There. It’s out. My madeleine is a piece of round steak mechanically mashed into submission.
The realization came to me not too long ago, when I found a package in the grass-fed beef bins where I buy my groceries. I took them home, patted them with some seasoned flour and slipped them into a hot skillet. Six minutes later I was right back at my childhood dinner table, when cube steaks on a Tuesday night meant life was safe, steady and predictable.
But my feelings for the cube steak are more than nostalgic. That I can get grass-fed cube steaks for about $8 a pound (half that if I go for conventionally raised beef) is a comfort to my budget, too.
The cube steak is suddenly one of the hottest cuts of beef in the country, according to figures from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The amount of cube steak sold during the last quarter of 2008 was up by almost 10 percent over the same period a year earlier. The overall amount of beef sold went up only 3 percent.
It doesn’t take a wizard to figure out that the economy’s swan dive has much to do with the cube steak’s resurgence. But even before kitchen budgets became tight, the cube steak had its fan base.
Through good times and bad, it has remained a wallflower among meat cuts. Old-fashioned and a little mysterious, it’s a steak without pretension, or maybe a hamburger with humble aspirations.
But tell people you’re on a little cube-steak jag, and the reactions you get — either pro or con — are surprisingly powerful considering we’re talking about a cutlet.
“I feel sad and sick whenever I hear the term ‘cube steak,’ ” said a friend whose mother used to bake them into greasy, grim casseroles studded with string beans. The cube steak represents all that was unstylish and lacking in her childhood.
Bill Niman, the boutique beef man from California, has a strong reaction to the cube steak, too. It’s not all bad. He appreciates that the cube steak once served as the convenience food for an entire generation. And he likes that the tenderizing method helps make use of the whole animal, which is especially helpful for small-scale grass ranchers with tiny profit margins.
But when Mr. Niman fixed one for himself recently, it only served to remind him of the gloopy, tomato-soaked Swiss steaks of his childhood.
“I fed it to the dogs,” he said.
But other people jumped on me like I was a long-lost sorority sister when I brought up my appreciation of the cube steak.
“Oh, I just really love them,” gushed Kathy Sullivan, 66. A Rhode Island resident, she has warm memories of cube steaks served alongside her father’s homemade piccalilli relish. Later, she pan-fried them for her own children. But only good ones, she said, made from slices of sirloin or round steak she had the butcher cube by hand.
Susan Schultz, who lives in Fort Atkinson, Wis., fondly described the slightly pink centers of cube steak sautéed in nothing more than butter and seasoned with a little salt and pepper.
“It was kind of an upgraded hamburger if you couldn’t afford steak,” said Mrs. Schultz, who raised two children on pan-fried cube steaks. “I’m going to have to have one now.”
The term “cube” can be a little murky. It doesn’t refer to the shape of the meat, which is usually beef but is sometimes made from pork, elk or other animals. Rather, it refers to both the shape of the dimples that checkerboard the surface of cube steak and the process that puts the dimples there.
Although pounding tough pieces of beef to make them more tender has a long history in the Southern and Western United States, it wasn’t until patents on mechanized cubing machines were handed out in the 1930s and 1940s that the cube steak became an inexpensive butcher shop staple.
The machines are usually stainless-steel cases with innards fashioned from rollers covered in dozens of teeth sharp enough to pierce flesh cleanly. There are top-feeding home machines with cranks that do the job, too.
The realization came to me not too long ago, when I found a package in the grass-fed beef bins where I buy my groceries. I took them home, patted them with some seasoned flour and slipped them into a hot skillet. Six minutes later I was right back at my childhood dinner table, when cube steaks on a Tuesday night meant life was safe, steady and predictable.
But my feelings for the cube steak are more than nostalgic. That I can get grass-fed cube steaks for about $8 a pound (half that if I go for conventionally raised beef) is a comfort to my budget, too.
The cube steak is suddenly one of the hottest cuts of beef in the country, according to figures from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The amount of cube steak sold during the last quarter of 2008 was up by almost 10 percent over the same period a year earlier. The overall amount of beef sold went up only 3 percent.
It doesn’t take a wizard to figure out that the economy’s swan dive has much to do with the cube steak’s resurgence. But even before kitchen budgets became tight, the cube steak had its fan base.
Through good times and bad, it has remained a wallflower among meat cuts. Old-fashioned and a little mysterious, it’s a steak without pretension, or maybe a hamburger with humble aspirations.
But tell people you’re on a little cube-steak jag, and the reactions you get — either pro or con — are surprisingly powerful considering we’re talking about a cutlet.
“I feel sad and sick whenever I hear the term ‘cube steak,’ ” said a friend whose mother used to bake them into greasy, grim casseroles studded with string beans. The cube steak represents all that was unstylish and lacking in her childhood.
Bill Niman, the boutique beef man from California, has a strong reaction to the cube steak, too. It’s not all bad. He appreciates that the cube steak once served as the convenience food for an entire generation. And he likes that the tenderizing method helps make use of the whole animal, which is especially helpful for small-scale grass ranchers with tiny profit margins.
But when Mr. Niman fixed one for himself recently, it only served to remind him of the gloopy, tomato-soaked Swiss steaks of his childhood.
“I fed it to the dogs,” he said.
But other people jumped on me like I was a long-lost sorority sister when I brought up my appreciation of the cube steak.
“Oh, I just really love them,” gushed Kathy Sullivan, 66. A Rhode Island resident, she has warm memories of cube steaks served alongside her father’s homemade piccalilli relish. Later, she pan-fried them for her own children. But only good ones, she said, made from slices of sirloin or round steak she had the butcher cube by hand.
Susan Schultz, who lives in Fort Atkinson, Wis., fondly described the slightly pink centers of cube steak sautéed in nothing more than butter and seasoned with a little salt and pepper.
“It was kind of an upgraded hamburger if you couldn’t afford steak,” said Mrs. Schultz, who raised two children on pan-fried cube steaks. “I’m going to have to have one now.”
The term “cube” can be a little murky. It doesn’t refer to the shape of the meat, which is usually beef but is sometimes made from pork, elk or other animals. Rather, it refers to both the shape of the dimples that checkerboard the surface of cube steak and the process that puts the dimples there.
Although pounding tough pieces of beef to make them more tender has a long history in the Southern and Western United States, it wasn’t until patents on mechanized cubing machines were handed out in the 1930s and 1940s that the cube steak became an inexpensive butcher shop staple.
The machines are usually stainless-steel cases with innards fashioned from rollers covered in dozens of teeth sharp enough to pierce flesh cleanly. There are top-feeding home machines with cranks that do the job, too.
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