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02 February 2007
Porterhouse, t-bone, ribeye, sirloin or filet? I'm going to a steakhouse tonight. Decisions, decisions...
I've always been a porterhouse (bloody rare) man, although filet is good, too. (are you going to Peter Luger's? If you say yes, I'm going to turn green as lime jello with envy)
Nah, I'm not. Frankie and Johnnie's. Peter Luger's is a once-a-year proposition, and we went oh hell, I guess it was last May. Anyways, Luger's only does porterhouse so there wouldn't be a decision.
My favorite part of Luger's is when you go in to drop a couple hundred bucks and the waiter walks up and says "What can I get you buncha shitheels?" and then slaps your face.
Actually, if someone had good reasons for not getting a filet, I'd be interested in hearing them. I don't understand the point of other cuts of meat very well.
occi - I'm not much of a filet girl myself. It really lacks the flavor of a good ribeye. Most people like filets because of the "mouth feel" of the meat, I think, but when I eat steak I want to taste it.
Anyway, ribeye is probably my favorite cut, for the reason above. You can't go wrong with a Porterhouse, either.
occhi, I love filet*, but it's served without a bone. There's something very primal and unapologeticaly carnivorous about gnawing meat off a bone.
*when I was a teenager, sometimes on easter mom would make filet. for a week afterwords, I would reheat leftovers and eat them with eggs over easy, toast and fries. One of my favorite memories.
Well occhi: a porterhouse incorporates a tenderloin (as does a t-bone, albeit smaller) and then has a strip steak as well. So you have flavor and texture in one cut.
Hm, I just read this: "The porterhouse and the T-bone are the same except that the porterhouse is cut from the larger end of the short loin and thus provides more of the filet mignon." So a Porterhouse contains the tenderloin, but it's on the bone? Meat is weird.
Speaking of odd cuts of meat, I really miss barbequed tri-tip sandwiches. I used to eat them in California, but I can't find any here!
Yeah muddgirl - a t-bone and a porterhouse are kind of the same thing (strip steak on one side of the T, tenderloin on the other) but like you said, the porterhouse is heavier on the filet.
I tend to like my steaks pretty much as rare as possible, which is probably also why I tend to like the filet; it always seems like other cuts need a bit more cooking to have the right texture.
But I can *totally* see how a filet plus bone would be heavenly. I'm sold!
Dammit, I really want a porterhouse now. I just had a sausage biscuit from the gas station (now does everyone understand why jonmc and I get along so well?) and it was pretty much the bizzaro universe Porterhouse steak. In fact if that fucking thing ever touched a proper porterhouse... goodnight Manhattan.
Rib eye, my all time favorite, nice and rare and juicy. More flavor than most steaks, in my opinion. I like porterhouse (that's what we had tonight), and filet is nice when done right, but I love rib eye.
And yes, muddgirl, a t-bone and a porterhouse are from the same piece. A t-bone is just further up the rib. Technically, when the butcher gets to a certain part of the t-bone, it no longer qualifies as a t-bone, but instead becomes a strip steak. Go further up from that, and that's where your rib steak begins. Tenderloins are just cut lengthwise from the short loin area. The top sections are made into strip steaks.
Meat these days comes all broken down in large portions. Years ago we used to get the hanging beef, where butchers really knew their stuff, and had to break it down by hand. Nowadays, especially in supermarkets, the "butchers" are known as "meat cutters", and many of them would have no idea what to do with a hanging beef.