By Chef Alexis Hernandez
Nobody Called Them Cheap
Nobody in my house said cheap cuts.
That was a store word. A butcher word.
At our table, it was just dinner.
By 4:30, not long after we got home from school, you could already smell the rice blooming. That was always first.
My mother made it early and kept it warm, and if it started to dry out, she’d bring it back with a little water from her hand.
In our house, the rice was the base. Everything else went over it.
She made chicken legs and thighs stretch through a pot of fricassee with rice and vegetables.
Oxtail was on our table long before anybody started treating it like a luxury.
She braised it until the meat gave in and the sauce turned glossy, with that slightly greasy, gooey richness that stained the plate a little and tasted even better because of it.
We always reached for the rice first.
That was where dinner started.
My Father’s Steak
My father brought home top round or bottom round, the lean cuts that needed help. He always had the butcher run them through the jacquard.
That was steak in our house.
And when he forgot once, everybody noticed. We chewed our way through dinner and knew right away something was off.
He seasoned the meat himself — garlic powder, onion powder, salt, lemon or lime juice, and sazón Goya.
It came to the table with white rice, caramelized onions, and black beans with a float of olive oil on top.
Thin, a little chewy, seasoned right, and gone fast.
The First Filet I Saw
The first time I saw a filet, I was out to dinner with my high school friend John.
I remember looking at that thick little steak on the plate and thinking, this is steak?
To me, it looked small. Almost like a sample.
I grew up with my father’s thin jacquarded steaks, cooked in quantity, the kind that covered more of the pan and fed more than one person without acting precious about it.
So when that filet showed up, plump and perfect in the middle of a white plate, I almost laughed.
What Stayed With Me
I still cook that way.
I reach for chicken thighs before breasts. Chuck roast before ribeye. Pork shoulder before tenderloin. Not to prove a point. Because I know what those cuts can do.
They can take time, seasoning and can take heat. And if you do right by them, they give you more back than people expect.
That was the lesson in my parents’ kitchen.
The cuts people overlook are often the ones that teach you the most.
What Those Cuts Taught Me
Good food is not about spending the most money.
It is about knowing what to do with what is in front of you.
It is about patience. It is about seasoning and letting something tough turn into something worth passing around the table.
So when I see oxtail in the case, or a roast most people walk past, I do not think cheap.
I think about the rice already warm by late afternoon.
My mother at the stove and my father at the butcher counter.
And the fact that nobody in my house ever used that word.
We just called it dinner.
Chef Alexis Hernandez writes The Other Side of the Stove. His work has also appeared in News of Sun City Center and South County, and he has appeared on Food Network Star and Cutthroat Kitchen.
