Everything your favourite carnivore wants and needs
Steak is such a great gift, especially for the person who has everything. If you bought someone a watch or a tie last year, they still have those things. If you gave them beef? They’ve eaten it and they’re ready for more.
So we’ve gathered some of the top beef purveyors in the country—and Australia too—to explore the world of dry-ageing, grass-fed beef, Wagyu, and more. We didn’t stop there though. We also believe the ultimate meat deserves the right tools to bring out its best qualities. We’ve been tasting and testing the very best to discover the best gifts for steak lovers, including pans, blades, and even finishing salts that any self-respecting meat-eater needs.
Kalamazoo Gaucho
Bring the theatrics of an Argentine asado home with Kalamazoo’s Gaucho. This wood-fired grill has an attached 30-inch spoked wheel, which you spin to raise and lower the cooking rack to the flame. The grates have a vertical range of 28 inches, guaranteeing a precise cook. Gas burners get your fire roaring in less than five minutes. And the Gaucho includes a motorised, built-in rotisserie spit that’s hefty enough to hold an entire animal for roasting. It can be used simultaneously as you grill. And as shown above, you can integrate the grill into an impressive outdoor kitchen from Kalamazoo. Add a couple of bottles of Malbec to the dinner table and you’ve delivered dinner, drinks, and a show.
Smithey Ironware No. 12 Combo Set
Since 2015, Smithey Ironware in Charleston, SC has been crafting beautiful, polished cast iron pans. While you can get pretty good performance out of a good Lodge cast iron pan—which are readily available all around the country—they don’t have the vintage flair, beautiful patina and ultra-smooth surface that Smithey boasts. While the company sells a dutch oven, forged carbon steel pans and multiple cast iron skillets, our favourite is the set they offer with a 12-inch skillet paired with a flat top griddle that also doubles as a lid for the pan.
Laguiole en Aubrac Mixed-Horn Steak Knives
Even if you can’t eat at one of America’s best steakhouses every night, you can feel like you are with a set of Laguiole en Aubrac steak knives. These are the tabletop knives of choice in the dining room of CUT by Wolfgang Puck in Beverly Hills, and it’s easy to see why. The ultra-strong Sandvik steel knives are made by hand—from shaping the 4 ½-inch-long handles to fitting the 4 ¾-inch-long blades—by a single craftsman in Laguiole, France. Each of the six in this collection has a handle made of natural horn, making them as practical as they are one-of-a-kind showpieces.
Napoleon Prestige Pro 825
Sure, your grill can cook. But can it put on a light show? While not the most impressive feature of Napoleon’s Prestige Pro 825, its light-up control knobs are certainly the most fun: Outfitted with LED Spectrum lights, they can glow in practically any colour and cycle through the rainbow on their own. As a bonus safety feature, they will switch to red if you accidentally leave the gas on. The Prestige Pro 825 can run on propane or natural gas, includes scorching-hot infrared burners on the bottom and rear, and a side burner, totalling 1,430 square inches of cooking space. That’s enough space to cook 51 burgers at the same time. An integrated wood chips smoker tray is camouflaged as a control knob, and slides out so you can fill it with chips and add just a hint of smoky flavour to your meal, without having to fill your yard with smog.
Franklin Smoke
Aaron Franklin, the legendary pitmaster behind Austin’s Franklin Barbecue, believes in the power of fire and smoke. His latest book, Franklin Smoke, is a cookbook with recipes for preparing meats over backyard fire pits, grills, and smokers, plus it’s a detailed instructional manual for harnessing the outdoors in your cooking. From tools and techniques to methods and ingredients, this book demystifies live-fire grilling and smoking, so you can be a more confident and more educated at-home chef.
Steelport 3-Piece Essential Set
Steelport Knife Co. was founded by Portland, Ore.-based Eytan Zias, a chef turned knife sharpener and purveyor who started forging his own blades last decade. In 2020, he decided to create his own line of knives, and the eight-inch is the versatile chef knife you’ve been looking for. It’s a handcrafted knife featuring a full tang, carbon steel and a handle made from handsome Oregon big leaf maple that’s reinforced with resin for better durability. You can tell it was made by someone who cooks; the handle is ergonomic, the blade balanced, the knife sturdy. Steelport’s 3-Piece Essential Set includes the eight-inch chef knife, a four-inch paring knife, and a 10-inch serrated knife, which are sure to tackle any job in your kitchen.
Vermicular Oven-Safe Skillet
For a perfectly even sear, you’re going to need to throw your beef in a pan. Vermicular’s line of oven-safe pans are made from enamelled cast iron that does not require seasoning and is dishwasher safe. The feather-light skillets (they weigh just over two pounds) have “instant evaporation technology” that eliminates excess moisture and makes them naturally nonstick.
Steak Locker Smart Dry Ageing Refrigerator
With dry ageing steak, the problem people run into is that they don’t realise the home fridge doesn’t really work, for a couple reasons. You want your dry-ageing fridge to have a more consistent temperature and air flow than your home fridge offers. Also, you don’t want anything else in the fridge, because over time the steak will start absorbing the flavours of the other food inside the old icebox with it. So when the steak actually has time to undergo the enzymatic reaction that makes dry-aged steak so delicious, it will start to have a muddled, stale flavour because of what it has absorbed in the ol’ icebox. However, this Steak Locker solves those problems with a dedicated dry-ageing chamber that keeps the temperature and humidity at a constant level, for safe and effective ageing.
ThermoWorks Thermapen One
Don’t leave that steak to guess work. If you’re going to plop down a few hundred bucks on some amazing, thick-cut tomahawks, you want to get that cook just right. When you’re really seasoned, your fingers can do a lot of work to help you test for doneness, but this digital instant-read thermometer is even better. I use it when I’m reverse-searing a thick steak and letting it come up to temp in the oven before getting a hard sear on the outside. The Thermapen lets me pull the steak right on time so I get the perfect doneness with every steak.
Yeti Roadie Wheeled Cooler
If you’re grilling your steak outside or travelling with it to a destination, you need a trusted cooler to get it there. Yeti’s hard-sided Roadie Wheeled Coolers are just as durable and insulated as you’d expect from the brand. They come outfitted with never-flat wheels so rocky trails won’t puncture your fun, non-slip feet so they won’t slide around in your car or boat, and a sturdy periscoping handle that makes it easy to manoeuvre when you’re on the go. And the Roadie is big and deep enough to handle upright bottles of Cabernet, the perfect pairing for your slabs of beef.
Hedley & Bennett Grilling Apron
Splatter is unavoidable when grilling, but ruining your clothes is not. Pro chefs—including those who work at LA’s Chateau Marmont and those who appear on Bravo’s Top Chef—reach for Hedley & Bennett aprons when they want protective gear between them and a flame. The rugged yet functional design has deep pockets and cross-back straps to take the strain off your neck, plus they’re made from water- and stain-resistant heavy-duty waxed canvas and leather. That means they’re just as effective in a workshop as they are in an outdoor kitchen.
Arteflame
Cooking with fire is more art than science. It isn’t just for utility; it’s for fun. And Arteflame’s line of stylish outdoor grills sure are fun. The flat-top, Mongolian-style grill is cut in a circle, with a hole in the middle for a live fire, fuelled by wood or charcoal that smoke and flavour your food at once. The tall carbon-steel base moderates airflow, allowing the cooktop to reach temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees. The grill heats from the centre, out, so you can create multiple cooking areas with different heat patterns as you go. Plus, the cooktop lifts off, so the grill doubles as a polished, yard-centrepiece fire pit.
Sur La Table Stainless Steel Cooling Grids
What happens to your steak after you take it off the grill is just as important as what happens to it when it’s on the fire. And pro cooks know: You’ve got to rest your meat. Chef Marc Forgione recommends resting it for as long as it was cooked (five minutes on equals five minutes off), and it should be done on a resting or cooling rack affixed over a sheet pan. That way air can flow evenly around the meat to ensure a uniform cook. This durable, stainless-steel grid from Sur La Table can withstand temps up to 232 degrees celsius.
Shun Classic Western Chef’s Knife
Chefs like James Beard Award-winner Alon Shaya are big fans of Shun’s elegant and effective commercial kitchen knives. The Japanese company has brought that same level of quality to its ‘classic Western’ chef’s knife. This eight-inch blade boasts a super steel core clad with 34 layers of Damascus stainless steel. Old school Japanese craft meets a sleek, modern design.
Looft Lighter X Cordless
No matter how natural your fuel is—charcoal, briquettes, hardwood logs—you’ll inevitably have to introduce lighter fluid or toxic chemicals to get it ablaze. Enter the Looft Lighter X Cordless, a rechargeable lighter that superheats air to 649 degrees C in 60 seconds and then blasts it onto your fuel of choice to spark it up. After ignition, the all-electric device can be switched to “air mode” to quickly fan the flames, boosting heat, and glow.
Hestan Outdoor
Hestan has flipped the traditional grill on its head: Its outdoor grills have a ceramic, infrared top burner under the hood. With heat sources below and above, you can sear, broil and finish your meats like a professional kitchen does under a salamander. The hood has spring-assisted hinges that keep it in place, whatever angle you open it at, and motion-activated “stadium lights” illuminate the cooking area for late-night or early-morning grilling sessions. And all of the grills—built in, freestanding or carts—are available in 12 colours, bringing a splash of brightness to the typical stainless-steel finish.
Wüsthof Classic 6-Inch Cleaver
If you’re working with ribs, racks, and bones, you’re going to need a knife that’s up to the challenge. Wüsthof’s Classic 6-Inch Cleaver is strong, balanced, and rigid, with a large flat blade and ergonomic handle, to make quick and easy work of your butchering.
Jacobsen Salt Co. Pure Flake Sea Salt
You’ve tempered your steak, seared it perfectly to medium-rare, let it rest just the right amount of time, sliced it on the bias and now you’re ready to serve, right? No. You’ve taken so much care to this point, you might as well end strong with the right finishing salt. Jacobsen’s hand-harvest flakes from Netarts Bay, Oregon will provide a clean, crunchy touch that will heighten the flavours of meat without overwhelming it with salt.
Traeger Wooden Grill Grate Scrape
Wire brushes can scratch up and destroy the speciality coating on your grates. The Traeger Wooden Grill Scrape, however, can get the muck out safely. Made of solid rosewood, this paddle is designed to dig in between your grill’s grooves and remove everything but the porcelain, stainless steel or cast-iron finish.
This story was first published on Robb Report USA
