Steak - Mark Schatzker [22]
“Is a little char marking okay?”
“No. You don’t want any sizzle. When my grill gets to two hundred degrees Fahrenheit, I know it’s gotten too hot.” He suggested I use a pan over low heat. He also suggested I cook the steak in macadamia nut oil, which contains more monounsaturated fat even than olive oil, as well as palmitoleic acid, which is said to lower cholesterol.
I left the farm. I had grass-fed steak. I had macadamia nut oil. What I needed was a pan and a source of gentle heat.
Deeming it unlikely that any steak house, restaurant, or diner would be willing to lightly heat a one-and-a-half-pound sirloin in macadamia nut oil, I found myself accommodations with a kitchen. The stove was electric, and on the smallest burner the lowest setting was one. I set it to three, placed the pan on the burner, and poured in a wide puddle of macadamia nut oil. I laid Slanker’s grass-fed steak in the oil. Raw, it had a green, fecund smell, the smell of a just-mowed, well-fertilized lawn after a thunderstorm. A few minutes later, I discovered that three was too hot a setting. I could hear sizzle, and the side of the steak was gorgeously browned, caramelized, and carcinogenic. I flipped it and turned the heat down to one. The odor coming off was swampy. Ten minutes later, it was ready.
Ted Slanker said that people either love or hate his grass-fed steak. I fall into the latter demographic. The first bite was sour and tasted like algae. It was so tough as to seem bulletproof. I chewed and chewed, transferring it with my tongue from one set of molars to the other. Eventually, the swampy juice had all been wrung out of it, and I was rolling a wad of pulpy protein between my cheeks. After I swallowed, a metallic taste crept into my mouth. This, I thought to myself, is what healthy eating is all about.
After four bites I threw the steak into the garbage. Five minutes later, a swampy aftertaste floated into my mouth like a stubborn green fog. Coffee could not cut through it. Orange juice could not undo the damage.
As I drove to the airport in Wichita, Kansas, the next day, I gave some thought to my quest. It wasn’t going well. I had always thought of myself as a Beef Loyal. Was I, really? I didn’t much like the steak in Texas. I didn’t like the Prime steak I ate in Oklahoma City. And Ted Slanker’s Red River swamp beef was awful—even worse than the Mongolian boot-leather steak. I asked myself, What do I feel like eating right now? Not steak. I pictured fish grilled in a pan with lemon and herbs, boiled new potatoes, and a fresh green salad. I was starting to sound an awful lot like a Variety Rotator.
There was a time in my life when the best news I could have heard was my father saying, “We’re having steak for dinner.” He used to go to the butcher shop and pick out different cuts so we could cook both and decide which we preferred. But as miles of midwestern highway ticked along, I came to the realization that my youth had been filled with foods I don’t like anymore. Most vividly, I could recall an intense love of McDonald’s Big Macs. I remember being ten years old, on a rainy canoe trip at summer camp—wet, cold, hungry—and almost weeping over the thought of a Big Mac. Now, I don’t eat them. Now, a Big Mac tastes to me like salty-sweet mush, like something designed to be squeezed through a feeding tube to someone with impaired taste buds. Was the same thing happening with steak? Was I turning into one of those people who goes to a nice restaurant and orders the sea bass?
Did I even like steak? After five days of eating nothing but, not a single steak struck me as good. The best steak I’d eaten was also the cheapest—at the El Vaquero. Unlike the others, it wasn’t sour, but you’d hardly call it beefy. I had only one culinary