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Its summer, and summer is vacation time. So if you’re staying home this summer, take a vacation anyway”a food vacation. You’ve been careful all year to eat less meat and more legumes. Now that summer is here, get out the grill and enjoy your steaks. The news people are telling us to take a stay-cation. Well, turn your stay-cation into a steak-cation! And who is the king of the steaks? King! Porterhouse.

This cut of steak has lots of marbled fat so that it is juicy and flavorful and, most important, tender. Porterhouse is probably the most tender cuts of beef. Picture the porterhouse steak in your head. Its 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 portion is the treasure. It is even more juicy and flavorful. If someone divides the steak and gives you the choice of pieces, follow your mothers etiquette instructions and take the smaller piece. And that leaves the bone. butchers these days always want to remove the bones. Supermarket meat departments dont give us nearly as many bones as our parents could buy. But you know where the flavor is. Next to the bone. You know not to gnaw on the bone in a restaurant (Moms etiquette again), but if you are on your deck, anything goes! Chew! Gnaw! Lick! Slurp! Enjoy every atom of flavor on that porterhouse bone.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to cooking steaks. The first is gas grill versus charcoal grill. The second is marinated versus unadulterated.

This is just what I think, but, if you’re going to use a gas grill, you might as well broil your steak in the kitchen. You wont have to wave off the flies, mosquitoes, and yellow jackets, and the steak will taste pretty much the same. I know, you use 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 mess and work, but it is worth every bit of the bother. You absolutely have to be sure to allow 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 hundreds of feet and a flavor like no other.

The other question is to marinate or not to marinate. In my opinion, the native 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”its vacation, remember?) and maybe a little pepper, but that’s all the perfect porterhouse needs.