Philly Cheesesteak

This is one of the least practical dishes to make at home, since it really does depend on getting the meat cut in a way that isn’t all that easy or efficient to do by hand, and most of us don’t have a slicer in the home kitchen (imagine if we did). You can indeed slice your meat by hand, or you could potentially get your butcher to do it – either way, this is one of the pinnacles of all culinary experiences for me (when done right) and it’s useful to know how to do it.

We can spend a lot of time debating the various things that make a cheesesteak great, what should go on it and why, and the most boring conversation of all, what kind of cheese to use, but I’m going to bow out of that one, as I did not grow up in Philly and am no expert. That’s really a native Philly person’s thing, and the highest level of intellectual discourse in that town seems to be devoted to discussing no other topic. So I’m not going to waste my breath. You can in fact find a decent cheesesteak outside of Philly (the suggestion of which enrages Philly peeps) although it’s rare in New York. In the Boston area, where they’re called Steak and Cheeses, they’re prepared in the exact same way (although rarely, if ever, with cheese whiz), but they’re not a birthright. The point is, your average or even sub-optimal cheesesteak in Philly is almost certainly a damn sight better than most other cities’ better contestants. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, a lot of that has to do with the bread that is most ubiquitous in any given city. In Philly, that’s Amoroso rolls, whose rolls over the years have been developed into the absolute pinnacle of perfection when it comes to matching bread to hot steak and melted cheese. Like an attractive woman, they’re the perfect combination of firm and soft, and I don’t really know what more to say about them. When selecting bread for a cheesesteak, if you’re not in Philadelphia, you should try to find something that approximates this – don’t let it be so soft that it disintegrates, but never never never let it be so hard that you have to struggle to bite through it. You don’t want to cut your gums here. Believe me, no one loves a French baguette more than I do – anything out of a French bakery, in fact – and there might be no better receptacle for a large schmear of some gooey triple cream, but they are not the right choice for a cheesesteak, so get thee to an Italian bakery and find something a little more malleable.

I generally have ordered cheesesteaks with mushrooms and onions my whole life, although I’m starting to phase out the mushrooms, and I always prefer American cheese, for the same reasons that make it perfect in applications I’ve described elsewhere. This recipe/technique at home will keep it simple and only include onions.

The other thing that you should really put some effort into is securing the right cut. Supposedly, the proper cut in Philly is rib eye, with its streaky fat, but I can’t really attest to this. I do know that most places don’t seem to slice up real steaks, they take a stack of thinly sliced steak, pre-portioned per sandwich, out of the freezer and throw it on the grill, and it comes in a size and shape that is larger than most rib eyes. My guess is it’s a composite, like most deli hams or turkey breasts, or like Steak Ums, which, btw, you really should try to avoid at all costs, speaking from experience. On that same tip, you might be tempted to throw one of these together after returning home at 4 in the morning using sliced roast beef (and some abominable delis in NYC and probably other places do this as a matter of course), but you really never should, as the final product is nothing like what it should be. Anyway, as for picking the steak, start with rib eye and see how you like it. My recollection is that Bob’s Fine Foods, mentioned above, used to slice fresh steak on the slicer and I’m pretty sure it was top sirloin. I think a lot of other cuts would work – I’m no butcher and don’t know that much about this, but common sense tells me that chuck or round would probably work perfectly well in addition to the ribs and loins, but I’d stay away from the shanks, flanks, and plates. It’s just hard to picture a skirt stake slicing up the right way – if you’ve eaten your share of cheesestakes, you know what I mean.

In any case, try to have your butcher slice them super thin for you. If not, put the steak in the freezer for about 20-30 minutes until it’s about ½ frozen. You can try slicing on a mandoline at this point, or by hand. I’d say you’ll need about 1/3 to ½ pound of meat per sandwich, depending on the size of your bread and also how much fat and other liquids your meat ends up giving up. Play around until you get it right, but err on the side of having too much.

Slice your onions in rounds or halfs, about a ¼” thick.

Put a small amount of high heat oil like sunflower or safflower in a large skillet and turn the heat to high. Let it heat for about a minute, then add your beef in one pile and your onions in another. Don’t touch either for about another minute, then you can start your hashing process. I add salt and pepper at this point, but not too much of either.

You’ll need two spatulas for this, one in each hand. It’s nice if they’re identical but they don’t have to be. With your non-dominant hand, press down on a piece of steak near the edge of the pile with the tip of the spatula and hold it there firmly. With a swift, sharp motion, slide the tip of the other spatula with your dominant hand along the edge of the first spatula until it hits the steak, then simultaneously push away with the dominant hand and pull back with the non-dominant hand. Repeat this motion, working your way from the far edge of the pan towards you, through the pile of the steak, then flip around and repeat. It will get easier and require less effort as the steak cooks. At some point you should incorporate the onions. You don’t want these to get chopped into oblivion, so only do so when the steak is about two thirds of the way cooked. You can continue this technique until the steak is chopped to the fine-ness you like; I tend to like it pretty damn fine. When it is at the consistency you like and thoroughly mixed with the onions, it’s probably just about done; if not, keep cooking on high heat, stirring every 30 seconds or so, until it’s fully cooked through.

Form the meat and onion mixture into a log in the pan that’s roughly the length of your bread, maybe a little shorter. Lay the cheese slices on top of the log on the diagonal, so they look like diamonds, not squares. Overlap them a bit. Let the cheese go long enough so that it is fully melted and sinks down into the mixture but is not turning to liquid and running away. This should take between one and two minutes. You can turn the heat down if you’re worried about burning or otherwise overcooking the meat – after all, it’s really the steam from the meat and cheese and the ambient heat from the pan that will melt the cheese, and turning the heat down shouldn’t affect this too much. You can slice your bread now, while you’re waiting for the cheese to melt.

You have two options for removal – you can either place the bread directly on the meat and cheese log in the pan upside down, then slide a spatula underneath and flip the whole thing, or you can scoop the log into the bread. I prefer the latter, but whichever you choose, try to do so with as few movements as possible, and without breaking up the cheese and meat log too much. You want to maintain a solid layer of cheese as best you can, rather than just mixing the whole thing up.

I sometimes like wrapping the sandwich in foil for about 30 seconds or so to let everything inside it glom up into one another, but this isn’t really necessary. There is a difference between a cheesesteak that has been in foil and one that hasn’t – both are good, it just really depends on what I’m feeling like and how patient I am at that moment. No matter what, and despite how good a cold cheesesteak from the fridge the next day can be, you should serve immediately and enjoy.