Cookbook:Grilled Steak

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This Cookbook page needs work. Please improve it. See the talk page for discussion regarding improvements. The following reason was given: This recipe lacks amounts, clear directions, and is mostly something about the author's family.

Grilled Steak

[edit] Ingredients

Two Sirloin cut steaks Salt, or seasoning salt, Garlic Powder, Marjoram, Coriander, Thyme, Savory, and Basil

[edit] Procedure

Thaw frozen steaks for about an hour beforehand. Warm the grill to appropriate setting for barbecue, lower heat the better, but at a longer cooking time. Sprinkle everything but Garlic Powder and Coriander on the steaks while grill is heating, then lightly shake on the Garlic and Coriander. Cook the blank side of steak first for about seven to ten minutes, then flip and repeat. Cook to desired rarity, for medium cook for about another 5 minutes after the first fourteen, depending on your heat setting.

[edit] Essay

I have selected a family steak recipe and I interviewed my father via telephone, and from gathering information it is not a complicated recipe, and it really isn’t about the recipe completely, but rather the meat itself as a cultural dinner meal. The recipe is shared with all family members, and has evolved from each new generation as tampering with new spices becomes available, yet it always consist of some seasoning salt, or salt itself to attenuate for blandness that the meat might turn out to have. My dad didn’t have any expectations for who is allowed to be taught how to cook the steak, but since it is grilled, and he had two boys, it just turned out to be passed along to males, yet he did tell me that if he had had a girl he would have tried to teach her to grill the steak as well. Before we finished though, he said he father and grandfather always did the outside cooking, more than likely because they were always outside, but also maybe because they fit the cultural model that the man does the grilling. He did talk about a certain level of male bonding that sit parallel with grilling a steak, as he said when he learn he was watching his older brother who was being taught by their father how to properly put the salts and herbs on, then how to rotate it at the correct time and how to check if whether or not it was to satisfaction. After his older brother had learned is really when my father learned, for his older brother started sharing with him, until they eventually grilled the meal together. My father started this at about age thirteen, mainly because he was always around his older brother, I on the other hand didn’t start learning the recipe until about age seventeen or eighteen when I was a senior in high school, and I didn’t share the bonding with my brother doing it because he was much older and left the house by the time I was in sixth grade, so culturally it was a little differently for my father.

The recipe for cooking a steak over a flame has been passed down for generations because that’s what my family has always had and been around, beef cattle, all my grandfather’s generation of relatives were farmers, but it slowly dwindled from every generation to the next, now to where out of five children, my father is the only one left with raising cattle on his great uncles old orchard and cattle land. My father couldn’t remember how his dad learned the recipe, but he knew that his father and grandfather grew up eating steak and potatoes over some type of grill, yet even though hid didn’t speak of any rules of code for passing the recipe along, it has so far not been passed along to any daughters, so my father would have been the first, which he may yet still be, for he is able to pass along to his nieces, but he didn’t share whether or not if he would pursue doing so or not. From what I gather, the recipe is centralized around male bonding, since women are mainly left out of the experience, even in my own household, the tradition still holds firm where my father does the outside cooking, and my mother does the bulk of the inside cooking, and it’s not exclusionary for outsiders as they are not debarred from participating, as I have seen my father grill with friends and other family members that were not close relatives; however, it is always older men hanging around the grill having conversations and discussions, and I am not sure where this cultural phenomenon originated from, only that it is the cycle that has occurred for quite some time.

My father’s family emigrated from Ireland, and he said that his family has always had beef and potatoes, but whether or not its emergence started in Ireland or the US is unknown, yet my father insists that it is Irish, and always talking about being Irish since are last name is Hennessy, and some times it does make my family feel like they are Irish, though I have doubts that there are any true connections to ancestral cultural heritage, but this does not mean he is wrong in such ardent insistence that it was our Irish past. In any case, in some sense it helps identify with our Irish ancestors that made a home in the US, that there culture still exists in my family’s present time helps us to feel like we still have a sense of tradition, which my family responds to in many cases, where as they make their own new traditions, so they still have a connection that they attach themselves too to make sure that they feel they haven’t abandoned everything that came before them.

I can understand that not only is the meal tasty, but also it is readily available to my family, my father mostly gives our beef to close family, and albeit the meal is shared with all, the actual beef tends to stay within the family. My father used to always says when we would have steak and potatoes and I would ask why we are having it again when we just had it last week that it is an Irish meal, and that’s about all he would say on it. He doesn’t necessary connect with living an Irish lifestyle or really any else being Irish, but always includes that the meal is Irish, although I know that many emigrants from other counties very well ate steak and potato meals, in fact it has been seen as a prairie or rural meal for a very long time, which I think has a larger connection to a large number or emigrants, and not just the Irish, but for my father it is still the “Irish” meal to consume. In many ways, it better correlates to a larger emigrant culture that has been produced from generation to generation that now, at least for my family is very specific to family history, and making new bonds as an old cultural experience. -John Hennessy