Stuff to eat. Mostly around St. Louis.
You Deserve a Better Steak.
Steak. Let’s talk about it.
You brag about how you cook a mean steak at home, but deep inside, you know you don’t. You overcook it. You undercook it. The seasoning is never quite right. It’s not seared—it’s charred. You just pretend that’s the way you like it because your pride gets in the way.
There are two issues at hand: first, you’re just not a very good cook. Secondly, you don’t have a grill that gets as hot as a restaurant’s.
Leave it to Kenji Lopez-Alt, the mastermind behind Serious Eats, to show the way. Reverse searing meat—letting it cook at a low temperature until desired doneness then searing in a ripping pan—is the way to go. But even then, you’re not getting flavor of cooking over coals and fire. And you’re getting your house all smoky.
Leave it to Kenji Lopez-Alt, the mastermind behind Serious Eats, to show the way AGAIN. Sous vide ribeye (if you don’t have an Anova, you don’t belong here)—123F for 1 hour—grilled directly over the grill’s chimney starter. It’s like cooking on a jet engine.
It’s simple: about midway through the sous vide process, go light your chimney starter in your grill (see the 17 min mark of the video). I found that using letters from my ex worked as a great fire starter, so if you have any of those left in your closet, use them. Place a smaller grill grate over the starter so it can get extremely hot.
Pull the steaks out of the water bath and season with salt and pepper on both sides. You’re probably going to only be able to cook one steak on the chimney at a time, but that’s okay, because sous vide steaks don’t really need to rest—plus, each steak takes just about 2 minutes to grill TOTAL (if you’re going for a perfect medium-rare, that is).
Like Kenji, I kept the steak moving every 15 seconds or so, including rotating it onto the edges. When each steak finishes, you can pull it off the grill and onto a baking sheet, lightly tented with foil.
As you can see below, it worked perfectly—especially when paired with my grilled maitake mushrooms. Or a nice, hefty pat of Bolyard’s steak or bacon butter.
I’m never going back to cooking it the old fashioned way. Thank you, Kenji.
Get those coals hot
boom.
Salt + Smoke's Brisket
There are a lot of things to like about Salt + Smoke, like owner Tom Schmidt's sultry voice and his Leonidas beard, dense as Germany's Black Forest, dark as night. And chef/pitmaster Haley Riley, who not only cooks meat that can't be beat, but once won a Jon Snow lookalike contest at West County mall. But what I like the most about Salt + Smoke is the brisket.
I've written about their burnt end t-ravs before, but I've never written about the brisket itself.
Brisket is my smoked meat of choice. I would pick fall-apart-tender, Texas style brisket over ribs and pulled pork any day. At the time of writing, there are three places that can quash my qraving for it in St. Louis: Salt + Smoke (obviously), Big Baby Q, and The Stellar Hog.
Before being smoked over white oak for the better part of the day, the brisket is rubbed with a simple salt and freshly ground (pre-ground stuff is for people that don't like flavor) pepper mix. Then it goes in. That's it.
The result is brisket that manages to stay together and fall apart all at the same time. It's smoky. The bark is crunchy. It's juicy, like a meat Starburst. I love it.
You can get the brisket either as a platter, which comes with two sides (I'd probably get the garlic and herb fries and white cheddar cracker mac) and a cheddar-bacon popover, or you can get it as a sandwich with burnt end mayo and tobacco onions.
When you order it, you'll get the option of lean, fatty, or burnt ends. You should order the lean—that leaves more of the good stuff for me. Oh, and I don't want to forget: Salt + Smoke has William Larue Weller bourbon in right now. Treat yo' self.
