign to pop them into the Foreman grill.
I’m going to slice and saute some mushrooms, in butter. I’m going to pull my steaks out when done and place them on some aluminum foil to sit and finish cooking.
I will take the drip tray from my grill and toss it in the pan I sauted my mushrooms in (with mushrooms still in it) and add a bit more butter, and maybe some red wine. Cook down, till it’s a sauce.
Drizzle over steaks, add a heap o’ mushrooms and serve.
How does that sound?
Side dish- Homemade Mashed spuds.
The most important difference is that kosher(ing) salt is not iodized. The addition of iodine to salt completely changes the flavor. Try a taste test between regular table salt, kosher salt and sea salt. You’ll never go back to table salt.
Tristan,
While I love olive oil and feel it has many uses, coating a steak that will have the highest heat you can create applied to it is not one of them. Olive oil has a low smoke point (essentially, where it starts to burn). Canola, peanut, safflower, vegetable or corn oil would be better choices.
What time is dinner? I’m starved. 
Beef cooks at a low low heat…the difference between olive oil and any other is purely preference. The beef burns long before the oil.
BTW, my garden is overflowing with thyme, coriander, mint, rosemary, etc…
Noted. I will alter this plan to use a differnt oil… probably a light brushing of some veggie oil.
The kosher laws forbid the eating of hindquarters, which is where most steaks come from. What cut of kosher beef do you use for rare steaks?
I’m not the type to jump in without reading all the posts in a thread, but the quote is dead-on. If you have to marinate, baste or wet-bake it. If you need more than salt, you’re cooking too cheap a cut. And if it hasn’t been said, pan frying should only be done in a ribbed cast-iron skillet. Please buy high-quality steaks and don’t screw them up with marinating. You want to taste the steak, not the marinate.
I can’t believe I missed a steak thread for this long but let me add my personal steak cooking points regarding the previous posts.
I’m bit leary of the Foreman grill for steak. As I understand it the Foreman grill is designed to create pressure and squeeze the fat out of stuff for health. This is a no-no for steak . You want all the fat to stay in the meet for flavor. Squeezing the steak is bad. Make sure there is as little presure as possible.
The oil burning point isn’t that imporant for grilling. For true grilling you sear at such a temperature (700+ degrees) that any oil in existence will burn anyway. You just smear such a thin layer over it that when it burns the rancid burnt oil flavor (that occurs when a fry oil is over heated) never manifests, but the flash igniting of the oil that is there adds a grilling tase to the flavor. I personally prefer sesame oil. When it gets seared it creates a nutty/smokey flavor which adds to the taste but doesn’t overwhelm the basic flavor of the beef.
I have a Foreman grill, and while you won’t be creating steak masterpieces with it – it just doesn’t get hot enough to make a proper sear – it is quite handy for quick-n-dirty small-serving cooking. And it does not work as you describe. The top part of the grill does not “create pressure” to “squeeze the fat out” of the meat. The top part rests on the meat, introducing a heat element to both sides of the meat, but it does not squeeze the meat.
The Foreman grill is tilted so the fat runs off the meat, but this is only a real difference compared to pan-cooking (where the meat would be sitting in its own fat as it cooks); on a real grill, the fat also runs off the meat – and onto the coals/gas burners below.
And I agree with the “a little salt is all you need” assessment, though I will usually also throw in a light dust of fresh ground pepper.
The rib eye is one of my favorites.
I like to add a hint of cayenne pepper as well. Not a lot, just enough to add a very faint heat.
I realize I should probably expand on this a bit.
The rib eye is one of my favorites, and is available from kosher butchers.
The vast majority of the time, though, I buy leaner non-kosher steaks because they’re less expensive and I don’t need all those marbling calories from a really nice steak. 
As a side note unrelated to steak, I try to buy kosher chicken as much as possible, because I actually think it tastes better than non-kosher chicken.
The meat seems to have more flavor. I can honestly say it “tastes like chicken.” 