ho-made horsey sauce for all kinds of sliced beef
A friend and I have a long running half-joke that one day, we will write and produce an animated television show loosely inspired by observations at an Arby’s. While the content is based on our respective experiences dealing with retail customers, the thematics are mostly about the terrible way life often makes us feel if we let it.
In one of the “episodes,” our lead character—the recently and reluctantly promoted manager of a franchise fast food establishment that is not named Arby’s but might have some similar menu items—is closing the late shift when someone he went to school with comes in alone. He may only order a large curly fry and a coke, but he offers a window into a parallel universe: once confused with our lead by their elementary school teachers, he’s now a wildly successful startup-founder with a nice car and a new watch and a credit card with a metal core; he might as well be on a different planet from our lead, who despite several earnest attempts to change his life continues to find himself gravitationally compelled to stay in the same position, which is slicing beef in a grease-stained apron.
horsin’ around
The worst part of it all is that this classmate is nice, humble and uncorrupted, with nothing really about him to dislike. Yet our main character is furious. Why else would a steakhouse contender scrub it among low-grade beef, our character thinks, if not to taunt me? No, he decides—it’s for this prime cut of meat to reaffirm himself, to stand a little taller, to get an electric shock to the brain that reminds him to appreciate his own good fortune. There’s no more powerful trigger of gratitude, he thinks, than enjoying a harshly-lit comparison with someone else, someone you could’ve just as easily been, who is somehow having it so much worse.
But back in the kitchen, the main character realizes that, despite having many of the same underlying traits and experiences in common, some people just aren’t meant to do anything others consider great. You can start on the same road and move at similar speeds for a long time, but that does not mean you’re destined for the same destination. We cannot all grow up to have credit cards with metal cores. And so he ruminates, frustrated, jealous, and angry with himself for being the way he is and even caring at all while he stands over the oil and makes the fucking fries.
It’s only later as our lead locks up the restaurant that he spots his old classmate passed out, car windows down in the dark parking lot, and it’s definitely not because he’s tired. And finally he sees it: failure is an unfairly distributed but equal opportunity enterprise; this guy may have climbed the ladder, but chaos is a pit that can suck anyone back down in the end. And at the bottom of that pit awaits a darkened restaurant with meat portraits on the wall and a fluorescent sign outside in the shape of something that is definitely not a hat, where people come to accept that the menu and the fryer oil will never change and neither will they.
Confirming his old friend is still breathing, our main character gets into his own car, probably a 20-year-old Honda, and leaves for the night. On his way home he wonders if maybe it’s not him that’s damaged after all, and if it’s the yardstick by which people measure success that’s the real broken thing.
People who know me know this already, but I have a passionate defensiveness in my heart for most things derided as “lowbrow,” mostly because the only distinction between what’s “high” and what’s “low” is based on class and cash and not really a whole lot on actual taste. (Horsey sauce, for example, tastes delicious.) And while a to-be-named episode of a nonexistent meat-themed television show is not technically the inspiration for this recipe since I’ve been making a version of it for years, the reference is an accurate microcosm of what this dish represents: all the best steakhouse intentions and prime beef attitude will not make you immune to, or better than, the inevitability of finding yourself right back at an Arby’s.
So just lean in: pick whatever steak cut you like to eat, grill it to the rareness you prefer, let it sit for a few minutes until it cools off, slice it nice and thin, and then smother it with this insanely good, insanely horseradish-y horsey sauce you can make in less than 5 minutes. Scatter on a few capers, and serve with torn hunks of crusty baguette if you feel the need for a bun-like presence, and go to town. Add a simple green salad if you feel so inclined. Eat it cold on a sandwich the next day. Nothing matters anyway.
Alternately if you, like me, have friends who would find delight in the idea of attending a high-low horsey sauce dinner party, try making this with a whole beef tenderloin and double (or triple) the sauce, and maybe throw some curlies in the air fryer along with it for fun. Whatever you do, just don’t pretend you don’t like how this all sounds at least a little bit.
Stay cool. Have fun. See you at Arby’s.
RECIPE
What happens when a prime steak stumbles into an Arby’s at 3am? Make this sauce and find out.
Effortful time: 2 minutes for the sauce, 30 minutes if you include the steaks
Makes enough for 1 lb of meat
You need
1/2 cup prepared horseradish
1/2 cup mayo; I use Kewpie
Juice from 1/2 a lemon
Pinch each of cayenne and salt
2 tsp. capers, drained and rinsed
Make it
Blend the sauce. Combine all the sauce ingredients EXCEPT the capers together in a bowl or measuring cup. Use an immersion blender to blend until totally smooth, unless you are fine with a textured sauce, in which case you can skip this step.
Drain and rinse the capers, and set aside.
Cook your meat. When it’s time, heat your grill, broiler, or a pan to high. Season your steak and sear. I like rare in this recipe for ultra-lean cuts like tenderloin or filet.
Rest the steaks at least 5 minutes, and preferably 10. Slice very thin and arrange on a plate.
Finish and serve. Drizzle the sauce over the beef—use a heavy hand, you won’t regret it—and scatter the capers on top. Then tear into this meat the way the violence of existence tears into our souls. Sop up the blood and horsey sauce with a crusty piece of baguette. Use the good knife. No one’s getting any younger. Enjoy Arby’s.