A true hombre loves his meats. And when it comes to buying, cooking and savoring the best steaks, Omaha Steaks is an industry leader. The company was founded in 1917 as a single butcher shop in Omaha, Nebraska; and five generations later remains a privately held family business, that is now one of America’s largest marketers of beef. Omaha Steaks is the largest small parcel direct shipper of gourmet foods in the US. Its 400-item product line generates revenue of about $450 million in annual sales – a total of about 4 million packages a year.

Todd Simon is a fifth-generation family owner and the Senior Vice President of Omaha Steaks International, Inc. He is an expert on grilling and here tells us everything you wanted to know about steaks.

CHOOSING A STEAK

HOMBRE: First off, what makes a good steak? What should one look for when buying a steak?
Todd Simon: Well, you know of course I wouldn’t recommend you choose one from the supermarket, ha-ha. There are a couple things that make for a good steak. The first thing is that you start out with the very best beef that you can get, which in America will typically come from the mid-west part of the country. You want to make sure that the beef is grain fed. Then the number one thing that Omaha steaks does, and that I think anybody can do to make a steak great is aging. Once you get the best meat, it needs to be aged.  We age ours for 21 to 28 days; the aging is an old world process. It just isn’t done much anymore. It adds a different kind of flavor, and it makes the beef more tender.

H: Can a steak be aged at home?            
TS: No, the aging needs to be done by a highly trained professional, and under very controlled conditions.  Nobody is equipped for aging in their own house, and I would discourage anyone from trying it. It has a very strict temperature control. It has to be at exactly 28 degrees the temperature can’t go up, and can’t go down. It should be done in a controlled environment.

GRILLING

H: Give us some quick tips on grilling a steak.
TS: My wife’s from Argentina and in South America, at least in Argentina they slow cook over a warm and very low heat. But in America we recommend that you cook more quickly over a very high heat.  My recommendation is that you pre-heat your grill on high, and then you lightly oil, and season the steak before you put it on the grill. What that does is that it helps the searing process, and also prevents sticking.

When you’re searing the steaks use tongs, or a spatula to turn the meat never use a fork.
A fork pierces the meat and lets the juices out.  You also have to know how long you’re going to cook the steak, before you put it on the grill. At OmahaSteaks.com you can find a steak cooking chart. We have an APP called Steak time you can download for your android, or iPhone, and it will help you determine the time.

It’s basically a function of the thickness of the steak, and how done you want it.
Once you determine how long the steak needs to be on the grill to get the desired level of doneness. You want to use what we call the 60/40 grilling method. You want to grill it for sixty percent of the time on the first side, and forty percent of the time on the second side.

Once you take the meat off the grill you don’t need to play with it, just leave it alone. I recommend that you let the cooked steak rest on a clean plate for a couple minutes. It helps it to retain moisture and let the natural juices of the meat kind of circulate before you cut it.

OMAHA STEAKS SUCCESS

H: To what do you attribute the success of Omaha steaks?
TS: You know, we’re a family business that’s been around almost a century. And because we are a family business we treat our customers like family, and we treat our team members like family. It’s very easy for us to put our customers as the number one focus of our business. We never compromise on quality, we never compromise on service, and we always keep our promises to our customers. That keeps customers coming back.

It’s great to be in a business where you have a product that people can come, and use over and over again. I might love my car, but I’m not going to buy a new car every week (laughs). But, if I love your steaks I’m going to eat them, and I’m going to need to come back and buy some more every week.

STEAKS AS THE PERFECT GIFT

H: Why does a steak make a great gift?
TS: That’s a great question. Gifts of food are really a ‘go to’ favorite for the holidays and special occasions because there’s something to please everyone on your list. There’s never a wrong size, or a wrong color, and there’s nothing to assemble.

It’s really about bringing people together and gourmet food is something that everybody enjoys.
Everybody eats, so you really have a good chance of hitting a home run.
When you give a gift of steaks, you’re giving the gift of an occasion, and you’re giving the opportunity for your recipients to share a meal, and a great conversation with good family, and friends. You’re not just giving a steak in a box, you’re really giving them the chance to share the joy, with the people they love.

H: What are the most popular steaks sold?
TS: Our steaks that are really popular are our gift assortments. The assortment that we are giving away in the magazine has two filet mignons, two sirloin steaks, pork chops, and burgers. Those are really good because they really represent the complete meal, right? So not only are there steaks, there are pork chops and burgers. We’ve also go the stuffed baked potatoes, as the side dish and caramel apple tarts as the desert.

And then of course, just the steaks themselves are very, very popular. People love to give filet mignon, they love to give T-bone steaks, and they love to give the New York strip steaks.
What determines the right gift is who you’re giving it to.  If you really want to give it to a he-man, a guy’s guy type then you might want give a great T-bone steak. Whereas, if you’re giving the gift to your parents that might require smaller portions, you might give them a filet mignon, or something like that.
There’s is a variety of sizes, and cuts that really fit any number of possible recipients.

Our most popular steaks overall are the filet mignon. Typically the five ounce filet, or the six ounce filet. People tend to eat a smaller portion of the filet mignon.

STEAK/ WINE PAIRINGS

H: Your website has expanded to include all kinds of meats and wines; what makes a good wine/steak pairing?
TS: Well I personally prefer sort of the bigger red wines to go with steak. I like Cabernets, Malbec, the big wines Super Tuscan, those are all great. We also sell seafood, and poultry, and sometimes those are in the assortments as well. If you’re going to drink red wine with that I recommend a Pinot Noir. If you’re going to drink a white wine I prefer the drier wines, like Pinot Grigio, or Sauvignon Blanc. You can kind of mix it up, and our website has wine pairing suggestions.

OMAHA STEAKS

H: What can a customer expect when ordering from Omaha Steaks ?
TS: They can expect terrific service, and a very easy to use website. We also have very friendly and helpful team members on the phone that you can call. You can call and you can order online. And typically we will ship also to Canada and Mexico. You can expect them to arrive depending on how they can choose to get there shipment, which is anywhere between overnight, and a few days.

H: The company is so successful, what is the future for Omaha steaks?
TS: We are going to continue to do what we’re doing and really focus on our core business of steak, and improving steaks. I also see there’s more opportunity in convenience, and so we are looking at ways that will make it easier for our customers to cook steaks more easily. We introduced a new cooking process called Rapid Roast. That is a special package that lets you just put the whole package in the oven.  So what use to take two, and three hours to roast might only take forty five minutes.

H: Do you see a time where there may be free standing Omaha Steaks restaurants?
TS: We are always looking for opportunities, but you know the food service business is really a lot different from the directing consumer business. We really understand the business that we are in, we don’t really understand, and we’re not experts on the rest of the business. There are actually some licensed Omaha Steak around the country. I think there are three or four locations today. We are a partner with them, but we don’t operate the restaurants.

H: Just keep doing what you do best.
TS: Exactly.

Omaha Steaks manufactures, markets and distributes a wide variety of premium steaks, red meats and other gourmet foods. These products are custom cut and packaged to serve the needs of various markets. Markets nationwide and overseas that include foodservice, mail order, incentive, telesales, retail stores, licensed restaurants sales to specialty and food stores, and in 1990, online sales. OmahaSteaks.com, Inc. was founded as a separate company to provide more comprehensive service and a shopping experience for customers.