Mackay Jordan - Knife: Texas steakhouse meals at home

I dont know when cooking a steak became so complicated. When I was growing upand this is probably true for you toowe didnt need to have charcoal or wood chunks or lighter fluid or a hibachi or a Big Green Egg to cook a steak, much less a sous vide machine and a water circulator. You didnt have to own a backyard or blacken your hands or dispose of dusty ashes. All you needed was a big steel pan, some oil, salt, and a piece of good meat. Some of the best steaks I ever ate were cooked this waywhere the beefiest flavor and the deepest crust depended mainly on a good pan, a strong burner, and an honest piece of meat. I like to call this method Back to the Pan, because it encourages people to not get too fussy about steak.

Back to the Pan is at the heart of this book, because that concepta simple, classic technique with an emphasis on essential ingredientswas driving me when I made my deep dive into steak in 2014 with the creation of Knife, my restaurant in Dallas. Knife was a response to the sad state of the American steakhouse, which often lacks personality, verve, and distinctiveness. More important, it usually lacks good steak, a particularly galling failure when you live in Dallas, a beef capital. I wanted to celebrate and honor meat, not exploit it.

Reinventing the steakhouse was a daunting task, requiring that I first travel across the country visiting steakhouses. I ate a lot of steak, most of it uninspired, but I also got a clear sense of what was missing.

First, I went out in search of great local beef. Then, when I wanted to transform that beef to become even beefier, I found Adam Perry Lang and Mario Batali, who helped me understand the nuances of aging meat. Last, I tried to design a menu that respects that precious meat and expresses its flavors as purely as possible with some of the flair of a chef. But the philosophy of Knife is clear: Let the product speak for itself. So I kept things mostly simple in the cooking, reaching back to my roots in classic French cookery, like Back to the Pan.

I follow the same pattern in this book. I tell my own story so youll know where I come from. I then discuss sourcing great beef, with an emphasis on the notion that you dont need to spend a fortune to have great-tasting meat, so I introduce you to the Old School cutsa filet is a great steak, but more often you can find even more flavor in lesser-known cuts at just a fraction of the price. In the equipment chapter, I detail just that: the few things youll need to deliver the most perfect steaks at home. Beyond steak, Knife is devoted to the celebration of meaty deliciousness in every form. To that end, I back-loaded the book with the recipes and techniques to execute everything we do.

My wish is that you will create the ideal steakhouse meal at home. Its not complicated. All the tools, techniques, and, nowadays, great meat are available to you. A delicious, perfectly cooked piece of meat is a precious thingI hope it means as much to you as it does to me.

Mistakes happen quickly; comebacks take a long time. Ive said that to myself more than once over my career, as those sentiments ring painfully true in both the kitchen and in life. Over and over, Ive tumbled from the tops of mountains that took me years to climb. And each time, Ive made the long, laborious ascent back to the summit.

My latest campaign has been the steakhouse and American beef. How a New York chef came to Texas, much less how I came to own a steakhouse in Dallas, is a piece of a much longer culinary tale. Its a story with many generous spoonfuls of success right alongside several heaping servings of failure. I want to tell a little bit of my story not out of vanityto be sure, this tale often doesnt flatter mebut to describe how a chef develops, how a surplus of manic energy can be defused through the kitchen, and how acquiring a foundation in the basic elements of cooking can help you lead a rich life. I also want you to understand me so that you can ultimately see what Texas, Texas beef, and serving steak in America mean to me. Even though you might have seen the cover of a magazine proclaiming me the Most Hated Chef in Dallas or watched me on Top Chef or read about my public dustups with the restaurant critic here in Dallas, I want you to know that what matters to me is creating beautiful food and making customers happy. Yes, Im prone to volatility. I suppose Im an old-school chef in that sense, but Im also grounded in a way Ive never been before in my life, thanks to Texas and thanks to beef.

One thing most people dont know about me is that every day I run. Like a frigging windup doll, I get on a treadmill and race my legs for an hour, sometimes more. I do it in the late afternoons after workand before work continues. People ask, Dont you tire yourself out? Arent you already on your feet day and night? The answer is yes, Im on my feet all day long. And, no, I dont tire myself out. The running is in fact to let off steam, to burn off the excess energy that buzzes in my mind and body every day. If I didnt run, Id probably burst. And Ive been like that my whole life. Ive been running, burning energy, moving. Always moving. Sometimes to my benefit, sometimes to my detriment. But always, always moving.

Im not sure where the energy comes from. Maybe it belongs to Thomas Kenyon. Thats the name on my birth certificate. I was born to parents I never knew. I heard my biological father was an Irish gangster, but I dont know for sure. They put me up for adoption as an infant only weeks old, and I was taken in by second-generation immigrants, a Czechoslovakian couple already in middle age. My new grandparents didnt speak English, only Czech. Suddenly, I was John Tesar, the only identity Ive ever known. But just as I am now a New York chef who has found his identity a long way away in the state of Texas, sometimes I wonder what the dynamic of being a kid with Irish DNA raised by strict Czechs has done to me. It must produce some amount of internal tension and energy. Most chefs have a lot of tension and a lot of energy. Probably not as much I do, though.