Refire A Classic: Deconstructed Salisbury Steak

“Eat the muscle pulp of lean beef made into cakes and broiled. This pulp should be as free as possible from connective or glue tissue, fat and cartilage…..The pulp should not be pressed too firmly together before broiling, or it will taste livery. Simply press it sufficiently to hold it together. Make the cakes from half an inch to an inch thick. Broil slowly and moderately well over a fire free from blaze and smoke. When cooked, put it on a hot plate and season to taste with butter, pepper, salt; also use either Worcestershire or Halford sauce, mustard, horseradish or lemon juice on the meat if desired.”
– Dr. James Henry Salisbury (1823-1905)

Don’t do that.

Before Bob Atkins, there was James Henry Salisbury. He got lost in the Victorian Era nutritionist craze. John Harvey Kellog promoted a vegetarian, cereal-heavy diet supplemented by yogurt enemas. Sylvester Graham made people sleep on hard beds, take cold baths, and lie about masturbating. Those were the heavy hitters. It was a fascinating time peopled by fascinating people.

As with Kellog, Salisbury was an early voice suggesting germs had a part in sickness and infections. He got made fun of a good bit for that before being proven right. Both men probably got away with a lot of crackpottery after that. Salisbury promoted a diet of beef cakes as described above, three times a day washed down with hot water. Why hot I’m unsure, but he warned against ever drinking other liquids at other temperatures. Fruits and vegetables were chock full of poisons and the cause of “summer complaints.” Pace Kellog and Graham, plants were relegated to a rounding error; no more than one percent of the Salisbury diet.

If you’re trying to imagine what it would be like to go through life eating the same minced meat every meal, every day, washed down with the same scalding mug of plain water or what kind of person would soberly agree to such a regimen, I’ve got great news. You don’t have to imagine. Elma Stuart, she of the friends of novelist George Eliot fame, took all her suddenly free meal-planning time and wrote What Must I Do to Get Well? And How Can I Keep So?, a 390 page tome revealing all the closely-held sputum divining mysteries. Her testimonial comes after eleven years as a practitioner. I don’t know if it’s more remarkable that she suggests she’s in the midst of an unbroken streak of twelve thousand and forty-seven meals (my rough approximation) or that the book (as linked here) made to at least a 12^th edition. I don’t know how many editions of Middlemarch were printed in Eliot’s lifetime, but I’m betting if it was eleven or less, Elma knew.

Salisbury would doubtless freak seeing the steam tables his legacy serves, with smothered pork chops and battered catfish, as anchor; psychosomatic summer complaints, I’d expect. Toxic potatoes and mushy green beans, fried okra. Tomatoes are from the nightshade family. His intent was not to have his namesake on a fork with a bit of mac ‘n’ cheese.

Our modern conception of Salisbury steak is a creation of several telephone game generations. I don’t know if the phrase “modern conception of Salisbury steak” has been written before, but these days, it’s a school lunch cafeteria and meat ‘n’ three staple defined by the gravy. Otherwise, it’s a hamburger.

I’ve made replicas; filled a Dutch oven with beefy flour and onion broth, adding mushrooms inconsistently  –  just like they did in high school, with submerged par-cooked patties not to be fished out until blessed by a half hour’s simmering. It’s hard-to-beat comfort food, especially with an overly complicated mac ‘n’ cheese or oddball collards on the side.

I recently went to Belize where I bought a lot of black pepper and I recently got rid of a tree that carpeted my roof in pine straw and made outdoor grilling a panicky pastime I largely abandoned. I couldn’t stop worrying about breeze-borne bits of still incandescent ash lighting my roof kindling and having neighbors sing about not needing no water and letting the domestic franchise burn.

I wanted to grill something, and this is what I came up with. The sauce is a definite keeper. It’ll get used with other meats, other recipes. But the whole was better than expected. It’s made the rotation.

We used to make fun of one of the best chefs I’ve ever worked with because he started featuring “deconstructed” dishes right when the deconstructed craze fad was at its height. As fads go, deconstructed was a fun one. But as much as I liked it, I liked teasing the chef about being chic and trendy more. If he reads this, it’s with hat in hand that I present it.

Deconstructed Salisbury Steak

• 1 ½ lbs. ground chuck
• 2 decent sized whole portobello mushrooms
• 1 large yellow onion, sliced into rounds
• sauce to taste
  • 4-6 cloves garlic, chopped
  • ½ yellow onion, diced
  • 1 carrot, diced
  • 1 rib celery, diced
  • tbsp tomato paste
  • fresh thyme, small handful
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 glass dry white wine
  • 3 cups beef stock
  • red pepper flakes to taste
  • arrowroot as needed
• olive oil
• salt and cracked black pepper to taste

Start with the sauce. It can be made ahead and reheated if that’s your druther. Pour a few glugs of olive oil into a saucepan over medium heat and add the onions and carrots. When the onions start towards translucent, add the celery and thyme. Cook until both celery and carrots start to dull, 3-5 minutes. Add garlic and then half a minute or so later add the tomato paste.

Stir a few times to coat everything with tomato paste and let cook for 1 minute. Add white wine and red pepper flakes, reduce by half, and add the beef stock and bay leaf. Bring it all to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer. Let it simmer for at least twenty minutes to reduce and thicken. Stir occasionally.

After the sauce has simmered, strain it through a sieve. Everything’s had time to add what it brought. Take a minute to look at the picture above. I’ve mentioned this when writing about similar sauces, but I’m going to beat this drum again anyway. That stuff is gold in an omelet. Don’t throw it away.

Pour the strained liquid back into the saucepan over low heat. It’s time to add arrowroot. Look at the picture above.

Don’t do that.

I accidentally dumped a tbsp in. I was paying attention to something on tv and not to what I was doing. Do what I did and you have to strain again because the powder quickly finds a way to form lumps and you’ll hate yourself trying to break them up.

You want to let the arrowroot fall like an early snow. If you have a sifter, great. Use that. If not: sprinkle in a little bit, whisk, sprinkle in a little bit, whisk, …

How viscous the sauce will be is up to you. I like it to stick to the back of a soup metal spoon. That took roughly 1 ½  tbsps.

You can take it off the heat, put it in Tupperware or whatever, and refrigerate at this stage if you like. I kept mine at the lowest simmer and started on the grill.

Rub the mushrooms and onion with olive oil and liberally salt and pepper. I started this with a pepper craving so, spread over all ingredients, I used roughly one Spanish galleon’s worth. You probably don’t want to commit as heavily, but when I say “liberally” maybe take me to mean “Liberally” where pepper is concerned.

Make hamburgers as you do. I like a fatty mix, particularly when grilling because I’m losing so much to the fire, so I use ground chuck. I also don’t like to make a fuss with burgers. Worcestershire, garlic, cayenne, etc. are all fine, but I prefer to leave the meat alone save salt. In case you missed it, this time I added pepper, but simpler is better in my opinion. Suit yourself.

The burgers need a head start, so I hold off putting the mushrooms and onions on until at least the first burger flip. There are people who believe that a perfect burger needs only one flip. They have been misled. That’s a post in itself, so I’ll get back to that point some other time.

Cook the burgers to taste and try to get some char on the onions and mushrooms.

Pull everything off the grill. Slice the mushrooms. Taste the sauce and correct for salt and pepper.

Put it all on a plate and be generous with your ladle.

It’s not the comfort food steam table stuff. This is cleaner and satisfies a different hankering. There’s charred meat and smokiness. The mushrooms still have a little bite. The onions are still sharp. And it’s no longer faddish.