Table Of Content

Text copyright © 2019 by Hasenpfeffer LLC Photographs copyright © 2019 by Wyatt McSpadden Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Bryan B. Butler All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. www.crownpublishing.com www.tenspeed.com Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. The photo on this page appears courtesy of Bryan Butler and Ben Runkle Illustration on this page by iStock.com/clu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Franklin, Aaron, author. | Mackay, Jordan, author. Title: Franklin steak : dry-aged, live-�red, pure beef / Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay ; photography by Wyatt McSpadden. Description: California : Ten Speed Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identi�ers: LCCN 2018045052 Subjects: LCSH: Beef steaks. | Cooking (Beef) | BISAC: COOKING / Methods / Barbecue & Grilling. | COOKING / Speci�c Ingredients / Meat. | COOKING / Regional & Ethnic / American / Southern States. | LCGFT: Cookbooks. Classi�cation: LCC TX749.5.B43 F69 2019 | DDC 641.6/62—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045052 Hardcover ISBN 9780399580963 Ebook ISBN 9780399580970 v5.3.2 prh Preface Introduction Part I KNOW THY BEEF CHAPTER 1 The Story of Beef CHAPTER 2 Buying Steaks CHAPTER 3 Steak Cuts Part II NEXT-LEVEL BEEF CHAPTER 4 Dry Aging CHAPTER 5 The Grill CHAPTER 6 Fuel Part III STEAK PERFECTION CHAPTER 7 Firing Up CHAPTER 8 The Cook CHAPTER 9 Sides, Sauces, and Drinks Resources Acknowledgments Index Preface Boy, do I ever love a good steak! And I eat a lot of it, which, along with beer, is how I managed to achieve this awesome bod. Nevertheless, since I’m known for Central Texas barbecue, many people will ask, why a book about steak? Well, I’m glad you asked.… My love of steak goes back a long way. When I was a kid, it was a huge, really big deal if we ate steaks for dinner. My folks cooked and stuff, but not like we cook today. It was the 1970s and 1980s, you know, and Tuna Helper was standard pantry fare and pretty darn good. But steak night was an event. In Bryan, Texas, where I was born, my dad was actually a restaurant manager at a steak house. I’d guess my dad used a few tricks from that stint when he cooked for us. In hindsight, my dad probably just put a bunch of Lawry’s on steak. (That’s all right by me, as I still put Lawry’s on tons of stuff!) He’d always cook a T- bone, about an inch thick or something like that, on a grill with charcoal— nothing special or speci�c about it. His grill was likely just a shallow hotel pan with a grate on top of it. But those �avors—really salty and beefy—have always stuck with me. I never really started cooking until I left home when I was eighteen. I moved to Austin to an area called West Campus, adjacent to the University of Texas, which was known for its ample frat and sorority houses and dozens and dozens of apartment buildings for student housing. Now, I wasn’t a student, but I lived there anyway because it was cheap. I had an apartment with a small patio, and on that patio, a little Weber grill. Not really being a very good cook—never having cooked in a restaurant kitchen—I remember getting supercheap grocery-store steaks and, at like four o’clock in the morning, �ring up the grill and eating steaks with my roommate while watching the sun come up. We’d get the cheapest charcoal, the cheapest meat, and iodized salt packets from the taco stand for seasoning. It was absolutely the least expensive, foulest way to eat steak, but we still felt like kings. Nineteen years old, living on, like, twelve dollars a month, and drinking beer at six in the morning—that was a straight line from the way my dad cooked steaks, but I didn’t know anything about charcoal or wood or grilling. Or meat, for that matter, especially the quality kind. It was that same nostalgia that got me into barbecue. When I really got into barbecue, a bunch of lightbulbs started going off: what do I do with all these coals? I was around �re all the time and my relationship with �re and the nighttime is what got me into steak. If I have to sit there watching the �re for twelve hours, why not use the �re to feed myself something that would sustain me? I wasn’t going to be eating barbecue because that’s what I had to sell. But a steak was the quick, easy way to taste that beautiful union of beef and �re. One of the most memorable steaks I ever ate was from Tom Perini of Perini Ranch in West Texas. While I was working on the PBS show BBQ with Franklin, we did a shoot at the ranch. Tom is a heck of a guy and a really talented chuck-wagon cook, which he started doing on the ranch in the 1970s, eventually going on to open a steak house in 1983. Later, at a live-�re event, our dish was loosely inspired by Perini: �fty tri-tips dipped in Cognac. We grilled the steaks over mesquite and let them cool down. Finally, we set up two PK Grills and got them raging hot (it felt like we were going to melt the bottoms out of them) and poured Cognac into a bucket. Yes, you read that right: a bucket of Cognac. We dipped the tri-tips in the Cognac and �ambéed them on the grill—that’s how we brought everything back up to temp. Man, what a great memory. A person can eat only so much barbecue. I’m sure you understand: if, for your day job, you worked in a place that smelled powerfully of meat, fat, and smoke and then, when you went home, you smelled powerfully of meat, fat, and smoke, too! The smell of a grilled steak is always refreshing, bright, and less rich. While that fact might impact my hunger for barbecue, nothing ever seems to get in the way of my appetite for a good steak. I never get tired of it. And that’s part of the way this book happened. When Jordan and I were working on our �rst book, Franklin Barbecue, he noticed that dinner at my house very often ended up being steak. And over the course of many long nights outside on cooks, we spent a lot of time gazing at �ames and hot coals and talking about grilling and meat. Without knowing it, we had started to plan a second book. And what’s more deserving of a book-length tribute than steak? It’s as common in America (well, almost) as hamburgers and hot dogs, yet because it’s so precious, cooking it is loaded with pressure not to screw it up. So we �gured we might be able to lend folks a hand by helping them sharpen their steak skills and knowledge. And that’s all this book is meant to do. But along the way, we realized that most people don’t have a great understanding of the modern beef industry, and I think it’s important to know, as best as you can, where your beef comes from, be it the actual farm or at least a trusted supplier. Every year, I �re up the old truck and head up I-35 to Kansas to visit Creekstone Farms, which supplies our barbecue restaurant with excellent, all-natural briskets, and Loro, a new Austin restaurant I’m involved in, with bavettes and brisket. This is because I like to check in on where the beef is coming from and the people who manage it. It’s a long drive every year but well worth it. Then, it turns out, I have a lot of thoughts about wood, charcoal, and grills, too. People might think I just smoke meat all the time, but in fact, I grill just as much—for events, for parties, or just on a weeknight for me, my wife, Stacy, and my daughter, Vivian. Over time, I’ve developed some ideas about cooking steaks—different methods for different cuts and so on—that I thought might be useful to those of you out there who are as geeky as I am about live-�re cooking. And since Jordan travels around a lot writing about wine, he got some inspiration from other countries, especially Spain but Japan, France, and Sweden, too. All together, we thought we would make this book our so-called love letter to steak. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I loved making it. • Aaron Franklin