As steak is one of the nations most favourite and versatile dishes, there are often arguments on how a steak should be cooked, whether that’s medium rare or well done. But one thing everyone can agree on is that using a top-quality beef steak is what matters most. However if you want to know how to cook the perfect steak for you, we have the perfect guide for you.

Customers at Dale’s Cellar Restaurant loved the flavorful steak marinade so much they started taking some home. “People came in and said, ‘Can I have some of that sauce?'” Seigel said. “They got a bottle of Coke and filled it up.” Later, Levine began bottling the secret marinade and selling it over the counter at the restaurant. Inclined to head for steaks that have worked over their lifetime I do however occasionally enjoy a fillet steak, roasted to medium-rare and well-rested that it delivers its juicy suppleness.Daole moved to Atlanta to open restaurants there, while Levine later opened eight more Dale’s locations throughout Alabama and the Southeast, including one in Panama City Beach, Florida. A second location in the Birmingham area called Dale’s Hideaway opened in Homewood in the late 1950s. The original Dale’s Cellar Restaurant moved to the old Essex House on Sixth Avenue North in 1966. It closed nine years later. Dale’s Seasoning was the “house marinade” for the old Dale’s Cellar Restaurant, located in the basement of a multi-story apartment building in downtown Birmingham, Ala. (Photo courtesy of Dale’s Seasoning; used with permission) But unless you’re a big Dale history fan, here are 10 things you might not have known. (But now you will.) In 2006, Dale’s Seasoning introduced a healthier version of its marinade that contained 42 percent less sodium than the original. (Photo courtesy of Dale’s Seasoning; used with permission)

Operating out of a small commercial kitchen in Homewood, the family bottled the Dale’s marinade using a hand pump that filled four bottles of sauce at a time. “It would take 20 to 30 minutes to fill 48 bottles,” Seigel said. On a good day, they could fill around 900 bottles of sauce – a job that now takes around six minutes on an assembly line. They began selling Dale’s Marinade in Birmingham grocery stores including Piggly Wiggly, Western Supermarkets and Bruno’s. “We started getting some distribution,” Seigel said, “and the good news is that people liked the product.”

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Make a Steak salad for two: Combine ¼ cup olive oil with 2 tablespoons whole grain mustard and the juice of a small lemon. Season to taste and serve as a dressing over 6 ounces of sliced cooked steak with tomato, fresh leafy greens and steamed broccoli. Sometimes I use this same dressing over an easy brunch plate with green beans, a boiled egg and whichever kind of cheese I have in the refrigerator.