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.
