The Steak in the Cheesesteak

At Simply Fresh Market, nothing goes up on the Monthly Features board unless we'd be glad to serve it every day of the year. August's feature is a Cheesesteak: thin-sliced grass-fed ribeye, sweet sautéed onions and bell peppers, spicy jalapeño cheese sauce, all packed into a toasted Zingerman's hoagie roll.

It's a great sandwich. But the part we really want to talk about is the steak.

Most Cheesesteaks Aren't Made WIth Steak

Not the way you'd picture it, anyway.

Walk into most sandwich shops and the meat came out of a freezer box labeled "sandwich steaks" — thin sheets of beef that were chopped, blended, pressed into a mold, and frozen flat so they'd separate on the griddle. It cooks fast and costs almost nothing, which is exactly why it's everywhere. But it's a beef product assembled from trimmings, not a cut of meat someone sliced.

Even the shops that do use whole muscle are usually reaching for chuck or sirloin tip. Nothing wrong with those cuts. They're just chosen because they're cheap, not because they're the right steak for the job.

Why We Use RIbeye

Ribeye is the cut you'd grill for company. It's marbled, which is the whole point — that intramuscular fat is what melts down on a hot griddle and keeps thin-sliced beef tender instead of turning it into shoe leather. Chuck fights you. Ribeye doesn't.

It's also, by a wide margin, the most expensive way to build this sandwich. We did it anyway, because a cheesesteak is a sandwich about beef. If the beef isn't good, there's nothing else in there to hide behind.

Grass-Fed, Because That's Our BaselIne

Our ribeye is grass-fed — the same standard we hold across the store, not a special exception we made for one sandwich.

Conventional beef spends its last months in a feedlot on a grain ration, consuming genetically-modified corn and soy. Grass-fed cattle stay on forage, which is what a cow's digestive system is actually built for. The meat that comes off them is leaner, with a noticeably beefier flavor and a better fatty acid profile — more omega-3s and conjugated linoleic acid than grain-finished beef.

You can taste it. Grass-fed beef has an actual flavor of its own instead of tasting like whatever it was seasoned with.

The Rest of the SandwIch Follows the Same Rule

• Jalapeño cheese sauce — real cheese, real heat, made from our original recipe. Not a pump bottle of cheese-flavored product.

• Onions and bell peppers — sautéed down slow until the onions go sweet.

• Zingerman's hoagie roll — sturdy enough to hold up, from the Ann Arbor bakery we've trusted for years.

Every piece of this was a decision. Intentionally striving toward excellence.

Through August 31

The Cheesesteak is on the Monthly Features menu through the end of the month. Come September, it comes down and something else goes up.

Come taste the difference for yourself. Stop by and visit us, or order online!