LA: Musso and Frank’s classic Steak Tartare. How did it get there? (And a recipe).

If you’re interested, there’s a little history below, but we get that you clicked for the recipe - no need to scroll all day to find it.

The beauty of steak tartare is you can make it to your taste. In fact, many restaurants serve the accoutrements on the side and the guest can mix their own. Two things are crucial: the beef needs to be served cold and it needs to be well seasoned.

Steak Tartare

serves 4

Tips that help: freeze the cut of meat for 30 minutes before slicing so it’s pretty firm - but not too frozen where it’s dangerous to cut. Once you’re ready to slice, have a clean cutting board, a sharp knife, and an ice bath below a metal bowl to keep the meat as cold as possible.

What you’ll need:

6-8 oz of a really good, really fresh cut of beef

This is your choice, depending how lean you like your tartare. Tenderloin, top round, eye of round, or top sirloin are all good lean options. Ribeye is great, too, if you like a little marbling - just trim off some of the sinew and thick fat.

olive oil or garlic oil

cracked black pepper

kosher salt

one shallot, minced

3-5 cornichons, minced

6-10 capers, roughly chopped

sliced chives

chopped parsley

lemon juice, to taste

one egg

finishing salt such as fleur de sel or maldon

What to do:

Slice the beef into thin slices, about 1/8”. Lay on a piece of parchment paper on a tray or plate and place back into the freezer until firm. Stack three or four slices on top of each other and slice the meat into long strips, the same width as its height. Then dice the meat across the length into 1/8” cubes. Transfer diced meat to the chilled bowl and place in the fridge while you mince and chop the rest of the accoutrements.

Add a little olive oil to the diced meat and mix until coated - this helps coat the beef in a little fat to keep it from oxidizing, especially once you add acid. Season with salt and pepper. Add the minced cornichons, shallot, capers, chive, and parsley to the beef. Mix again. Finally season with freshly squeezed lemon juice. Mix again.

Now, remember when I said “the beauty of steak tartare is you can make it to your taste”? Now’s the time to do exactly that. Taste! This recipe is more of a guideline than a hard and true recipe. If you like more acidity, add more cornichons, capers, and lemon juice. More allium? Add more shallot and chive. Aromatics? Chive and parsley. A little kick? Black pepper. The flavor is muted? Salt. You get it.

Once it’s properly seasoned, you can serve it in a few ways. If you have a ring mold, place it in the center of a plate, and, using a spoon, pack the tartare into the ring mold. Remove the ring mold. No ring mold? You can serve it in a bowl or on a plate. Next, make a small divot in the center of the tartare. Crack the egg and separate the yolk, discarding the white. Place the yolk in the divot to keep it from sliding off and season with black pepper and finishing salt. Serve with toast points or crispy romaine hearts.

So here’s a little history of Steak Tartare, if you’re interested.

The etymology of Steak Tartare can be traced to a European traveller, named Jean de Joinville, who wrote of the culture and eating habits of Mongolian warriors. Tartar is a mostly obsolete term for someone from central Asia, but in this context it was used specifically to describe a Mongolian mounted warrior. The anecdote describes a method of eating raw horse meat practiced when building a fire to cook meat was not viable during wartime. The Tartar would place a slab of raw meat under their saddle. The previously inedible cut of meat would tenderize after a period of riding and would then be fit to consume by the individual who had spent his entire day sitting on it. Although some enjoy this story for entertainment value, it seems apocryphal considering that Jean de Joinville never spent time among the Mongolians. This tall culinary tale was most likely crafted with the intent to cast the Mongolians as barbarians who would have no qualms about eating raw meat.

Steak Tartare became associated with luxurious dining rooms and champagne service at the turn of the century in restaurants operated by the legendary chef Auguste Escoffier. In his Encyclopedia of French cuisine, Le Guide Culinaire, Escoffier offers a recipe for Steack à la tartare which he explains is a derivative of Steack à l’Americaine. The distinction between these dishes is a simple one: Escoffier defines Steack à l’Americaine as a dish of ground, raw fillet of beef seasoned with salt and pepper and topped with an egg yolk accompanied simply with onion, capers and parsley.  Steack à la tartare is the same dish, without the egg yolk.

As much as those of the Gallic persuasion would like to believe that Steak Tartare is a French preparation, it is not. It comes from working-class American pubs, inns and chophouses of the late 1800s where raw beef was served. In these common drinking establishments one would order a steak “Hamburg style", a dish of ground beef with onions served raw. Our beloved American culinary champion, the Hamburger comes from people ordering a steak “Hamburg style”, but requesting that the chef at least consider applying heat or some smoke to their food. Escoffier’s inclusion of Steak Tartare in Le Guide Culinaire is important as it gives us a moment in time when what was previously regarded as a pedestrian food received recognition as a delicacy, fit for the finest kitchens in the world.

Finding these moments of common food ascending to the status of “haute cuisine” is what food history is all about. It is a humbling experience, to realize that even Caviar was once an abundant staple of a 12th century eastern European fisherman’s table.Just like with much of food history, it’s easy to look at a plate of food (especially the ones currently popular on restaurant menus) and not think about the journey of where and how it came to be. But most of the food we know today has a long history that goes back centuries and can be difficult to trace. Raw beef or meat is eaten in almost every country around the globe and it seems to be a large web of dishes influencing another dish influencing something else influencing another dish until finally we get to what we know as steak tartare.

Fact: It isn’t known when Tartare first appeared on restaurant menus, but it’s been found in cookbooks such as the 1921 edition of Le Guide Culinaire by Escoffier and the 1938 edition of Larousse Gastronomique. It’s even mentioned as a description in Michel Strogoff by Jules Verne. But we do know that tartare can mean a few things: raw meat (like beef or horse) or fish (such as tuna tartare) or a la tartare means served with tartar sauce.

Fact: the Hamburg steak (influenced by a German meatball dish) became popular in New York restaurants in the 1800s because it was easy to prepare and was relatively cheap. It was minced by hand, lightly salted, sometimes smoked, and served raw or slightly cooked with onions and breadcrumbs and a raw egg. Sound like anything? Actually it sounds like two things.

Fact: in the early 20th century, steack à l'Americaine was served in Europe. A variation included serving the raw beef with tartar sauce but no egg yolk, called steack à la tartare. The tartar sauce was prepared a little differently than what we think now; it was an emulsion of hard boiled egg yolk, vinegar, chives and oil. Eventually, the name was shortened to steak tartare and tartar sauce was eliminated with the egg yolk replacing it. It became especially popular in Paris in the 1950s after WWII.