Summer’s here, and summer is vacation time. So if you’re staying home this summer, take a vacation anyway—a food vacation. You’ve been careful all year to eat less meat and more legumes. Now that summer is here, get out the grill and enjoy yoursteaks . The news media are advising us to take a “stay-cation.” Well, turn your “stay-cation” into a “steak-cation!” And which cut is the king of the steaks? King! porterhouse This cut of steak has plenty of marbled fat to make it juicy and flavorful and, most important, tender. Porterhouse is one of the tenderest cuts of beef. Imagine a fresh-cut porterhouse steak. It’s that nice, thick triangular steak with the bone down the middle. The bone splits the steak into two neat portions. The larger one is what you expect from a porterhouse, a treat to eat. But the smaller portion is the treasure. It is even more juicy and flavorful. If someone divides the steak and gives you the choice of pieces, follow your mother’s etiquette instructions and take the smaller piece. And now we’re left with the bone. Meat processors these days always want to remove the bones. Supermarket meat departments don’t give us nearly as many bones as our parents could buy. But where’s the flavor? Next to the bone. You know better than to chew on the bone in a restaurant (Mom’s etiquette again), but if you are on your deck, anything goes! Chew! Gnaw! Lick! Slurp! Savor every atom of flavor on that porterhouse bone.
There are a couple of schools of thoughtconcerning cooking steaks. The first is charcoal grill versus gas grill. The second is marinated versus gloriously naked.
This is just my opinion, but, if you’re going to use a gas grill, you might as well broil your steak in the kitchen. You won’t have to wave off the flies, mosquitoes, and yellow jackets, and the steak will taste just about the same. I know, you use the lava rocks in the bottom of the grill. They say that the fat drips from the steak, hits the rocks, and gives the steak a grilled flavor. But, in my opinion, it doesn’t work. A charcoal fire is a lot more mess and work, but it is worth every bit of the bother. You absolutely have to be sure to take the time for the fire to die down to ash-covered embers, and you need to keep a spray bottle of water handy to put out the licking flames, but the result is an aroma that will call hungry carnivores from long distances away and a flavor like no other.
The second question is to marinate or not to marinate. In my opinion, the native flavor of the charcoal-grilled steak is so satisfying that adding other flavor via a marinade detracts from the perfection of the pure steak flavor. So, sprinkle on a little salt (go on, salt it—it’s vacation, remember?) and maybe a little pepper, but that’s all the perfect porterhouse needs.