Steak in a Dorm

Col­lege dorm kitchens are filled with third-world prob­lems tran­scribed into extreme­ly first-world con­texts. The­se are defined by such ques­tions as, “what food can I afford to eat?” or, “how can I cook with what I’ve got?”

Unlike true third-world prob­lems, the­se are then elab­o­rat­ed on by state­ments such as, “I’ve spent all my intern­ship mon­ey on robots” or “my ful­ly-equipped Olympic Vil­lage suite kitchen might get smokey, set­ting off the fire alarm.”

Regard­less of how hurt your sense of enti­tle­ment may be by deep intro­spec­tion into your posi­tion on Maslow’s pyra­mid, the answer is steak.

Steak is the per­fect bachelor(ette) food: you take meat and add heat, then eat. It’s then deli­cious yet some­how classy, despite requir­ing all the culi­nary sophis­ti­ca­tion of a high school dropout cave­man. In fact, the rest of this post is just gar­nish on top of the sim­ple “meat + heat + eat” for­mu­la, and is just filler info to impress your friends with. Feel free to just scroll for meat porn.

Step 1: Buy meat

Super­mar­ket meat total­ly works—you’re not going to go out of your way to sup­port small busi­ness and cel­e­brate local farms by find­ing a butcher you can talk to, so you’ll be buy­ing pre-cut, prepack­aged steaks from the super­mar­ket. Pro tip: Kore­an super­mar­kets price their beef accord­ing to Kore­an demand (i.e., kalbi or short rib), so they have great deals on tra­di­tion­al West­ern steak cuts. Plus, H-Marts and Assi Plazas are sur­gi­cal­ly clean. Damn, man.

USDA Choice—the USDA sys­tem rates beef on how much mar­bling (in-mus­cle fat) is in the beef, and Prime (the high­est lev­el) is too expen­sive for you unless you’re rolling in dough.

Meat fla­vor, espe­cial­ly “bee­fi­ness,” is con­veyed by melt­ed fat, and lean ol’ USDA Select (the low­est lev­el you’ll find at the meat aisle) just won’t deliv­er it. Choice, which is between Select and Prime, is a fine com­pro­mise between cost and deli­cious­ness.

Go bone­less—You’re too lazy to cut out the bones your­self, and you don’t want to pay for bones any­ways. Plus, since you’ll be cook­ing with a pan, you don’t want the bone to prop up the meat away from the pan’s sur­face.

Cut?—I’ll rank your choic­es:

1. Ribeye: one of the most fla­vor­ful cuts of beef avail­able. It’s not the most ten­der (but still very), but you’ll enjoy chew­ing it enough to not care. Comes from the ribs (duh).
2. Strip: slight­ly more ten­der but slight­ly less fla­vor­ful than ribeye. Tends to cost the same, but works slight­ly bet­ter with my method. Comes from the short loin, which is between the ribs and butt of a cow.
3. Sir­loin: closer to the cow butt than the short loin, yet some­how has less fat. More ten­der than either of the above, but at great cost to fla­vor. When being snob­bish about steak, remem­ber to mix in polit­i­cal com­men­tary about sirloin’s pop­u­lar­i­ty in the US ver­sus the preva­lence of more fla­vor­ful, less easy-to-eat cuts in oth­er coun­tries. You’ll look so cool and avant-garde putting down Amer­i­cans when it comes to food.
4. Flank, skirt, hang­er: tra­di­tion­al­ly cheap but very fla­vor­ful, tougher cuts from the bot­tom side of the cow. Thanks to Inter­net pop­u­lar­i­ty, you’re unlike­ly to find them very cheap in a super­mar­ket, so the best you can do is whine like a hip­ster about them¹. For the most part, they tend to be too thin to cook in a dorm kitchen.
5. T-bone & Porter­house: basi­cal­ly a strip steak with a bone and a slice of ten­der­loin. The bone is bad enough for cook­ing in a pan, but the lean­er ten­der­loin cooks quick­er and thus dries out by the time you’re done with the strip part. Also, stu­pid­ly expen­sive.
6. In fact, ten­der­loin in gen­er­al should be avoid­ed at the begin­ning of your steak exper­i­ments: it’s just too expen­sive to risk ruin­ing.
7. Chuck, brisket, round, blade: cuts which are too lean or have too much con­nec­tive tis­sue to eat­en as steak, unless you like your steak dry, tough, and gray.

Tri-tip is anoth­er option, but I’ve yet to exper­i­ment with it.

Thick!—seri­ous­ly, go for at least 1.25 inch­es of thick­ness. Steak is meant to be cooked uneven­ly; you want the inside to be medi­um rare (red­dish-pink and juicy) and the out­side charred and crust­ed. In between will be a region of well-done meat, and with a thick­er slab of beef that region will be a small­er pro­por­tion of the total thick­ness.

Step 2: Season meat

Dump salt on it².

Step 3: Heat meat

For the pur­pos­es of this post, I’m using a 1.75-inch thick USDA Choice strip steak.

This is thick enough for it to stand on its edge. In fact, this is what exact­ly we’re going to do. Get your pan siz­zling hot then smack the steak down edge-wise, fat­test edge first.

It looks stu­pid, but remem­ber that fat is an insulator—it’s going to cook way slow­er than mus­cle will³. We’re giv­ing it a head start by ren­der­ing the beef, let­ting the molten fat baste fla­vor into the steak. Mean­while, the edge gets a nice sear⁴.

Next we’re going to go low and slow on the sides using but­ter as a cook­ing fat. If you’re a steak fanat­ic or a food­ie, you’re prob­a­bly about to call the cops, but just trust me on this; I’m an engi­neer.

Fry­ing steak in but­ter will arouse the atten­tions of all mid-sized car­ni­vores in a 50-meter radius. I am not respon­si­ble for any restrain­ing orders or child sup­port pay­ments⁵ result­ing from your use of this method and your sexy neigh­bors’ sub­se­quent siege of your kitchen.

We flip the steak as it cooks and spoon the cook­ing oil all over the crust of the steak.

Remem­ber that the strong emo­tions caused by bast­ing the beau­ti­ful brown crust of your meat are not those of intense rage, as I ini­tial­ly thought, but mere­ly extreme non­sex­u­al⁶ arousal.

After eight to ten min­utes, the beef and dairy solids in the cook­ing fat begin to dark­en and burn beyond what will richen the fla­vor of the steak. At this point, trans­fer the steak to paper tow­els and dump the grease. Then (care­ful­ly!) wipe the hot pan with more paper tow­els. We add more but­ter and return the steak to the pan for an ago­niz­ing peri­od of more cook­ing.

Step 4: Rest meat

We remove the steak from heat and let it sit on a warm plate for half the time it took to cook. This is by far the most dif­fi­cult part of mak­ing a steak, by dint of the despair at not being able to tuck into your per­fect cre­ation.

It is also one of those sub­tle points glossed over by “meat + heat + eat,” as it notably involves nei­ther heat nor eat.

The bulging of the steak should give you some idea of why it needs to rest. Your steak is a but­ter-cov­ered bal­loon ready to burst, and will do so with even a sim­ple slice across the grain, spilling pre­cious juices all over.

Step 5: Eat meat

Slice it up across the grain and go at it!

If you’re going to do do dorm steak, you might as well do a fan­cy dorm sal­ad as well. I used the rest­ing time to broil frozen shrimp in a toast­er oven with oil, salt, cumin, and turmer­ic, then tossed them into a bed of kale driz­zled with bal­sam­ic and olive oil. Dorm folks take note: shrimp and kale will keep for weeks to months in your freez­er or fridge (resp.) with­out loss of fla­vor or tex­ture.

Now, because you’re a filthy col­lege stu­dent and your dis­gust­ing super­mar­ket steak is only medi­um rare, it’s poten­tial­ly crawl­ing with bac­te­ria. It’s best to use alco­hol to dis­in­fect your food as you eat. Given that you prob­a­bly don’t like wine (yet), I rec­om­mend a Dop­pel­bock or a strong lager.

Epilogue

I cooked dorm steak in a com­plex process involv­ing ghet­to sous vide, a hefty propane torch, and (just that once) a fire alarm. That is, I did until I read Alain Ducasse’s column for the NY Times:

I do not use very high heat, because you get good carameliza­tion in that amount of time. I’m not inter­est­ed in car­boniz­ing the sur­face of the meat. To me that ruins the fla­vor.

His method, involv­ing ren­der­ing and a fright­en­ing amount of beur­re (but­ter), was mind-blow­ing to me. My skep­ti­cism was soon over­come when I flipped my first but­tery slab of beef, and was dri­ven to tears by a crust gor­geous beyond any of my wildest fan­tasies involv­ing mam­mal flesh.

Thank you, M. Ducasse. I’m putting away the blow­torch.

1. Not that I’m a hip­ster. [▲]
2. Overnight in poly­eth­yl­ene wrap with coarse salt (e.g. Kosher salt) works best, but the dif­fer­ence won’t be huge. Overnight because the salt will break down some con­nec­tive tis­sue, and coarse salt because the larg­er grains can absorb more mois­ture before get­ting sucked into the meat. Also, it takes way more salt than you’d expect to sea­son a steak, but it’s up to you. [▲]
3. Cita­tion need­ed. [▲]
4. It would look kind of gray and weird at the edges if you had only seared the top and bot­tom sides. [▲]
5. Nor cas­es of acute car­diac arrest. [▲]
6. Typ­i­cal­ly speak­ing. [▲]