Yet Another Guy Writing About Food

Get the cardiologist on the line

This cut of beef, pictured above as an integral part of Sunday’s breakfast, is a bit of a mystery. Procured from a Pennsylvania purveyor at the Clark Park Farmer’s Market on Saturday, the “Ranch Steak” is the ideal size for the “steak” half of the classic “steak and eggs” combination. Grass-fed and dry-aged, the steak had a nice degree of marbling. I seasoned it with salt and pepper, cooked it for about five minutes in a pan over medium-high heat, then put it under the broiler to cook the other side, until the steak reached medium rare.

I think this was the optimal method for preparing the steak, and I was certainly pleased with the results. But I wasn’t certain, because the cut of meat is a bit of a mystery. My two most reliable cookbooks for general information, Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything and the 1985 edition of The Joy of Cooking, both provide clear diagrams of a cow and a side of beef, respectively, illustrating the provenance of each individual cut of beef, as well as the preferred method for cooking each cut. But neither book acknowledges the ranch steak. Did I eat some sort of phantom cut of meat? Or does the ranch steak go by a different name?

Luckily, the internet is functioning properly, and Wikipedia also has a nice diagram of a cow. Apparently, I was suckered:

The Ranch steak comes from the chuck cut of a cow, namely the shoulder. Technically it is called a “boneless chuck shoulder center cut steak”, but supermarkets, in an effort to get the patron a better sounding as well as an easier to remember name, dubbed it the “Ranch steak”.

The demands of the market influence small-scale producers too. My local farm evidently followed the lead of the big supermarkets, labeling my “boneless chuck shoulder center cut steak” something more commercially viable.

This labeling also disguised the fact that, at least by the book, the chuck steaks are tough, and best cooked by moist-heat procedures. But my steak, while no filet mignon, was tender enough, both to the knife and my teeth. Maybe this is where the grass-fed beef makes a difference. According to Michael Pollan, grass-fed beef does have less saturated fat and more omega-3 fatty acids than corn-fed beef. And maybe the overall nature of production matters. These cattle were not raised on a massive industrial cattle ranch, but instead on a small farm, where they were presumably pumped less full of drugs and lived a generally more satisfying existence before heading to the abattoir.

All speculation aside, with this particular steak, I will happily flout the advice of the cookbooks and prepare over dry-heat, along with eggs and potatoes, for a lazy weekend breakfast.