Franklin Steak: Dry-Aged. Live-Fired. Pure Beef. [A Cookbook] Kindle Edition

This book is very much in keeping with their first book, Franklin Barbecue. If you loved that, you’ll love this one, too. If you’re new to Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay’s books, this is not a cookbook. There are a few recipes for side dishes and sauce at the end, but their style is to mentor your steak education. If you read it from cover to cover, you’ll understand everything there is to know about steak, and you’ll be fully equipped to make that perfect steak. They are awesomely thorough. I’ll walk you through the chapters, so that you’ll know what to expect.Chapter 1: The Story of Beef. This is a primer on the different kind of cattle, with a very open discussion about all the pros and cons about grass-fed vs grain-fed cattle and how the aging of cattle affects flavor, with comparisons of perceptions throughout the world. It made me a little more eager to try out the new local butcher down the street, and to take a trip to Spain for a comparative taste. Great discussion.Chapter 2: Buying Steaks. He talks about brands, grades, labels, marbling, hormones, and antibiotics, and then gives a quick guide on page 45 to help you select that perfect steak. The short of it is a list of visual cues to look for in selection, along with a few other ways to increase your likelihood of getting the best product, rather than relying on labels.Chapter 3: Steak Cuts. This chapter covers all the different cuts of steak, steak language (defines terms you might see in the butcher’s shop), bone-in vs. boneless, American butchers vs. continental butchers, and a cheat sheet of cooking approaches by cut.Chapter 4: Dry Aging. Wow. He gives instructions to dry age at home if you’re super adventurous and have tons of space – like a spare, dedicated fridge for aging.Chapter 5: The Grill. He talks about stovetop, the oven, gas grill, sous vide (which he calls Steak by Spock), Kamados, old-fashioned charcoal, and hibachi. Then Aaron gives instructions on how to make a hybrid hibachi.Chapter 6: Fuel. He talks about charcoal briquettes, lump charcoal, Binchotan, coconut charcoal, and then moves on to all the varieties of cooking wood imagineable.Chapter 7: Firing up. This covers equipment use like how to start a charcoal chimney, tongs, grill brushes, trowels and pails, sheet pans, sizzle platters, towels, thermometers, and squeeze bottles. Then he moves onto firing up separate cooking zones and how to utilize different fuels, with a grill setup quickguide at the end.Chapter 8: The Cook. This is the one we’re all probably skipping ahead to before going back and reading the whole book in earnest. He talks about cooking goals and how to achieve them: A robust savory crust, proper doneness, salt, fats and oils, room temp before cooking?, grill marks and flips, resting, and freezing. Then he moves onto all the cooking considerations: hot and fast, reverse sear, steak on the coals, blast furnace, how thickness and weight come into play, and how the diet of your steak (as in what that cattle ate) affects the cooking.Chapter 9: Sides, Sauces, and Drink. Yeah. Green Salad with Garlic Vinaigrette, Garlicky Sauteed Mushrooms, Raw Tomatoes, Twice-Baked Potato, Home Frites, Grilled Vegetables, Salsa Verde, Charred Jalapeno-Anchovy Compound Butter, Perky Red Wine Sauce, and discussions on beer, wine, sake, and spirits.Okay, after reading through his ideal salting schedule, I picked up steaks for tonight and the next two nights. I grabbed my personal favorite, Bavette, sometimes labeled as sirloin flap (middle), filet mignon (right), and top sirloin (left). I weighed them out and weighed out the prescribed salt ratio. Just by visual inspection, it’s more salt than I usually use. I can’t wait to see how that plays out. I was just playing in a Greek book and that author used more salt than I usually do, and my kids who normally say lamb’s too gamey, liked it. I’ve only had the book for a day, and it’s already getting interesting with a tweak to my norm.The Twice-Baked Potatoes were fabulous! He uses less butter and sour cream than I normally would, but I think he gets away with it because of the bacon addition. Niiiice. The bavette steak wasn’t salty tasting at all with that salting, just really nicely flavored. I used what they call the Franklin Formation, meaning I stuck a log in one side of the grill with lump charcoal on the other side. I like the little extra smokiness it gave. I went with the Chimichurri on top for some brightness against that rich steak. Perfect. This chimichurri involves anchovies and capers in addition to the parsley, garlic, and olive oil.The Green Salad with Garlic Vinaigrette is 10 minute easy, but really flavorful. I usually double all garlic in recipes. I’m finding that’s not necessary in this book! My tenderloins were really thick, so I cooked them to 105 in the oven to get them started, then quick seared them in hot cast iron on the stove to bring them up to 128. I went the Charred Jalapeno-Anchovy Compound Butter to top it since it’s such a lean cut. Flipping fantastic dinner! These were salted heavily and rested for 24 hours and it didn’t taste salty at all, just perfectly seasoned.The Garlicky Sauteed Mushrooms were effortless and lovely. I made the Perky Red Wine Sauce for our sirloins. Lots of onion, Dijon, and butter make it flavorful and silky. These steaks were heavily salted and rested in the fridge for 48 hours and the flavor was perfection. I did the Franklin formation in my grill again, and I love what the wood adds to it. It’s funny, because I use wood in my smoker all the time when I’m barbecuing, but hadn’t thought about adding wood to a quick grill before. The flavor’s gorgeous.I’ll update this as I play with the concepts in the book and let you know how it affects my results, and as I try out those side dishes. I’m excited to dive into this!

I own and like “Franklin Barbecue”, so I knew this was going to be more a treatise on meat and method than a cookbook, but it is too much so in my opinion. Most of the book is about breeds and cuts, grills and fuel, and methodology. That’s all well and good, but it makes up 90% of the book and the remaining recipes are few and uninspired. There’s a basic vinaigrette, sautéed mushrooms, mixed vegetables, a salsa verde recipe and a few variations on potatoes and not much else. The recipe ingredients are few aren’t overly complicated, which leads me to think “Why do I need this?” Recipe wise, there’s nothing I can’t find elsewhere and actually little I’d make. There is for instance a recipe for “raw tomatoes” which is basically tomatoes with salt and pepper. If you want a book that is mostly theory with very little on the actual flavors, look no further.

A major disappointment compared to the Franklin Barbecue cookbook, which is a favorite of mine. There’s nothing novel here, and nothing a competent home chef wouldn’t already know. Frankly the small chapter on steaks in a book like The Food Lab covers all the content and techniques in this book, but with more evidence. A lot of the book also feels padded — sidebars with writeups on restaurants and chefs and butchers that add little value. I really wanted to like this book, but didn’t learn anything new from it.

I am a huge Aaron Franklin fan which makes it sting a bit to write this. His first book was amazing in the process detail and science behind what makes great barbecue, this book offered little of that. There is little to no mention of any seasoning other than salt but no reasoning for it, nothing regarding the science behind marinade ingredients, only a handful of steak cuts were mentioned and some of the most common cuts were not discussed. There was however some great info on dry aging and perhaps a bit of overkill on cattle history and ranching practices. I wish he would have taken some of the page real estate he used reviewing steakhouses across the country and addressed more cuts, char levels, heat and time and their effect on tenderness, and the science behind seasoning.

The amazing thing about Aaron Franklin's first book, Franklin Barbecue, was the extent of his generosity with his knowledge. There's a lot of award-winning pitmasters who've plopped out rote, uninteresting books of recipes, but Franklin Barbecue was more of an in-depth master class that didn't hold back the fruits of years of experience and knowledge. Now, Franklin Steak does the same thing. It's a generous, opinionated, deep-dive master class on how to do steak right. The Franklin Formation alone was worth the asking price - and no, buy it and read it to learn what that is - but the entire book is just stuffed with information on sourcing, choosing, seasoning, and grilling the perfect steak. And have gone all-in on a tri-tip with his charred jalaneno-anchovy butter and watercress salad, I attest he's hit the mark. Will it be a cheesy, crosshatched Applebee's commercial steak? Nah. It'll be better.

Holy smokes! I have learned more about beef and steaks, and beef cookery in the past 24 hours reading this than in my previous 70 years all total. Once again Aaron and Jordan insanely knock it out of the park. This, brothers and sisters, is the holy scriptures of beefianity. Amen.

An informative, beautiful, and yes, mouth-watering book on all things beef, and specifically the odyssey of grilling the perfect steak.It’s well-written and entertaining. Not a cookbook.People that have given it poor ratings are vegans and kooks.Steak is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!Thank you, Aaron and Jordan! A triumph!

I purchased this for two reasons: 1) I manage a steak restaurant, cooking over live fire and I wanted to improve my knowledge. 2) I loved Franklin BBQ which cooks over live fire, so this purchase makes sense.Franklin's love of beef shines through, and also resonates with myself, as I only want the best steaks for my guests, just as Franklin wants the best meat for his restaurant. A lot of the detail about various breeds of cattle may be more than a home cook needs to know, however I feel that this information is worth knowing for professional chefs.Cooking over live fire is important to me, so I will be using techniques from the book to look at ways of improving our cook temps and fire life, although we cook in a Josper, similar to the Hawksmoor chain. There's a great little flow chart on how to cook each cook - reverse sear, pan sear then oven finish etc but I don't think I recall seeing any go over medium-rare.I was a little disappointed with the side dishes, they are basic, lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms etc. The latter dish you could probably simplify further by just using sliced tinned mushrooms, garlic butter and chucking in a sprig if your desired herb.For those looking for a pure cookbook, this isn't for you. For those who want to expand their knowledge of beef and steaks in particular and are happy cooking indoors or outdoors this will offer more than just pictures and step by step recipes.

It's a Christmas present but the book looks really good

an important aspect was neglected, (neglected or avoided?) frozen meat! i tend to avoid it, specially when i am paying top dollar, but am i wrong? when compared to "other flaws" how bad is the frozen "flaw"? if i buy half a cow from the farmer.... all crayovaced frozen.... can i stil thaw and age?nevertheless, interesting reading ( however not a cookbook).

Comprato per curiosità...alla fine apprezzato...

Come non averlo nella propria collezione?Semplicemente wow!