TOMMY

Tommy, can you eat me? Dry-aged tomahawk rib-eye steak, a perfect bachelor dinner. [Click to embiggenate.]

The Atlanta Braves may be notorious for their Tomahawk Chop, but I, for one, am a big fan.

No, I don’t particularly enjoy sitting in the nosebleeds watching America’s Team getting trashed - they are having a supremely rough season this year - while moving my right arm up and down, chanting, “Oy, oy, oy-oy-oy, oy, oy, oy-oy-oy.” But I do like a good, dry-aged rib-eye steak, and if there’s an enormous bone protruding off the end that makes the whole affair look like a weaponized dinner entrée, then I am, as they say, all-in.

The first time we saw one of these, it was when we were celebrating Eli (hizzownself)’s eighty-fifth birthday up on Long Island. It was a monster 40-ounce Meat-Club that even Fred Flintstone would have appreciated for its heft, balance, and beefy, beefy flavor. I’ve been harboring a jones for one ever since.

This one - it had caught my eye while I was rummaging around Food Whole the other day - got the Big Green Egg treatment, using the “Blast Furnace” heat setting. It was probably running somewhere between 750-800°F, enough to create a generous crusty layer of beefy, charred meat flavor on the outside with a perfect medium-rare interior. Glorious.

Seasoning a monster chop like this is pretty simple. I hit it with kosher salt and a generous twist of freshly ground black pepper about an hour or two before I was ready to throw it on the fire. A spoonful of hot garlic butter finished it off when it was done.

A little heirloom tomato salad, a wee dram of single-malt Scotch, and - by George! Dinner!