Come on. You gotta love that hat!
I haven’t heard them called by that name before, but the concept is not new. I bought some for dinner more than ten years ago at a boutique grocery that I used to live near that has all kinds of interesting unique stuff. They were different from other cuts only in being very, very large steaks, and of course the giant bone. It’s really just a presentation gimmick as said, and the way these were cut, the amount of steak was really far too much for any normal person. Totally impractical but fun for a dinner party especially if the invitees are barbecue-loving carnivorous hungry males or, possibly, cavemen. In practical life nowadays I’m not even that much of a meat eater at all.
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of it called that, but our grocery store sells ribeyes like that from time to time.
They cost less per pound than the ribeyes that do not have the bone.
I don’t buy ribeye unless it is on sale, so I sometimes don’t notice that the great deal that I got was for the one with the bone, which reduces the deal of the price of the actual edible meat substantially.
As I cook my steaks on the stove in a skillet, that giant bone sticking out makes it even more inconvenient.
A bone like that almost makes it look like you could cook it handheld over a bonfire, marshmallow on a stick style.
That’s the influence of the inventor–cowboy cuisine.
The first one I ever saw was in the 50% off meat section at the local Safeway. Maybe they sell it, but I’ve never noticed. Seemed expensive at even the discount, and what’s the point?
I’m surprised the activists haven’t protested the name yet. “Cultural appropriation!” Well, we can still call it hatchet steak.
Dennis
Yeah, I decided to check my memory with a local restaurant/food message board I participate in, and the first mention of it I see is from 2007 at Ditka’s restaurant here in the Chicago area. Also, another mention in 2008 describing a restaurant’s ribeye cowboy style “which some people call a Tomahawk cut,” (suggesting it had been a somewhat known term by that time) and another one in 2008 where somebody said “shortly after it opened, I had the Tomahawk at Tramonto’s.” (And the first two references mention a ribeye with the long bone, so it’s definitely the same cut we’re talking about. And Tramanto’s opened in 2006 here in the suburb of Wheeling.)
Ahhhhh, it’s a bone-in rib steak (the ribeye has the bone taken out and costs more ‘cause it’s all meat) with a couple inches of bone left on. I wouldn’t choose it over a regular rib steak. The extra bone probably adds no more than a buck to the price of the steak.
I prefer the bone-in rib steak anyway, because I like to nibble the last of the meat off the bone. The closer to the bone the sweeter the meat, as they say. Plus, I have dogs.
Except for presentation, it is exactly not what I want. I want that meat that was removed from the bone. It even appears like some of these cuts are standard rib eye bone in cuts with the meat cut away from the bone to give the appearance of a long bone sticking out, I would love to be the butcher who got that request, more money in my pocket per pound and getting to keep the ‘scrap’ ends which are the tastiest part.
If I was going for presentation I think I may just get one or at most 2 of them, and serve them with the regular cuts which are more practical for plating and eating, but there is always some one who will take the long bone steak.
Top Chef did a quickfire that required butchering a tomahawk steak. The chefs with the three best steaks went head to head cooking them
Gosh, that had to be 7 or more years ago. Top Chef is currently airing season 15. Season 1 premiered March 2006.
Tomahawks must have been pretty mainstream to be featured on the show.
Never heard of it either. Could it be a hipster thing?
Now real tomahawks on the other hand…
Yeah, I saw a reference somewhere to Top Chef: Chicago that had a tomahawk steak in there. Looking it up, that was Season 4, which ran in 2008.
I’m not sure I would call it a hipster thing. Places like Ditka’s, Ruth Chris, and Gisbon’s (all which have or had a Tomahawk) aren’t exactly populated by hipsters. More like middle-of-the-road white-collar folks or folks on a corporate spending account taking clients out types of places.
bone-in ribeye has been a thing I’ve known of for a while. this is the first I’ve heard of “tomahawk.”
Just to further go on this sidetrack, since I enjoy reading about etymology and food history, your newspaper databases should have also found this New York Daily News article from fall 2006. The New York Sun also has an article around the same time (the next month.) So, it looks so far Ike 2006 is a pretty good candidate for when the term came into use. I didn’t dig too deep, though, just the first two pages of Google, and I’m making an assumption that Tim Love is the originator. It seems there are also “cowboy chops” which are similar, but not quite as long of a rib cut. It extends beyond the meat, but doesn’t seem to be an entire rib.
The funny thing about samclem’s 2010 cite is that it’s a review praising the steakhouse for not resorting to gimmicks and just doing a good job of going back to basics.
No that’s the vegan tomahawk steak.
Sorry. Fixed link in the quote above. I keep forgetting that quotes are not necessary in URL tags anymore, and my iPad defaults to typographic quotation marks instead of ASCII vertical quotes, and that messes up the link.
I’ve fixed the link in the previous post.