If you’re staying home this summer, have a “steak-cation”

It’s summer, and summer is vacation time. So if you’re not traveling this summer, take a vacation anyway—a food vacation. You’ve been careful all year to eat less meat and more legumes. Now is the time to get out the grill and enjoy yoursteaks . The news media are telling us to take a “stay-cation.” Well, turn your “stay-cation” into a “steak-cation!” And which cut is the king of the steaks? King! porterhouse This cut of steak has lots of marbled fat to make it juicy and flavorful and, most important, tender. Porterhouse is one of the most tender cuts of beef. Imagine a fresh-cut porterhouse steak. It’s that perfect, thick triangular steak with the bone down the middle. The bone divides the steak into two neat sections. The larger one is classic, wonderful porterhouse, a treat to eat. But the smaller one is the treasure. It is even more juicy and flavorful. If someone divides the steak and gives you the choice of pieces, follow your mother’s etiquette instructions and take the smaller piece. And that leaves the bone. Meat processors these days always want to take out the bones. Supermarket meat departments don’t give us half the bones that our parents could buy. But you know where the flavor is. Next to the bone. You know better than to chew on the bone in a restaurant (Mom’s etiquette again), but if you are in your backyard, anything goes! Chew! Gnaw! Lick! Slurp! Savor every fiber of flavor on that porterhouse bone.

There are two schools of thoughtwhen it comes to cooking steaks. The first is charcoal grill versus gas grill. The second is marinated versus gloriously naked.

This is just my opinion, but, if you’re going to cook on a gas grill, you might as well broil your steak in the kitchen. You won’t have to wave off the flies, mosquitoes, and yellow jackets, and the steak will taste just about the same. It’s true, you put the lava rocks in the bottom of the grill. Supposedly, the fat drips from the steak, sizzles on the rocks, and gives the steak a grilled flavor. But, in my opinion, it doesn’t work. A charcoal fire is a lot more bother, but it is worth every bit of the extra labor. You absolutely have to be sure to take the time for the fire to die down to ash-covered embers, and you need to keep a spray bottle of water handy to put out the licking flames, but the result is an aroma that will call hungry carnivores from long distances away and a flavor like no other.

The other question is to marinate or not to marinate. In my opinion, the natural flavor of the charcoal-grilled steak is so satisfying that adding other flavor via a marinade reduces the perfection of the pure steak flavor. So, sprinkle on a little salt (go on, salt it—it’s vacation, remember?) and maybe a little pepper, but the perfect porterhouse needs nothing more.