Austin on the Hoof

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An Epistle From Mick

Wes:

I've cooked herds of steaks in my time: starting out with six years at Pelican's Wharf, where the main entreés were rib eyes and prime ribs ... average covers per night, anywhere from 350 to 800, depending on the day of the week, all cooked on 81 square feet of charcoal grill. We hand-cut every steak from rib eye rolls, and I was taught that you should NEVER use a steak from the chuck end for anything cooked less than a medium. The guy who taught me how to do it was Curtis Walker, a guy who learned from the longest-term master steak chef for the Night Hawk chain. I think they knew what they were doing. We got nothing but compliments on our steaks.

Our prime rib was cooked low and slow in an Alto-Shaam oven cabinet, so that it was cooked overall to rare in the center of the roll. We used a 109A prime rib rack, bone-in. If we had an order for MW orWell, we gently braised it in a pan of au jus, or brought it up on the grill (called a "Douglas Cut"), using the end cuts of the roasted roll. There was a nice layer of browned goodness on the exterior. Now what steak places use is a rib eye roll that they just put in the oven ... no bone, no browned exterior, and it's NOT Prime! What they are serving is a rib eye roast, and calling it Prime rib. One we tasted was obviously removed from a Cryovac bag, and was precooked! Restaurateurs who do that should be ashamed of serving inferior cuts to their unsuspecting customers!

I get the distinct impression that some of the people cooking steaks don't really know much about the meat they're handling, likely because there are fewer masters dedicated to the art, and kitchens can often be spread thin. A rib eye roll has a chuck end that has a core of fat in the very center of the roll ... as you move down the roll, the core of fat migrates to the outside edge, so that the lean end has a thin seam of fat along the outside of the meat core. When you use the chuck end for a Rare or MR,you end up with fat that isn't properly cooked, and/or a big waste of inedible meat.

The other problem with steaks these days is that what used to be Prime is largely unavailable. After the USDA relaxed grading standards some years ago, only a handful of local shops offer actual dry-aged Prime. You can find it at the Meat Shop on Peyton Gin, the Butcher Block in Round Rock, Cooper's at Jefferson Square, and often at Central Market, but in general, what used to be Choice is now Prime. What used to be called "No-roll" (the grader couldn't decide if it was Good or Choice) is now Choice or Prime. What used to be Good is now Choice.

It sucks! Pardon my rant. – chowmick