Steak Secrets: Get The Most Out Of Your Meat

By JEFF HOUCK | The Tampa Tribune

When Jonathan Luft moved to Tampa from Phoenix to become executive chef at the InterContinental Hotel on Kennedy Boulevard, he was surprised by what he discovered about the area's steak consumption.

“My first original thought was, ‘I'm going to Florida, and there's going to be all this seafood,'” says Luft, 37, who oversees the catering services as well as the hotel's Shula's Steak House.

“In Tampa, it was kind of a shocker when I got here,” he says. “We do a lot of seafood here — salmon, snapper, oysters, lobster, mahi-mahi, crab — but it's cooked more in a steakhouse style, grilled or seared. I was surprised at how many steakhouses there were. I figured everyone here would have a seafood house.”

He doesn't eat as much steak at home as he used to — after all, why bring your work home with you? Still, he grills about twice a month for his wife and two children.

Which means that he's not immune to the prices of beef at the butcher shop and grocery store. Meat prices are 50 percent higher than they were a year ago because of the Midwest floods and the increased price of commodities used to feed cattle.

Luft says he hasn't seen many changes in what customers are ordering at Shula's, other than the seasonal switch to more seafood.

“People are saying, ‘We're going to go out and have a great dinner; we're just not going to go out as much,'” he says.

For those who can't afford the steakhouse experience, they can still cook with steakhouse flavor and get the most for their money. We asked Luft for tips on how to maximize a grocery budget by cooking the best steak possible at home.

TIPS TO MAKING THE PERFECT STEAK: