STEAK IN THE GAME

Story & Photos by Jeremy Waltner | Publisher

It’s April 16, 2022 and Mark Johnson is standing under a tent on a concrete parking lot behind the Elks Lodge just off of Interstate 29 in Sioux City, Iowa, along with some of the other best cooks in the world. The ribeye he is preparing has been warmed to between 80 and 85 degrees and the B&B charcoal burning in the basket of his PK grill is heating to his liking — between 600- and 630-degrees Fahrenheit, although some like it hotter — as hot as 700 degrees.

Mark has infused his non-clarified butter with garlic oil and other spices and the special, home-spun marinade he previously applied to the perfectly trimmed cut of meat has been rinsed off, and the steak patted dry.

With the clock ticking on his 2 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. window to turn his steak into the panel of five judges scoring the Siouxland Steak Challenge, Mark gently places the circular cut of ribeye, wrapped in cooking twine, onto the steel grates of his PK, careful that the grill marks reach from edge to edge, before flipping the steak over at the 1 minute, 10 second mark.

He watches his digital timer carefully while occassionally triggering his infrared thermometer to check the heat.

Then he turns the steak over again.

On the third turn, the butter that has been heated is brushed on, the steak is pulled from the grill to rest for between 4 and 5 minutes, and a light application of what is known in the world of steak competitions as “finishing dust” is applied using a thumb grinder.

Then it’s go time.

Mark moves the steak from its resting position into a Styrofoam container and carries it from the tent city occupied by several dozen other cooks from across the country into the Elks Lodge, where it is handed off for judgement.

Like all the others turned in, Mark’s steak is evaluated for appearance, doneness, texture, taste, and then overall impression.

Later that afternoon the winners are announced.

Not only does Mark not win, he doesn’t even place. Instead, he returns to his home just outside of Marion, ready to cook on his own, share what he comes up with those in his inner circle, and then visit another competition, ready to do it all again.

It’s something he’s been up to since 2019, when he discovered a new world that’s as tasty as it is fun.

World class

So what does it mean to be a cook who knows how to prepare a world-class steak?

It means having an appreciation for your roots on a barbecue team, but learning in 2019 that working with beef suits your temperament — and work schedule with the United States Department of Agriculture — much better.

It means early success in competitions sanctioned by the industry’s leading competitive agency, the Fort Worth, Texas-based Steak Cookoff Association (SCA).

It means humility and following the advice heard early on by the SCA world’s No. 1 at the time: “No matter how good or bad it goes, learn something from every cook.”

It means practicing at home, slicing up strips of steak on a large cutting board attached to a breakfast bar and sharing them with friends and family over a casual evening of standing around in a garage that is as much about the socialization as it is the education.

It’s about hearing one of your children say, “Can you just fix some steaks so we can have a normal dinner?”

It’s about riding the momentum of success, like Mark found in his first year of competitive cooking when he placed ninth in the 2019 SCA World Championship, top 20 the following year and then seventh in 2021, and being ranked in the top 20 in the USA points chase each of his first three years cooking.

It’s about picking yourself up when you don’t succeed, like at the Siouxland Steak Challenge in Sioux City in April of 2022, and then bouncing back, like last June when he qualified for his fourth SCA World Championship at a competition at the Winneshiek Wildberry Winery in Decorah, Iowa, when he was ranked 41st in the USA in cumulative points earned through SCA competitions.

But more than anything, it’s about the social element, friendships and camaraderie rooted in good-natured competition.

“These are just good people,” says Mark, a former Freeman veterinarian who lives just outside of Marion with his wife Monica and has been a supervisory public health veterinarian with the USDA the past 18 years. “They call it the SCA family and that’s really true. There are a lot of good relationships built by people who have a lot in common.”

The biggest? “We like to cook steaks.”

Learning to play

Mark got his footing in barbecue years ago but was drawn instead to SCA-sanctioned events beginning four years ago. Not only did the weekend competitions require considerably less time that what was often a Wednesday-through-the-weekend commitment, he liked the even playing field steak battles provided.

“The barbecue competitions are about who can buy the best meat — you can buy a $300 brisket — and the best sauce,” Mark says. “At a steak competition, the organizers are the ones that procure the steaks.

“You might have an organizer that goes to the supermarket and gets OK steaks, or an organizer that goes to a really quality meat market and has fantastic steaks,” he continues. “But everybody is cooking the same meat.”

It’s also accessible and relatively affordable for most. While travel is a prerequisite and takes some time and expense — Mark has competed in upwards of 300 SCA-sanctioned events ranging from Sioux City to Kansas City to Ocean Springs, Miss. — it doesn’t have to get fancy beyond that. Marinades and seasonings are easily packable and portable, the steaks are included with what is typically a $150 entry fee, and any cooking implement is acceptable.

While he uses a PK grill, Mark has seen everything from cast iron skillets and portable gas grills propped up on a small folding table.

“I’ve seen everything,” he says “You can throw some coals on the ground, put a shovel on top and cook your steak that way if you want,” he says. “However you think it will look good and taste good.”

Of course, winning is good for both the ego and the pocketbook.

Mark remembers the first competition he ever won back in 2019 and the Golden Ticket he earned to the SCA World Championship the following October — several months before Covid-19 brought things to a halt.

(Golden Tickets are automatic bids for every winner of a SCA-sanctioned competition, or the highest place-winner who had not previously earned their Golden Ticket that season.)

“I had tried lots and lots of different things — Worcestershire, pineapple juice, straight salt,” Mark says of his strategy leading up to that winning effort in Iowa. “I did alright, but I wasn’t winning.”

He said he started feeling some momentum when he eventually took third place and won a ribbon at a regional competition that first year of competitive cooking, and then more of it when he won a trophy and $400 at a bigger event in Kansas City. That was followed by the stop in Iowa and his first victory, which prompted him to turn around and hit up two more competitions in Springfield, Mo.

“Maybe not the best choice in the world, but I had $1,000 to work with and it took off from there,” he said.

Mark bagged two other wins that year and a lot of top-10 finishes, and finished the season 16th in the world.

“It was good,” he said. “A lot of fun. Lots of good experiences.”

Methodology

While Covid-19 put a temporary stop to competitive cooking, Mark was all in thereafter and has continued to experiment with taste profiles and technique. A lot of it he has picked up from fellow competitors he now considers close friends.

“There is one married couple that I cook with a lot,” he says. “A few years ago, she was No. 1 in the USA points chase and the following year he was No. 1, and they have both been in the top 10 for years. They’re good friends and I cook next to them almost all the time.

“I’ve never taken a class, but I’ve observed and learned and seen what others are doing,” Mark continues. “I don’t know exactly what they put on their steaks, but I can’t be that far off because I’m getting good scores, too.”

While Mark’s recipe is always in a state of flux, his method is standard. The steak should be brought to room temperature or higher, a wet marinade he has developed over the years is applied between 12 and 16 minutes of the cook, and the steak is then rinsed off and patted dry before the final seasonings are applied, whether that is butter, other seasonings or the finishing dust.

Some of what he does depends on the cut of loin he ends up with.

The biggest unknown in every SCA competition is exactly what cut of meat the cook ends up with, because each piece is selected based on a lottery system.

“You pick your own cut,” Mark says. “If there are 43 cooks, they’ll put 43 chips in a bag, and you might be one, you might be 43.

“Aside from how your cook goes,” he continues, “that’s the most important thing. There are a lot of different cuts in that loin, and if you get a good pick, you get to cook something you’re more comfortable with.”

He continues:

“There’s a muscle that goes along the edge of all the steak, from the loin end to the chuck end, and there are different sizes throughout that loin. If you’re pick No. 1 or No. 2, that’s a really nice cut. You get to that 14th and 15th pick, it’s just a smaller strip and there’s a lot of tougher tissue in there.

“It’s just not as good, so you end up cooking more of the eye of the steak rather than the spinalis of the steak. It’s a little harder to make it look good.”

Mark also notes that each cook is allowed to pick two steaks — one that can be used as practice and the other for the competition itself. (Mark says he rarely uses the practice steak, instead focusing on prep work while saving the other as a spare in case of a disaster during the actual cook — something that saved his butt once.)

“Anything can go wrong anytime,” he says.

And the goal is always the same: a steak trimmed to look “like a hockey puck” for optimal appearance and flavor that is cooked to perfect medium — pink all the way through — with a desirable appearance, texture and taste.

The latest from Texas

Mark made his fourth trip to the SCA World Championship in Fort Worth, Texas with Monica this past March after receiving his Golden Ticket last June. While he didn’t take part in the ancillary competition that has become more and more popular at events like these — when chefs experiment with creative, non-steak food offerings like bacon and egg dishes or wings — he was around it that first day and enjoyed the spirit of the competition that featured cooks from here to Europe, Japan, the Netherlands and Australia.

He also enjoyed being recognized as South Dakota’s leading point-getter in both the ancillary and steak competitions from the 2022 season.

But mostly he was focused on the competition that included 434 cooks who were broken into three teams for the preliminary round, which paid off: For the fourth time in as many years, Mark advanced to the finals.

“There are a lot of good cooks who have never made it to the finals,” he says, “so I felt pretty good about it.” And then?

“Well, I didn’t get as good a steak pick number as I wanted,” he said, noting there were 95 cooks in the finals and he picked No. 95.

“I can’t blame it on that because I did end up with an OK steak,” he said, “but if I had an OK steak at 95 I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be one of the higher picks.

Mark followed the same recipe — “you go with what got you there” — and ended up 55th, his lowest finish yet.

While disappointed, Mark says the final tally shows just how close the competition was.

“I had really good scores, but the winner had a perfect score,” he said, noting that the scores in each category from all five judges can max out at 50 points, with decimals only allowed in scoring overall taste, which can top out at 54.5. “Second place was a tenth of a point off the winner and third place was another tenth of a point off.”

Mark’s judgement went 50-50-49-52.9, “so I had a really good score. One more point would have put me in the top 15, so you know there are a lot of good steaks between 55th and 16th.”

So what now?

Well, Mark has cooked in several competitions since the Worlds and will continue to mold his cooking craft in an effort to be the best he can be. He doesn’t know if he will ever cook a perfect steak but hopes to one day land a perfect score at a competition.

Indeed, Mark doesn’t indicate that he will be slowing down anytime soon and will continue to cook for family and friends from the loins he buys so he can cut them himself to competition thickness of 1 1/8 inches.

Those cooks at his home are something that has become one of his trademarks.

“I fix a lot of practice steaks and I have a lot of people over, and I hear a lot, ‘This is the best steak I’ve ever had,’” he says. “And I think, ‘you eat the whole thing you might not think so.’

“There’s a difference between a dinner steak and a competition steak,” Mark continues. “It’s a lot of rich protein; it has butter and everything else. You eat the whole thing you might feel a little slow for a few hours.”

Maybe so.

But when it comes to competition and the quest to be the best in the world, Mark knows what must be done.

He also knows that getting there is the fun part. And really, when it comes down to it, that’s what this game is all about.

than the spinalis of the steak. It’s a little harder to make it look good.”

Mark also notes that each cook is allowed to pick two steaks — one that can be used as practice and the other for the competition itself. (Mark says he rarely uses the practice steak, instead focusing on prep work while saving the other as a spare in case of a disaster during the actual cook — something that saved his butt once.)

“Anything can go wrong anytime,” he says.

And the goal is always the same: a steak trimmed to look “like a hockey puck” for optimal appearance and flavor that is cooked to perfect medium — pink all the way through — with a desirable appearance, texture and taste.

Latest from Texas

Mark made his fourth trip to the SCA World Championship in Fort Worth, Texas with Monica this past March after receiving his Golden Ticket last June. While he didn’t take part in the ancillary competition that has become more and more popular at events like these — when chefs experiment with creative, non-steak food offerings like bacon and egg dishes or wings — he was around it that first day and enjoyed the spirit of the competition that featured cooks from here to Europe, Japan, the Netherlands and Australia.

He also enjoyed being recognized as South Dakota’s leading point-getter in both the ancillary and steak competitions from the 2022 season.

But mostly he was focused on the competition that included more than 440 cooks who were broken into three teams for the preliminary round, which paid off: For the fourth time in as many years, Mark advanced to the finals.

“There are a lot of good cooks who have never made it to the finals,” he says, “so I felt pretty good about it.”

And then?

“Well, I didn’t get as good a steak pick number as I wanted,” he said, noting there were 95 cooks in the finals and he picked No. 95.

“I can’t blame it on that because I did end up with an OK steak,” he said, “but if I had an OK steak at 95 I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be one of the higher groups.

Mark followed the same recipe — “you go with what got you there” — and ended up 55th, his lowest finish yet.

While disappointed, Mark says the final tally shows just how close the competition was.

“I had really good scores, but the winner had a perfect score,” he said, noting that the scores in each category from all five judges can max out at 50 points, with decimals only allowed in scoring overall taste, which can top out at 54.5. “Second place was a tenth of point off the winner and third place was another tenth of a point off.”

Mark’s judgement went 50-50-49-49-52.9, “so I had a really good score. One more point would have put me in the top 15, so you know there are a lot of good steaks between 55th and 16th.”

Going forward

So what now?

Well, Mark has cooked in several competitions since the Worlds and will continue to mold his cooking craft in an effort to be the best he can be. He doesn’t know if he will ever cook a perfect steak but hopes to one day land a perfect score at a competition.

Indeed, Mark doesn’t indicate that he will be slowing down anytime soon and will continue to cook for family and friends from the loins he buys so he can cut them himself to competition thickness of 1 1/8 inches.

Those cooks at his home are something that has become one of his trademarks.

“I fix a lot of practice steaks and I have a lot of people over, and I hear a lot, ‘This is the best steak I’ve ever had,’” he says. “And I think, ‘you eat the whole thing you might not think so.’

“There’s a difference between a dinner steak and a competition steak,” Mark continues. “It’s a lot of rich protein; it has butter and everything else. You eat the whole thing you might feel a little slow for a few hours.”

Maybe so.

But when it comes to competition and the quest to be the best in the world, Mark knows what must be done.

He also knows that getting there is the fun part.

And really, when it comes down to it, that’s what this game is all about.