Confession: I don’t like to do much to my steaks. Good meat doesn’t need it. Over the years, I have even started to forgo adding pepper to them. But we have to shed our comfort zone sometimes, so out came the black pepper along with toasted coriander and fennel, which I have been playing with a lot of late. What we got was one hell of a crust: fragrant, smokey, with a hint of spice. Finish with garlicky pan juices, some lemon zest, fresh chopped thyme and the gentlest squirt of lemon juice to cut the fat.
I love smashburgers, their easy to consume patties, the large blanket of well-seared crust, the yellow cheese that burns a little because the patty is so thin that when a slice melts it’ll inevitably touch the pan. For years, I didn’t consider anything other than beef the meat one uses for a burger. But we grow older, and our absolutes become less absolute, and then all of sudden you’re letting other meats into your burger arsenal. Even writing that last sentence was hard.
The double cut tomahawk chop looks like something cut by God’s own butcher — it is as powerful a presentation as it is elegant, the kind of thing that makes meat lovers genuflect with love even as they wonder how to cook the darn thing. It’s over two inches thick and it takes some secret knowledge to nail it at a perfect medium while getting all the flavor, juice and texture out of the chop without incineration the outside, without having to go lower slower… the finished product must be seared to perfection, and when cut open, be as pretty and pink as any thing ever to grace your plate.
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