Table Of ContentText copyright © 2019 by Hasenpfeffer LLC
Photographs copyright © 2019 by Wyatt McSpadden
Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Bryan B. Butler
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a
division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com
Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random
House LLC.
The photo on this page appears courtesy of Bryan Butler and Ben Runkle
Illustration on this page by iStock.com/clu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Franklin, Aaron, author. | Mackay, Jordan, author.
Title: Franklin steak : dry-aged, live-�red, pure beef / Aaron Franklin and
Jordan Mackay ; photography by Wyatt McSpadden.
Description: California : Ten Speed Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identi�ers: LCCN 2018045052
Subjects: LCSH: Beef steaks. | Cooking (Beef) | BISAC: COOKING / Methods /
Barbecue & Grilling. | COOKING / Speci�c Ingredients / Meat. | COOKING /
Regional & Ethnic / American / Southern States. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.
Classi�cation: LCC TX749.5.B43 F69 2019 | DDC 641.6/62—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045052
Hardcover ISBN 9780399580963
Ebook ISBN 9780399580970
v5.3.2
prh
Preface
Introduction
Part I
KNOW THY BEEF
CHAPTER 1
The Story of Beef
CHAPTER 2
Buying Steaks
CHAPTER 3
Steak Cuts
Part II
NEXT-LEVEL BEEF
CHAPTER 4
Dry Aging
CHAPTER 5
The Grill
CHAPTER 6
Fuel
Part III
STEAK PERFECTION
CHAPTER 7
Firing Up
CHAPTER 8
The Cook
CHAPTER 9
Sides, Sauces, and Drinks
Resources
Acknowledgments
Index
Preface
Boy, do I ever love a good steak! And I eat a lot of it, which, along with beer,
is how I managed to achieve this awesome bod. Nevertheless, since I’m
known for Central Texas barbecue, many people will ask, why a book about
steak? Well, I’m glad you asked.…
My love of steak goes back a long way. When I was a kid, it was a huge,
really big deal if we ate steaks for dinner. My folks cooked and stuff, but not
like we cook today. It was the 1970s and 1980s, you know, and Tuna Helper
was standard pantry fare and pretty darn good. But steak night was an
event. In Bryan, Texas, where I was born, my dad was actually a restaurant
manager at a steak house. I’d guess my dad used a few tricks from that stint
when he cooked for us.
In hindsight, my dad probably just put a bunch of Lawry’s on steak. (That’s
all right by me, as I still put Lawry’s on tons of stuff!) He’d always cook a T-
bone, about an inch thick or something like that, on a grill with charcoal—
nothing special or speci�c about it. His grill was likely just a shallow hotel
pan with a grate on top of it. But those �avors—really salty and beefy—have
always stuck with me.
I never really started cooking until I left home when I was eighteen. I moved
to Austin to an area called West Campus, adjacent to the University of
Texas, which was known for its ample frat and sorority houses and dozens
and dozens of apartment buildings for student housing. Now, I wasn’t a
student, but I lived there anyway because it was cheap. I had an apartment
with a small patio, and on that patio, a little Weber grill. Not really being a
very good cook—never having cooked in a restaurant kitchen—I remember
getting supercheap grocery-store steaks and, at like four o’clock in the
morning, �ring up the grill and eating steaks with my roommate while
watching the sun come up. We’d get the cheapest charcoal, the cheapest
meat, and iodized salt packets from the taco stand for seasoning. It was
absolutely the least expensive, foulest way to eat steak, but we still felt like
kings. Nineteen years old, living on, like, twelve dollars a month, and drinking
beer at six in the morning—that was a straight line from the way my dad
cooked steaks, but I didn’t know anything about charcoal or wood or
grilling. Or meat, for that matter, especially the quality kind.
It was that same nostalgia that got me into barbecue. When I really got into
barbecue, a bunch of lightbulbs started going off: what do I do with all these
coals? I was around �re all the time and my relationship with �re and the
nighttime is what got me into steak. If I have to sit there watching the �re
for twelve hours, why not use the �re to feed myself something that would
sustain me? I wasn’t going to be eating barbecue because that’s what I had to
sell. But a steak was the quick, easy way to taste that beautiful union of beef
and �re.
One of the most memorable steaks I ever ate was from Tom Perini of Perini
Ranch in West Texas. While I was working on the PBS show BBQ with
Franklin, we did a shoot at the ranch. Tom is a heck of a guy and a really
talented chuck-wagon cook, which he started doing on the ranch in the
1970s, eventually going on to open a steak house in 1983. Later, at a live-�re
event, our dish was loosely inspired by Perini: �fty tri-tips dipped in Cognac.
We grilled the steaks over mesquite and let them cool down. Finally, we set
up two PK Grills and got them raging hot (it felt like we were going to melt
the bottoms out of them) and poured Cognac into a bucket. Yes, you read
that right: a bucket of Cognac. We dipped the tri-tips in the Cognac and
�ambéed them on the grill—that’s how we brought everything back up to
temp. Man, what a great memory.
A person can eat only so much barbecue. I’m sure you understand: if, for
your day job, you worked in a place that smelled powerfully of meat, fat, and
smoke and then, when you went home, you smelled powerfully of meat, fat,
and smoke, too! The smell of a grilled steak is always refreshing, bright, and
less rich. While that fact might impact my hunger for barbecue, nothing ever
seems to get in the way of my appetite for a good steak. I never get tired of
it.
And that’s part of the way this book happened. When Jordan and I were
working on our �rst book, Franklin Barbecue, he noticed that dinner at my
house very often ended up being steak. And over the course of many long
nights outside on cooks, we spent a lot of time gazing at �ames and hot
coals and talking about grilling and meat. Without knowing it, we had started
to plan a second book.
And what’s more deserving of a book-length tribute than steak? It’s as
common in America (well, almost) as hamburgers and hot dogs, yet because
it’s so precious, cooking it is loaded with pressure not to screw it up. So we
�gured we might be able to lend folks a hand by helping them sharpen their
steak skills and knowledge.
And that’s all this book is meant to do. But along the way, we realized that
most people don’t have a great understanding of the modern beef industry,
and I think it’s important to know, as best as you can, where your beef
comes from, be it the actual farm or at least a trusted supplier. Every year, I
�re up the old truck and head up I-35 to Kansas to visit Creekstone Farms,
which supplies our barbecue restaurant with excellent, all-natural briskets,
and Loro, a new Austin restaurant I’m involved in, with bavettes and brisket.
This is because I like to check in on where the beef is coming from and the
people who manage it. It’s a long drive every year but well worth it.
Then, it turns out, I have a lot of thoughts about wood, charcoal, and grills,
too. People might think I just smoke meat all the time, but in fact, I grill just
as much—for events, for parties, or just on a weeknight for me, my wife,
Stacy, and my daughter, Vivian. Over time, I’ve developed some ideas about
cooking steaks—different methods for different cuts and so on—that I
thought might be useful to those of you out there who are as geeky as I am
about live-�re cooking. And since Jordan travels around a lot writing about
wine, he got some inspiration from other countries, especially Spain but
Japan, France, and Sweden, too. All together, we thought we would make
this book our so-called love letter to steak.
I hope you enjoy the book as much as I loved making it.
• Aaron Franklin
