Rib – Crossrib Steak – I wing it.

I love Sundays.

Sunday afternoon is the denouement of my weekend. It’s where the entire thing resolves, we get our happy ending, and we move on to the next thing.

This is the first non-scheduled, stress-free Sunday I’ve had in quite a while, so I’m going to make the most of it. So mid-afternoony, I hop on my (dusty, cobweb covered) bike and head out to the market.

My bike is actually the fastest way for me to shop. I roll right up to the front and lock in front of the door (rockstar parking!), get what I need, and zip home. My ride is an Xtracycle longtail cargobike, so I can carry pretty much anything I could take in a car. No exaggeration. I’ve carried three cases of soda, flowers, and six full bags of groceries on the badboy. Occasionally I return shopping carts I find in the neighborhood. Now that I have two functioning shoulders again, I plan on using a lot more than I have been.

To the store. I buy some stuff. Among the stuff… ice cream. Buying ice cream when you’re on a bike can be a pretty ballsy move. You’re writing a check you hope your legs can cash. Today, I’m feeling it.

Home again. I unload the goods and the ice cream is hard as a rock. Rawr.

Time to cook. What do we have? I have several appropriately-sized packages for the meal I hope to make for my wife and son. I settle on a crossrib steak. What’s that? It’s a steak. Cut across the rib. I suppose. I don’t feel like looking it up right now. (Answers at the end.*) It’s about the right size, so that’s what I’m making.

A note: I also don’t feel like cracking a cookbook. I’m in a zone. I’m just gonna wing it.

Now. What do I do with the thing? Looking it over, it looks like it has a fair bit of connective tissue. So I’m gonna try a braise. Also, upon thawing, I notice there are two steaks in the pack. I’ll save the second for later and try something different later this week.

Did I expect two steaks? I did not.

Right. Braising. In what? I have beef stock, so I’ll go with that. I don’t really feel comfortable braising in wine, because (drum roll) my wife is pregnant! We’re expecting our second child, a daughter, in September.

So no braising in wine. Also, no rare steaks for a while. Back to the show.

Beef stock. I got it, it’s delicous, done. I chop up a quick mirepoix, add in some mushrooms, shallots and garlic, and I’m ready to rock.

Mise:

Since I’m braising, I salt and pepper fairly heavily and dredge the meat in flour.

Off to the Dutch for a quicky sear.

I know the meat’s seared when it has a hard, golden brown crust and the fire alarm goes off. I set it aside to cool its jets.

A little more olive oil, and in with the vegetation. Meat on top like it’s a little beefy hovercraft riding on a cushion of plants instead of air. On with the liquid. Bada bing.

Elapsed time, like, all of ten minutes. And the steak will braise until… it’s done? A while. I’m winging it.

Out to mow the lawn.

Lawn tamed, house smells great. Time for a treat.

...with artsy dutch angle.

Yes, I bought a Clamato beer, specifically for an after-mowing treat. I’ve never had one before. It’s beer, tomato juice, clam juice and lime. My beer has a warning on the can that it contains shellfish. This is a food item that simply should not be.

It’s so wrong. It’s so right.

I’m gonna grill some potatoes for a side, so I prep them for the party. Have I mentioned it’s a beautiful day? It is.

Stash the spuds in foil.

It’s been about an hour and a half. Steak’s like buttah. Stash it in foil, too. Note to self: I need to get more foil.

Sauce. Remove lid. Boil. You know, this clam/tomato/beer thing isn’t half bad.

Strain sauce. Plate and serve.

Verdict: Okay, yes. This is great. The steak is falling apart tender and this is easily the best sauce I’ve ever made to accompany a meat dish. I let it reduce further than I thought I should, as my sauces have wound up a little loose in the past. This is perfect. This coats the back of a spoon, and tastes like a hug wrapped in a backrub stuffed inside endorphins and dipped in chocolate. This one worked.

The steak is tender and luscious. The beef flavor is pronounced and vibrant, with a soft shallot note that I really dig. I used a lot of shallots.

Freshly cut lawn. Weird clam/tomato beer. Quality steak with a sauce I consider a personal best. Happy family. I can get down.

The Wife Says: Why don’t we do this more often?

It was also the perfect portion size for two adults and a kiddo. My two year old chowed down on this one. That’s saying something.

I love Sundays.

–

*Crossrib steak comes from the Chuck. It’s taken from above the rib, like a ribeye. This cut is just further forward on the beast than the ribeye. Of variable tenderness, so most books suggest marinating or braising. It’s primarily composed of a single muscle, and is frequently compared to a ribeye in terms of taste, but at a fraction of the price. There ya go. Now you know.

Next up: There were two in the package. Let’s see what we can do with the other one.

Rib – Smoked Back Ribs

Ah, the 4th. Birthday of our nation. A celebration of individual liberty, Locke-ian natural rights, and assertions of American Exceptionalism.

Naturally, we celebrate with liquor, explosives, and outdoor cooking. I can get down.

This year, I’m celebrating with some straight-up American barbecue. Beef back ribs, vaguely Texas style: low and slow, in a nationalistic haze of hickory smoke.

The bits: I’m rolling with back ribs today. These are the bones off the ribeye steak, if you remove them from said steak prior to cooking. Ribeye’s a high-end, expensive piece of beef, so my back ribs are sheared pretty close to the bone, so that the ribeye itself will be as large as possible. The majority of the meat on these will be between the bones, rather than on top of them.

There’s usually a membrane on the underside of back ribs, which you’ll need to remove. My butcher already did it for me, because he’s a rockstar.

I start the party  at 10 am. I need a rub, so I cast my eyes through the series of tubes (it’s not a big truck!).

I find a gent named Craig “Meathead” Goldwyn, who has an exceptional website. After forty-five minutes or so reading more than I anticipated, I settle on his Big Bad Beef Rub. It’s light on the sugar, which is good for beef (Pork rubs like the sweetness. Beef rubs, not so much). Plus, I appreciate the attention he pays to oversalting, if you happen to brine and then rub. That’s detail. Good man.

Oh, Basil.

I had help with the rub.

Good work.

Today, I’m smoking over hickory. It’d be lovely over any number of woods… anecdotally, fruit woods seem especially popular. I also have some mesquite laying around, but I think that’d be overpowering. I love hickory, so hickory it is. I don’t own a hot smoker, so I’m doing soaked chips in aluminum foil on the fire beneath the grates on my gas grill. It isn’t fancy, but it’s functional.

Ribs land on grill at exactly noon. My scheduling kungfu is impeccable. We land at 225 degrees. Best estimate is five to eight hours, but I’ve been surprised by how quickly grass-fed cooks, so I’m keeping a close eye on things.

Oh! Except that I want to knock together a quick sauce to baste with in the last couple hours. I’m feeling like wet ribs today, so I want to do it right and I need a few things from the store. My wife will be home, so if anything goes sincerely pear-shaped, I’ll hear about it. Plus, I’ll only be gone a minute.

I hop in the car and place foot on gas. At that precise instant, (as if it knew!) my propane tank coughs its last, and settles quietly into a pit of stealthy nonfunctionality. Goodnight, sweet hydrocarbons. I knew you well.

I get back, and the mercury’s south of 150.

This, however, is why I keep a spare tank.

We’re back up in ten, but my timeframe is all akimbo. I’d rather not be mayor of Chucktown again. We shall have to wait and see.

And wait.

And see.

And wait.

And see.

Getting close! Baste (with homemade sauce). And wait.

I've grown facial hair since this project began.

And see.

Ooh, fireworks!

And baste.

And wait.

And see! Finally, we’re there. The bones rotate gently in their sockets (so the collagen has transmuted into delicious, unctuous gelatin), and we’re in the sweet spot.

Thar be ribs.

It’s 9 pm.

So my son had to stay up late for ribs. It’s a holiday, right? Basil heads to her crate so we can have a picnic in the yard. We watch illegal fireworks and eat like kings. Which is perhaps antithetical to a celebration of American democracy, but there ya go. Ribs are good.

They’re crunchy, and sweeter than you’d think, given the amount of sugar in the rub. There isn’t as much beef in a back rib as a short rib, but my wife and I are only two people, and D doesn’t eat much. It was an almost perfect amount of meat for us. I call it a success.

I hope everybody staring at electrons right now had a happy and safe holiday.

Rib – Ribeye

We had our dear friends Z and K in from out of town to prepare for some upcoming shenanigans. We got crazy busy, time was short, and we needed dinner in a hurry. Steaks.

What haven’t we had? Ribeye. Batter up.

Ribeye, wackily enough, comes off the rib primal. It’s name is an old Algonquin word meaning, “eye of the rib.” It’s tenderer (that’s a word) and more marbled than most other cuts, and as a result is usually more expensive. And also, delicious.

It doesn’t do a lot of work – mostly it helps pivot the bovine shoulder and hips. Put more simply, if cattle danced, this steak would be a lot tougher. They don’t. And it isn’t.

As it’s our first time eating a ribeye off this particular beasty, we consider this our control steak, and prepped it just like the NY strip of weekends past. Salt, pepper, a little canola oil on the grates. C’est fini.

It was a little thicker than our NY strips were,  so I kept my 2min per side cooking time, but i checked at 1:30. It needed the full 2min. A quick rest, and perfect medium rare.

I know this, because I gave it a finger test. My brand spanking new Weber meat thermometer is not temp-customizable. So you can’t set a temperature, you have to adhere to the temperature the ThermoGods dictate you should be cooking your meat to. And call me nutty – a grasss-fed ribeye at 145 degrees when you take it off the grill is not medium rare. It’s a briquette. How the hell do you build a thermometer, and not let the end user customize the alarm temp? What kind of dystopian hell-kitchen does Weber think I’m toiling in? Come on, Weber. I’m a big boy. Let me push the button to change all the pretty numbers.

In short, if you’re thinking of acquiring the Weber Style Audible Meat Thermometer, I suggest you reconsider.

Back to the beast. I think you can predict the result of a medium rare grass fed ribeye… It was neighboring on otherworldly. Z and K hadn’t had any of our grass fed beef yet, so they were taken aback. It really is among the best steak I’ve ever eaten.

The day we took our farm tour at Chaffin Family Orchards, our agroguru Chris recommended a steakhouse in town. When your beef guy recommends a steakhouse, you go. We did, and the 14oz ribeyes Ben and I ate that night at the highest-end steakhouse in town were really very very good.

These were better.

Z and K actually swore when faced with the loveliness of these steaks. They swore. That’s a little like seeing the Pope bite the head off a kitten.

I was no longer a grass-fed virgin, so I kinda expected them to be amazing. So long as I didn’t screw them up, that is. Thankfully, I did not.

Now, a few points. I realize this is beginning to look like a steak blog. It isn’t, and I apologize for that. I don’t intend these missives to detail the exploits of a Los Angeles suburbanite who’s just barely bright enough to throw salt and pepper on a piece of meat and slap said meat onto a grill. I do plan to whip up something more interesting soon.

But this is June.

June is nuts (for me, at least). June is madly overscheduled. June is beating me like the fat kid at camp. In June, meals are rare and sleeping is optional. I’m up to my eyelashes in commitments I’m doing my darnedest to meet.

For example: in less than a week, I plan to summit the highest mountain in the contiguous United States.

Z was at my house this weekend so we could make our final preparations to scale Mt. Whitney. Slack off on that commitment, and you wind up injured or worse.

Next: Jerky.