It's on.

Three years ago, Schatzker (no honorifics; a man who has written a book about steak has to be called by his last, meatiest name) set out to cure his growing disappointment in the corn-fed, feedlot-fattened fare that constitutes that vast majority of steak eaten in North America. To his surprise, no book on the subject existed.

“There’s all kinds of cookbooks,” he explains, “but nobody’s ever done a book about steak like this one” – a serious search for flavour that, along the way, delves into cattle breeding, the history of stockyards, marbling and why it’s not the be all and end all, grass versus corn (grass wins), the vast chemistry of flavour (there are 25 different kinds of fat in steak), evolutionary history and its relation to carnivorism, Roland Barthes’s love of meatiness, and the difference between a Beef Loyal eater and a Variety Rotator, which is what Schatzker was afraid he was becoming – to name a handful of its concerns. The result is an often funny and immensely readable ode to mouth-feel, meat and joy. . .

One good thing about eating a steak dinner at the home of a man who has written a book on the subject is that he knows what he’s talking about. A lot of people don’t these days, given the fractious and dogmatic state of the food world: They have opinions, but narrow tastes. Schatzker set out to tear apart every meat stereotype he could find.

His search for a sublime piece of meat starts in Texas (disappointment and despair, and a lungful of fecal dust from the state’s endless feedlots). He makes his way to France (where he visits the cave drawings at Lascaux – “pictures of steak” – and feasts on ersatz aurochs, a Nazi-inspired reintroduction of cattle first domesticated 10,000 years ago); to Scotland (terrifying details about scrotums and artificial insemination, and inspiring grass-fed Highland cattle steaks); to Italy (yum), Japan (double yum) and Argentina (an education in open-fire grilling); and then back, by way of Fleurance (whom he raises with the help of chef Michael Stadtlander, on grass north of Toronto, finishing her with lots of apples, acorns, Persian walnuts, and carrots, to name just a few of Fleurance’s excellent taste notes). Finally, he lands in Idaho, at the Alderspring Ranch of Glenn Elzinga, with whom he ate the steak that finally transported him to heaven.

“Smell them,” Schatzker says in his kitchen, motioning to the specimens before us. We do. The butcher steak has what, until that point in my life, I thought of as meat smell. Meat smell good. But if the Wagyu smells darker and richer, like a sexy girl at a dangerous party, it is the clean, fresh Idaho rib-eyes that made me realize the local butcher shop steak didn’t smell much like meat at all. Meat concept, maybe.

Another crew.

in my opinion—OPINION, that’s all—the best steak I found was at Peter Lugers in Brooklyn.

As I recall, their method involved, first, having an owner meet every meat truck that pulled into New York and take her pick of the high-fed, Prime carcasses coming out of those little corn feedlots in that part of the country. These were swinging carcasses in bobtail trucks backing up to little wholesale businesses that somehow survived the boxed beef revolution. It was like 1957 all over again, as I recall, except the cattle were taller.

But just as, uh, rich in tallow. The worst—measured by marbling--of the beef I saw unloaded from those trucks would exceed the best of what you’ll see hanging in a plant in my part of the world. Well, maybe that’s a bit of hyperbole. But not much. They were some longfed sons a guns.

And then the steaks were dry-aged for a secret amount of time at a secret temperature. And then they were cooked hot and buttery. . .

it may be possible, but I’d need to be convinced that Glenn Elzinga’s grass fed beef could equal Peter Lugers. My experience with grassfed beef has not been all that impressive, and, without getting too snotty, I believe there might be some culinary placebo effect involved in the perceived taste of “organic,” “grass fed” and other trendy things.

Well, like arugula. Arugula tastes fine if you know it’s arugula and you know the president can’t afford it. But let your wife sneak some in your salad some day and not tell you what it is.

It’s bitter. Plain lettuce is lots better.

But there are so many variables in beef quality from breed to diet to post mortem management, that I sure don’t doubt it’s possible that the Elzinga family raise the best beef in all the world.

In my experience there is quite a lot of variability in steaks. Related animals, contemporaries who had the same diet all of their lives, and that were handled and processed identically, can still be very different from one another. One of the primary goals of the feed lot system is to produce a consistent product. There is a large market for beef that may not be very good by the standards of connoisseurs but that a hungry work-a-daddy will love because it always tastes the same and that's what he's used to eating. He can taste it when you merely speak the word "steak" and is upset when any given steak does not taste that way. That's McDonalds system too: consistent mediocrity that is reliably good enough.

I've used this one before and it belongs here too:

Several years ago I asked this question: If the Rutherford region is famous for Cabernet Sauvignon and Carneros for Pinot Noir, why not similar appellations for beef? . . .

If you were seated next to this beef during a dinner party, what kind of personality would he or she have? Is he Reserved, hard to tease out what he’s all about? Maybe you just taste a single flavor, such as “beef”? Or is he the Adventurous sort, the life of the party, with layered & distinct flavor notes? . . .

Now that you’ve met this beef, what Impression did he leave on you? If fleeting, would you be pleased to see him again? Or will you remember him years from now? Is that a pleasant or unpleasant thought?

Steak personified - everything from a sexy girl at a dangerous party to the life of the party, with layered & distinct flavor notes. For me steak isn't like a person in any way, it's more like beer. Commodity steaks are like commodity beer. Neither is very interesting but they are consistent. Boutique beef from private growers and processors is like craft beer, or even quality home brew. Each batch can be different and is often very, very good.

Update: More Schatzker

So, what makes a steak flavorful?

At last count, 340 flavor compounds. (Which, incidentally, is a mere 46 fewer flavor compounds than have been found in red wine.) These are the complex chemicals that are produced when a steak is subject to the intense heat of a pan or grill. They are formed by everything you find in a steak—amino acids, water, sugars, fat, you name it. . .

The way a steak tastes has a lot to do with what a cow eats—and the best beef is raised on grass.

Simple answers, however, only get you so far. I have eaten grass-fed steak that made me want to weep with joy, but I have also eaten grass-fed steaks that induced the gagging reflex. As with wine, creating a great steak requires great passion and greater skill. A steak can be ruined by many things—a noxious weed, a butcher who misunderstands the art of aging—but it is most often ruined by the farmer or rancher who doesn't know that a grass-fed steak only tastes good when the cow it comes from is fat. Getting cows fat is simple in a feedlot. On grass, it may as well require a Ph.D.

Finding an excellent steak, thankfully, is somewhat easier. It requires combing farmers' markets, searching relentlessly on the Internet and asking questions.

The most important question to ask is age at slaughter. For flavor reasons, be wary of steak from a cow younger than 20 months. Ask how much the cow weighed when it was slaughtered, because any cow weighing less than 1,000 pounds is almost always too lean to be delicious. Ask about the breed. Be wary of "Continental" breeds, such as Charolais or Limousin, which do very well in feedlots and terribly on grass. Look for British breeds like Hereford, Galloway and Angus. And if you should find grass-fed Wagyu, buy it.

The news for steak lovers is good. The virtuosos are overtaking the hacks. Their meat, it so happens, is better for you. It has less saturated fat, more heart-healthy omega-3s and is denser in vitamins and antioxidants.

You will not find these steaks in most steak houses. A USDA beef grader cannot pick them out by sight. But when you eat one, you will remember why steak and nothing other than steak will ever be steak.

I'd add that knowledge of locality will help you choose well. In addition to age and weight at slaughter you want to know when, what time of year, and match that to your knowledge of grass growth cycles.

An animal taken in late spring that has had 90 days to fatten on lush spring grasses and forbs in comfortable temperatures that both the grass and the cattle enjoy will be better. One taken in mid-summer may have been eating less nutritious C4 summer perennials and experiencing heat stress. The British breeds such as Angus that Schatzker cites for good flavor get heat stressed when temperatures are above 75F. They generate a lot of heat in the rumen digesting grass - as high as 104F - but they can't sweat to cool themselves.

An animal taken in late fall, like one taken in late spring, will have had a couple of months of good grazing but this time it's the C3 perennials that they feasted on, or perhaps C3 annuals planted by the grazier in late summer. Animals that have only had dry feed from dead or dormant grasses for a while - so called standing hay - will be less well nourished and lower in desirable fatty acids such as omega-3 and CLA. Animals taken in winter or early spring that have been eating stored forage can be a disappointment.