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Eater
6 days ago
- General
- Eater
What It Was Like Inside the 2000s Asian American Cooking Boom
I think as a kid when your family is fucked up, you fantasize about things. You tell stories, you build forts, you do anything to transport yourself from the corner of the home you're hiding in while your parents tear each other apart. At least that's how I dealt with it. One of the few positives in my family was that my mom could really cook, specifically homestyle Chinese Taiwanese food and the things she ate on the street as a kid. Her father and uncle used to sell mantou under a bridge when they first escaped to Taipei, but my mother took it to another level at home, cooking things like oh-ah-mi-shwa (pig intestine oyster vermicelli), zhong zi (sticky rice in bamboo leaves), minced pork stew, lion's head meatballs, and red cooked pork. Even if she said nasty things to my face, I would reason that she had to love me to some degree if she put this much effort into the food she cooked for me. It's well-documented that I grew up in an Orlando restaurant run by my father called Cattleman's Steakhouse. It was a fine steakhouse with USDA Prime meat, offering coupons for $10.99 prime rib and a phenomenal salad bar. Objectively, it was a step above Texas Roadhouse or Outback, but slightly below Morton's or Ruth's Chris due to the cowboy-themed dining room designed by a street dude from Taipei. I started off as a busboy at 15, then prep cook, then grill, then saute, but by the age of 17 I became the expediter. Watching the tickets come through, firing off the orders to the kitchen, slamming baked potatoes and rice pilaf onto plates shouting 'All day!' or '86!' was the best part of my day until I took my break to go buy Xanax from one of the older servers by the dumpster out back. Expediting was the time of my life, but I didn't want to get stuck in a restaurant because it was a hard life. A lot of people were drug addicts. Others were single parents. One of the managers was always disappearing, then reappearing, then one year just died. My dad fired me for fucking around at work. Then a few months later I caught an assault charge and my parents couldn't understand why I kept throwing my life away. I couldn't explicate it either until I saw Good Will Hunting. It was the first time I saw the feelings I had projected in any sort of way besides irrational violence. That's when I decided I wanted to be a writer-director one day. I got my start renting the Rollins College Library camcorder, shot a short film in the parking lot of Lee's Liquor, and my professor, Dr. Boles, submitted it to Columbia's Summer Film Program on my behalf. I got accepted, went, wrote more scripts with Asian characters, but all-Asian cast films or TV shows were a joke. A professor at Columbia told me to my face that 'Hollywood will never make a show with all-Asian faces.' 'My mother took it to another level at home.' Eddie Huang I took it as a personal challenge, but had no idea how I was going to pull it off. Walking out of Columbia the last day of our summer film program, I saw a guy with a blanket selling Sickamore, Black Wall Street, and Green Lantern mixtapes. I copped three for $10 and saw a Burkina sticker on one of them. I looked up Burkina online and discovered it was a mixtape spot near First and First with Army Navy gear hanging from the ceiling, making it feel like a bomb shelter. I went looking for more tapes, but what I discovered were a bunch of bootleg T-shirts with things like 'Stop Snitching' on them. I started wandering the neighborhood and found Nort, Recon, and a bunch of other stores selling what may or may not have even been referred to as streetwear yet, but I started pressing up shirts myself and selling them on the train. That was my portal into downtown NY and I met Asian people that were more similar to the uncles in my dad's Taipei youth gang than the kids at Chinese school in Orlando. I started to sell all kinds of things and it was a lot of fun. I forgot about film and writing for the moment. Then in the mid-2000s David Chang came onto the scene in the East Village selling noodles and gua bao. There was tremendous interest in Asian fusion food all of a sudden, but it really pissed me off that people thought Dave — now my good friend — invented the bao. Since the 1950s, people had been selling gua bao, which employed the sugar dough from mantou, filling it with braised pork belly and pickled mustard greens. As Chang writes in the Momofuku cookbook, he ate 'Peking' duck baos at Oriental Garden, a phenomenal but now-shuttered Cantonese restaurant in New York where you wouldn't get actual Peking duck. The restaurant served the 'Peking' duck with gua bao, which is also a telltale sign you are not eating Peking duck because it would normally come with a pancake or crepe-like carbohydrate. That said, Dave is served this bastardized 'Peking' duck and comes up with the idea to roast pork belly and serve it on a gua bao with hoisin and a pickle using French technique. That is absolutely Dave's innovation. But because the American audience had not seen the original, they believed they were seeing something for the first time. Even though it already existed. The first time I had gua bao was in 1994. I remember it because I went to the last LA Rams game at Anaheim Stadium where they lost to my Washington Commanders. The next day, I went to a bakery with my grandma and she bought me a gua bao. It was glorious and actually gave me the confidence to tell people I was Taiwanese. 'Because the American audience had not seen the original, they believed they were seeing something for the first time.' Being Taiwanese Chinese at the time, most people just said they were Chinese because of the politics. Even if someone was brave enough to say Taiwanese, people just thought you meant Thailand and it wasn't worth it. I could stomach that, but the gua bao thing bothered me. Living in mid-2000s downtown New York, hipsters at places like Welcome to the Johnsons or No Malice Palace would argue with me saying Dave invented them and I absolutely got into some really stupid drunk-high fights over this. I was selling weed and other things off South Oxford Street at this time. One weekend my mom came to visit and a few guys came to the apartment to re-up around 11 p.m. and she figured out pretty quickly what was going on. She cried, couldn't believe what I was doing, and I was like, 'All right, all right, relax.' A few weeks later I took my money and got a lease on Rivington Street to sell gua bao the Taiwanese way. I wasn't plugged into the Manhattan food scene. I ate around my crib in Brooklyn, Chinatown, or took the 7 to Flushing. I didn't even know what No. 7 restaurant was at the time even though my South Oxford-Fulton C train was right on top of it. I didn't think I was welcome in certain spaces because of what I did and how I dressed so I just stayed away. (I ended up being good friends with chef Tyler Kord, who taught me to eat broccoli and helped me stop being so defensive towards hipsters and their restaurants.) The idea for Baohaus was simple: Set up shop across from Alife and a basketball court on Rivington where the customer was a person I understood and sell them gua bao at a good price. I didn't think to change who I was, what I wore, or what I listened to. I was oddly also into Bauhaus and brutalist architecture, but 'bao' flowed better than 'Brutalisthouse' so there it was. I got the lease, then asked my homie who was good with Formica to build a simple counter in the middle and install Ikea shelves. Put some family photos on the wall and boom — we were open. The main event at Baohaus. Baohaus The menu had five to seven items depending on how much energy I had that particular day. The constants were a Chairman Bao, which was red cooked pork belly topped with pickled mustard green, peanuts, red sugar, and cilantro; the Birdhaus Bao, which was five-spice-brined chicken thighs, fried and topped with aioli, peanuts, red sugar, and cilantro; the Uncle Jesse, a fried tofu bao with a different aioli but the same toppings; a Haus Bao that had red cooked skirt steak until skirt steak became too expensive; fried baos with condensed milk; and if we had energy, boiled vinegar peanuts and a Taiwanese beef noodle soup. A couple months in, a white guy who spoke some good ass Mandarin came in with a pregnant woman for lunch. I made them some baos, some beef noodle soup, and the white guy actually put me onto the greatest Taiwanese film I've ever seen: A Brighter Summer Day. I hung out with them for a solid hour as I did most people who came by in the early days. A few weeks later, I get a call from the New York Times, which revealed the pregnant woman was Ligaya Mishan, who wrote an under-$25 column at the time. The white guy was the inimitable Ahrin Mishan, who has immaculate taste in food and new wave cinema. The day after her review dropped, there was a line down the block and I never looked back. This was my chance. To me, Baohaus and the gua bao was a vehicle to tell a story about where my family was from, but you could only say so much through a restaurant. Or at least I thought that. Agents started coming to the restaurant asking me to write cookbooks and such. I told all of them that I wanted to write a memoir about growing up Taiwanese Chinese in America and they laughed at me... even the agent that eventually repped the book. I held my ground, refused to be called a chef, and refused to write the cookbook because I knew that if I got pigeonholed as a chef, I would never get to be a writer-director. A lot of people around me, including my family, thought I was stupid and that my dreams were unrealistic. Ultimately, one agent agreed to read the first and last chapter of this 'memoir,' but if it was no good, I owed him a cookbook and I agreed. I locked myself in my apartment from Friday to Sunday and sent it to him that night. A couple weeks later, he sent it out to five publishers and by the end of the month we had meetings with all of them. The editor we chose was none other than Chris Jackson, who I still work with. That book became Fresh Off the Boat. We got Asians on television. Constance Wu did her thing. Ali Wong got her first job in our writer's room. Awkwafina's first appearance was on the original Vice version of Fresh Off the Boat. Luna Blaise just opened Jurassic Park and everyone has gone on to do amazing things. Eleven years later, I closed Baohaus in the pandemic. The guys wanted to work, but people kept getting sick and I wanted them to collect unemployment before it went dry. I shut down early with dreams of reopening, but eventually relented and gave the lease back to the landlord in October 2020 with no end in sight. I don't regret it. People know where Taiwan is, and it is now confirmed that while Dave Chang is a spectacular chef, he did not invent the gua bao. In his defense, he never claimed to. It was one of those things people said for him. Eddie in his element. Steven Lau While I was writing and directing, a lot has changed in the Asian American culinary scene. Anajak Thai has kind of reimagined Roy Choi's Asian Mexican observation of LA and put it on a tostada pedestal with dry-aged fish and other oceanic offerings. Pairing it with wine in a back alley of Sherman Oaks has cemented it as the restaurant to be at in LA. Danny Bowien can't stop won't stop and his energy on a wok is pretty much unmatched even if he makes fried rice with fresh rice. There's Calvin Eng in Brooklyn doing truly American Cantonese food at Bonnie's and since the Cantonese have been here longer than anyone else you get a real reflection of capital-A America in his cooking. Cory Ng, the proprietor of Phoenix Palace and Potluck Club, has been holding down Chinatown since he was throwing up Twon and bagging up sausages at Kam Man two decades ago. Cory not only puts out excellent food, but he does a lot of community work for seniors, which I gotta shout out. Shoutout Ha's even though I have to dine there at either 5 p.m. or 10 p.m., but I love to see another brother with the jade Buddha and vintage Rolex Date just getting it. The level of difficulty cooking the precise food they're putting out of that kitchen with a combi-oven and one electric burner is Simone Biles-level shit most people wouldn't even attempt. There are also Asian Americans in the Mountain West doing it big like chefs Anna and Ni Nguyen at Sắp Sửa resurrecting his mother's Vietnamese food in a modern setting. Shoutout Naks, shoutout Kalye, PhiLiPPiNES iS PROUD OF UUUU! Where my Koreans at? Atomix, Atoboy, but don't forget Woorijip you feel meeeeeeee. Shoutout David Chang and Roy Choi, who paved the way for a lot of chefs. Writing, film, television are all excellent mediums, but they're group projects in a different way than a kitchen. There are 100 people with notes standing between the script and the screen that film will ultimately be projected on. Every once in a while, someone wins a 1v100 battle and gets a great film across, but if there's one thing I learned the past decade it's that perhaps the immigrant story was actually best told in a kitchen where the line is immediate, direct, and physically digestible. We've come a long way and I'm excited to be back in the kitchen these days. Sign up for Eater's newsletter The freshest news from the food world every day Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Malaysian Reserve
03-06-2025
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
Empire Steak House Celebrates Father's Day with Elegant Prix Fixe Menu and Exclusive Beverage Experiences in New York and Hawaii
NEW YORK, June 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Empire Steak House, the acclaimed fine-dining destination known for its USDA Prime steaks and refined hospitality, invites guests to celebrate Father's Day with a luxurious prix fixe menu and premium beverage pairings from Saturday, June 14 through Monday, June 16, 2025, at all locations in New York City and Honolulu, Hawaii. A Father's Day Feast to Remember Empire's four-course prix fixe menu ($120 per person) showcases the restaurant's most beloved dishes, perfect for honoring dads and father figures in an upscale, celebratory setting. Highlights include: Appetizers: Fried Calamari, Canadian Bacon, Grilled Octopus Entrées: Prime New York Strip Steak, Filet Mignon, Lobster Ravioli, Shrimp Scampi Desserts: Tiramisu, Cheesecake, or Chocolate Mousse Cake Each meal includes a choice of salad, side, and coffee or tea. NYC Exclusive: Father's Day Whiskey Tasting At Empire's New York City locations, guests can elevate their experience with a limited-availability Father's Day Whiskey Tasting, available in three tiers: Standard Tasting ($60): 1 oz pours of Basil Hayden, Bulleit Bourbon, Buffalo Trace, Michter's 10-Year Rye Premium Tasting ($108): 1 oz pours of Baker's Small Batch, Booker's, The Hakushu 12-Year, The Yamazaki 12-Year Pappy Van Winkle Tasting ($375): Three 1 oz pours from the iconic collection, including 15, 20, or 23-Year Family Reserve options Reservations for whiskey tastings are limited and must be requested in advance. Hawaii Exclusive: Curated Wine Pairings Guests dining at Empire's Waikiki location will enjoy exclusive Father's Day wine pairings, hand-selected from the restaurant's award-winning cellar to complement the prix fixe menu and island setting. 'We designed this Father's Day celebration with intention-for those looking to toast with something exceptional,' said Jack Sinanaj, co-owner of Empire Steak House. 'Whether you're joining us in Midtown Manhattan or in Honolulu, we're offering a memorable experience from first sip to final bite.' About Empire Steak House Empire Steak House is a family-owned fine dining group with five locations in New York City, Honolulu, Hawaii and Tokyo-Japan. Known for its dry-aged steaks, premium wine and spirits, and high-touch service, Empire offers an elegant experience for both locals and international guests. Featured in Forbes, The New York Times, GQ Japan, and more.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Empire Steak House Celebrates Father's Day with Elegant Prix Fixe Menu and Exclusive Beverage Experiences in New York and Hawaii
NEW YORK, June 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Empire Steak House, the acclaimed fine-dining destination known for its USDA Prime steaks and refined hospitality, invites guests to celebrate Father's Day with a luxurious prix fixe menu and premium beverage pairings from Saturday, June 14 through Monday, June 16, 2025, at all locations in New York City and Honolulu, Hawaii. A Father's Day Feast to Remember Empire's four-course prix fixe menu ($120 per person) showcases the restaurant's most beloved dishes, perfect for honoring dads and father figures in an upscale, celebratory setting. Highlights include: Appetizers: Fried Calamari, Canadian Bacon, Grilled Octopus Entrées: Prime New York Strip Steak, Filet Mignon, Lobster Ravioli, Shrimp Scampi Desserts: Tiramisu, Cheesecake, or Chocolate Mousse Cake Each meal includes a choice of salad, side, and coffee or tea. NYC Exclusive: Father's Day Whiskey Tasting At Empire's New York City locations, guests can elevate their experience with a limited-availability Father's Day Whiskey Tasting, available in three tiers: Standard Tasting ($60): 1 oz pours of Basil Hayden, Bulleit Bourbon, Buffalo Trace, Michter's 10-Year Rye Premium Tasting ($108): 1 oz pours of Baker's Small Batch, Booker's, The Hakushu 12-Year, The Yamazaki 12-Year Pappy Van Winkle Tasting ($375): Three 1 oz pours from the iconic collection, including 15, 20, or 23-Year Family Reserve options Reservations for whiskey tastings are limited and must be requested in advance. Hawaii Exclusive: Curated Wine Pairings Guests dining at Empire's Waikiki location will enjoy exclusive Father's Day wine pairings, hand-selected from the restaurant's award-winning cellar to complement the prix fixe menu and island setting. "We designed this Father's Day celebration with intention-for those looking to toast with something exceptional," said Jack Sinanaj, co-owner of Empire Steak House. "Whether you're joining us in Midtown Manhattan or in Honolulu, we're offering a memorable experience from first sip to final bite." About Empire Steak House Empire Steak House is a family-owned fine dining group with five locations in New York City, Honolulu, Hawaii and Tokyo-Japan. Known for its dry-aged steaks, premium wine and spirits, and high-touch service, Empire offers an elegant experience for both locals and international guests. Featured in Forbes, The New York Times, GQ Japan, and more. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Empire Steak House Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
People swear by this Pierce County butcher shop. Have a look behind the counter
It was 10:55 a.m. on a Wednesday when a bearded man in a bright-orange T-shirt pulled on the door of Blue Max Meats. A few minutes later, Mapp Chhim turned toward the team of six or so employees and general manager Scott Johnson, some of whom have been on site since 5 am. 'Are we ready?' After a joint 'Yep,' he turns the key. In less than a half-hour, several customers have already come and gone, and a few more await their requests: Two pounds of trail mix, not the nutty kind, with hunks of Blue Max original beef jerky, torn pepperoni sticks, slices of smoked bratwurst, and cubes of cheese. Twelve jerk-marinated chicken thighs, packed six and six. Smoked pork chops. Ribeyes and New York strips of American wagyu, USDA Prime and Choice. Housemade sausages in 35 total varieties. Also housemade brown-sugar bacon. Lots and lots of jerky — the Hawaiian style is delightfully sweet and savory. Everyone is greeted with a 'Hello, welcome in!' and asked, probably more than once if you're indecisive, if you've been helped. The employee behind the counter who starts to help you will keep helping you, all the way through checkout. They are friendly and patient and maybe it's a show, but darn if it doesn't seem like these folks like working here. That sense of pride is precisely what led Tommy Marshall and Evan Greco to buy Blue Max Meats in 2013. The local company has served Pierce County since 1994, and it all started on the corner of South 96th and Canyon roads in the Summit area. Then it was a modest shop on the other corner of the same building it calls home today. Until maybe the early 2000s, there was also a Blue Max in Lakewood and South Tacoma. On the Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend, all but guaranteed to be busy, Marshall was dressed in Levi's and a maroon-and-cream checkered Oxford. Greco opted for shorts, high socks and a short-sleeved plaid button-down. Both were sporting aprons — one brown, one orange — as well as a ball cap. Along with their staff, the binding characteristic is a wooden clip-on bowtie, a throwback to butchers of yore. The duo met about 15 years ago. Greco, then in his early 20s, had been laid off from a job as a metal worker when his mom suggested butchery. Some of their family in New York state had a history as U.S. Department of Agriculture meat inspectors, and he was raised on a micro-farm in the Puyallup area. They sold animals to the Washington State Fair, he said, and their Italian relatives here were prolific home cooks. He got a job at Blue Max. 'On the first day, I knew this was what I wanted to do,' Greco recalled. With a burgeoning interest in the craft, he started making jerky at home. Armed with questions about how to cut a top-sirloin, he would frequent Summit Trading Co., the former supermarket a few blocks south on Canyon Road (now a Wilco Farm Store), where Marshall managed the meat department. Eventually Greco got a job there instead, and within a couple of years, the two were scheming how to open their own market. They point to Greco's random discovery of an old tin-type photograph at a local antique store as 'the catalyst' for their decade-plus journey of beefy entrepreneurship. An enlarged version of it — probably a midcentury Piggly Wiggly meat counter — now hangs on the wall of both shops. When they learned the Blue Max owner was closing, they inquired about buying some equipment and ended up buying the whole business. 'It was a big risk,' said Marshall last week. 'We didn't have any money, but we knew meat.' Their shop would focus on quality, consistency, customer service and housemade goods wherever possible — dedication that appears to have paid off. In 2014, they accidentally went viral when Greco decided to mix sausage and Skittles in honor of Seattle Seahawks star running back Marshawn Lynch, notoriously in love with the rainbow candy. Greco, who admits it's too much even for him in one sitting on a bun, laughs about his Beast Mode Sausage now. 'I thought it would be funny as a joke, and the next day we had a line,' he said. 'I was making these sausages 14 hours a day.' They kept it going as the Super Bowl Champion Seahawks returned to the big game the following year. You can still snag them — but only during football season. That was a big moment, they reflected in May. In 2016 they expanded to Buckley, taking over the old Rose's IGA on State Route 410. In 2019, they moved the original Puyallup shop into Summit Pub's original home. Not only is it much bigger, allowing them to provide even more variety in the coolers (cheese, specialty cold cuts), freezers (wild game, seafood, locker packs of meat that didn't sell from the case yesterday) and dry goods (produce, spices, sauces, tools), they kept the first storefront to handle all the smoking and processing. Today, all those sausages, smoked pork chops and jerky galore comprise a full quarter of sales. 'The thing that sustains us is that we're unique,' said Marshall. 'We don't hang out in the low-quality, low-price zone — and we charge a fair price for it.' Every morning, the fresh meat cases are stacked with fresh rows. Many steaks are sourced from Pacific Northwest producers, including Snake River Farms and Double R Ranch, as well as Canada's St. Helens Beef. They tear through some 300 pounds of ribeyes on a typical Saturday, they said, but if you're in search of advice for another cut: Ask the butcher. They agreed the coulotte, a singular strip of muscle from the top sirloin, was perhaps the most underrated cut in the case. It can handle grilling, broiling and a reverse-sear. As it cooks, explained Marshall, 'it puffs up in the center,' almost like a roast, but it feels like a steak. Serve it rare, he advised. 'It's one cut that for the price is a crazy value,' he added. Greco also highlighted the hanging tender (more commonly seen as just hangar steak, and in some parts of Europe 'onglet'), which he described as a 'thin piece that's super tender' with a 'kind of loose structure' that grills up beautifully with simple seasoning. His kids love it, too. To save time, he recommends 'The Smokin Wedgie,' a metal triangle that holds pellets to create a smoker-like situation out of any grill. They see some customers several times a week, they said. Many, like Roy resident Dennis Seberson, go out of their way to stock up. Seberson has been a customer 'since it's been here,' he told The News Tribune, holding a couple bags' worth of goods. While there are other meat shops and places to buy meat, none are 'as good as this one,' he said. Seth and Emma McClanahan said their visit was a long time coming. Like Seberson, his dad gets his meat exclusively at Blue Max, but they had been shopping at Costco out of convenience. On this particular Wednesday morning, the retailer didn't have what they wanted. More pointedly, said Emma, 'Everybody tells to come here!' ▪ Puyallup: 9502 Canyon Road E., Puyallup, 253-535-6110, ▪ Buckley: 29304 State Route 410, Buckley, 360-829-6520 ▪ Monday-Saturday 11 a.m.-7 p.m. ▪ Details: locally owned and operated meat market and butcher shop with fresh cuts daily, friendly and knowledgeable service, plus everything you need for a grilling party
Hindustan Times
23-05-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
Not able to perfect your steak? Here's all you need to know
We aren't in the thick of summer yet, not by a long shot, but hopefully you've already managed to fire up the grill at least once or twice. As the days get longer, the weather commands us to find a way to cook and dine outdoors. Also read | Recipe: Light and healthy Italian chicken steak and salad for weight watchers A juicy steak is — for many — the pinnacle of grilling options. In your mind, you can already see them. Caramelized and sizzling on the outside, pink and tender on the inside, with those beautiful crosshatch marks that let you know exactly how your steak was prepared. Here's how to get to that perfect beefy nirvana. This method works for all cuts of tender beef steak, such as ribeye, porterhouse, ranch, T-bone, filet mignon, flat iron steak, NY strip steak and so on. Buy the best grade of beef you can afford. USDA Prime is the top of the range, with USDA Choice coming after that. Next is Select, which will be leaner still. If possible, speak with a butcher about getting the best cut of meat for your needs and your budget. First, make sure your steaks are thick enough. If they're on the thinner side, 1¼ inch or less, you will probably want to flip your steaks only once, so they don't overcook on the inside while the outside becomes that deliciously appealing caramelized brown. In this case, you'll get grill marks that go one way. If your steaks are thicker, then go for crosshatch grill marks. Place the steaks on the grill on the diagonal, at about a 45-degree angle across the direction of the grates. Grill for a few minutes. Rotate the steaks a quarter turn (90 degrees). You are looking to create a diamond pattern with grill marks. Flip the steaks and grill them the same way. Let your steaks sit on the cutting board for 5 minutes after removing them from the grill before you cut them. This will finish the cooking (it's called carryover cooking). The resting period also lets the meat reabsorb its juices, so they stay in your steak where they belong and don't run out onto your cutting board. Also read | This cauliflower steak recipe with nutty parmesan will become your next favourite meal No matter what kind of steaks you choose, no matter what the thickness, make sure you have cleaned the grill well. A clean grill will offer cleaner grill marks. Also, oil the grill. In general (and it depends on the cut of beef and the heat of the grill), a 1½-inch-thick steak will cook to medium rare in 12 to 16 minutes. A 1-inch steak will cook to medium rare in a total of 8 to 12 minutes. An instant-read meat thermometer is the best way to check doneness. For medium rare, 130 degrees F is the approximate internal temperature. You can also use the touch test, if you don't have a meat thermometer. A general rule of thumb, so to speak: Let one hand hang limp. With the index finger of the other hand, push gently into the soft triangle of flesh between the thumb and index finger of the hanging hand. It will offer very little resistance, give way easily, and feel soft and spongy. That's the feel of a rare steak. Extend your hand in front of you and spread your fingers. Press the same spot with the index finger of the other hand. The flesh will be firmer but not hard — springy and slightly resistant. This is the feel of medium-rare steak. Make a fist and press that same spot between thumb and index finger. It will feel firm and snap back quickly, offering only a minimum of give, as does meat cooked to medium. A wonderful way to finish your grilled steak is to top it with a pat of compound butter, which is simply softened butter mixed with some herbs and/or seasonings. As the meat rests, place a bit of the butter atop it and let the butter melt as the meat rests. Also read | Try these appetizing dishes for a warm winter meal In a small bowl, combine the butter, Parmesan, minced garlic, salt and pepper until well blended. Place a couple tablespoons of butter on top of a steak as it rests after being removed from the fire.
