Customer Reviews

Steak: One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Beef

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading Steak. What I found was an excellent blend of travelogue, food writing, personal journal, and scientific discourse. The book is enjoyable from beginning to end. There is an honesty to the writing, suggesting a deep fascination and passion for the subject matter - steak. And that leads the author to discuss more than just opinions, more than just subjective descriptions of good food that may or may not be accessible to the average person. Schatzker travels all over the world to attempt to uncover why people love steak, what makes steak taste good, and what is wrong with mass produced commoditized beef. He writes about the food and flavor science in an ease that is reminiscent of Malcolm Gladwell or Atul Gawande. The complexity of the subject matter is explained in a story like fashion and that makes it highly digestible (pardon the pun) and fascinating. For a book that is educational, fun and even at times touching, I highly recommend this book.

Most complete book ever written on the hows and whys of producing the best flavored beef. Also a very enjoyable read for anyone interested in the culture of eating.

I enjoy "single subject" books like Rice, Sugar, Salt, The Founding Fish, Caviar and so forth. And I have been a perfect-steak-searcher for years. Some background: when I was a kid, my father, whose father was a butcher,would go in with a friend and buy a "side" of beef. He'd have it delivered to the local butcher where it would hang to become "dry aged." On Saturdays we'd go to the butcher shop and watch the butcher scrape off the mold and trim off the dried-out edges and deftly cut off two strip steaks 2 1/4 inches thick. The meat was crimson and "marbled" with intricate traceries of fat. Dad would cook the steak in an iron skillet (as the French do). Always rare. When done he'd put it on a warm plate and then pour red wine in the pan, add a pat of butter, swirl it around over high heat to make a sauce which he'd poured over the steak on the serving plate. That ritual turned me into a steak aficianado.

Schatzker's book is a steak lover's feast. He explores the merits of grass or grain fed beef and much more while taking you on a carnivorous journey around the world, a journey that will introduce you to the most subtle and delightful differences between extraordinaty steak and ordinary meat.

A customer of ours at a farmer's market loaned us this book. I started reading it, and my husband wasn't far behind. It has been a very intertaining trip to read this story, which surprisingly has quite a strong plot. As a writer I was extremely impressed with all of the different ways he found to describe steak. And, the ending...well, I don't want to blow it for you. But, I was so HAPPY with the ending.

We strive to raise the best grass fed steak around, and the one thing/place/person that I was surprised that he left out was Joel Salatin at Polyfaced Farms. Joel was the only missing element that would have completely covered the subject.

This is an excellent read, but do be warned...it got technical. But, not in an overpowering, heady way. He would sneak it in on you, and slam you in the face with it. People really need to know this information though. They need to know what goes into making the meat that they eat. They need to know the influence that industry is having over research and regulation in the food world. They need to understand how this then ties into the government regulations, and how it affects the product that ends up on the plate. The quality of food has gone down quickly in the past 20 years. Why arn't more people throwing a fit about it? Thank Goodness for books and people like this that are working to reverse the trend, and overcome it. Great work! Great Book! Great Writing!

After reading this book at the cottage where a great amount of beef is consumed I have come away with:
Questions I should be asking myself and the butcher
What great steak should taste like
Myths and misconceptions around steak

A great read that will surely give you a whole new appreciation of all things steak.

I really enjoyed this book. The author has a great writing style, and it was fascinating to see what he discovered during his travels. It made me appreciate steak on a whole new level.

This was a very entertaining book. Even those who don't consider themselves "steak people" will enjoy reading about Schatzker's journey as he searches out the steak of his dreams. I recommend it as a very enjoyable read for foodies and non-foodies alike.

Toronto-based Slate journalist Mark Schatzker has written a fabulous book about a healthy low-carb delicacy called Steak: One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Beef. Whether you are a connoisseur of steaks or a beef-eating novice, you're gonna learn so much from what is shared in this book.

Check out what Mark has to share about his personal love for beef and his disappointment with the "mediocre" steaks he was consuming, how his career as a travel and food journalist helped him find the perfect steak, what's wrong with most steaks that people are consuming, the problem of grain-fed beef, why inexpensive steaks aren't necessarily a good thing, how we can get people to want the better quality of beef, the influx of grass-fed beef in conventional grocery stores, why all grass-fed beef is not necessarily good, the parts of the cow that are not as popular but are delicious like the tongue (where it is hugely popular in Japan), the benefits of the various cuts of beef, why cows are supposed to be eating grass to create the protein and fat in beef, why you should never marinate a strip or flank steak, which is his favorite steak and why, his online resource for finding the good steaks vs. the not-so-good steaks, why restaurants aren't necessarily serving the best steaks, how people would find the ranches and farms selling these quality cuts of beef, the most exotic places he visited in his research for his book to find the best steaks, whether grain can play any role in the process of raising cattle, what his thoughts are on promoting grass-fed beef and the alleged lack of pasture land for the cows, why people are more apt to "settle" for inferior cuts of beef, and his future plans for future projects.

If you're not hungry for a sizzling (grass-fed) steak after listening to Mark Schatzker, then you're not livin' la vida low-carb! Get STEAK and eat this one up!

Been dry aging supermarket steak up to 42 days in my fridge seeking more tasty beef on a budget. Looking for the next level when I saw this book. Not very helpful to my project unless I bought my own ranch. Just tried a grass-fed steak from one outfit mentioned by the author and it was certainly not what I wanted, especially at about $20 a lb.after shipping. Certainly different. Very wet, no fat, cooked rare and still very chewy, and tasted like grass! More like wild game than beef.

Full disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book.

I absolutely loved this book! Mark Schatzker writes about his quest for the perfect steak, including his trips around the world to Texas, France, Scotland, Italy, Japan, and Argentina and his attempts to raise his own cow for the perfect steak. The book is full of so much interesting information about the history and current state of steak, including a vein that runs throughout the book that covers the grass-fed vs. feedlot argument about beef. Having tried one too many mediocre steaks, the author sets out to find the perfect steak and what goes into creating it, and takes the reader along on a humorous and fascinating ride. The writing is fantastic and will keep you laughing and interested.

Having moved to the San Francisco bay area a year ago, I found the book to be especially interesting because so much of the local culture here revolves around food and the search for delicious and healthy alternatives to many of the foods that are currently making Americans fatter and fatter. One of the huge things in this area's culinary scene is grass-fed beef, something I had never really seen or heard much about before moving here. I can definitely say that I find it to be much tastier, and a lot of the information in this book helped me to understand why this is the case, and how my new-found love of grass-fed beef may actually be better for me. I definitely think "Steak" is the perfect companion book to any foodie's collection.