The offer of a free mega-steak may seem like an intriguing challenge, but it won't do you any favors, nutritionally speaking.

My friend Donna Florio, who’s a senior writer at Southern Living magazine, rolled into 2009 with this goal: Eat less meat. “I’ve been in a bad meat habit lately, choosing beefy entrees, eating fewer meatless meals,” she says. (By the way, Donna is not referring to the Big Texan’s 72-ounce steak challenge, pictured above.) “I’m going to work on getting back to enjoying meat as an accessory rather than a main dish.”

I’m not including this resolution to demonize meat. I love meat, and believe it deserves a spot in a healthy diet–especially if you choose lean cuts and enjoy them in reasonable portions. If you visit a steakhouse, chances are the 8-ounce New York strip steak is the light-eater’s option. And on a menu populated with 24-ounce porterhouse steaks and other mega-cuts, it is. A 3-ounce cooked portion (that’s about 4 ounces raw) is more like it, according to the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans. 

I’m not including this resolution to demonize meat. I love meat, and believe it deserves a spot in a healthy diet–especially if you choose lean cuts and enjoy them in reasonable portions. The USDA considers a serving of beef to be 3 ounces cooked (4 ounces raw). That’s not a lot, especially if you’re accustomed to larger, restaurant-size portions.

There are several ways to “accessorize” with meat.

Keep an eye on portions. The USDA considers a serving of beef–or pork, lamb, chicken, or seafood, for that matter–to be 3 ounces cooked (4 ounces raw). That’s not a lot, especially if you’re used to larger, restaurant-size portions, though if it’s surrounded by ample veggies and whole grains, you won’t feel deprived. A kitchen scale is a handy tool to help you keep portion sizes in check. Serious Eats’ Meat Lite recipes offer plenty of inspiration on how to do more with less meat.

In this Mexican dish, grilled pork is part of a bigger picture. (Photo courtesy of the Culinary Institute of America/Greystone.)

Look to other cuisines for inspiration. Meat may be a mainstay of the American diet, but in other parts of the world, meat is an expensive ingredient and cooks have had to devise creative ways to stretch its flavor. Asian stir-fries are a classic example of this. For inspiration, check out the Culinary Institute of America’s Worlds of Healthy Flavors site.

Add meaty flavor in subtle ways. If you love hearty, meaty flavor–what’s known as umami, the so-called fifth taste sense–you can enhance that quality in many ways. For example, last night, I made pasta with some leftover Pantry Pasta Sauce. The sauce itself has a touch of soy sauce, which lends it a meaty, umami-ness that helps tame the tinniness of canned tomatoes. For extra meaty heft, I added sauteed mushrooms and pancetta, and finished it off with a grating of pecorino Romano cheese. 

[Interesting side note: In all fairness, I have to point out that the Big Texan in Amarillo, Texas, which is famous for offering a free 72-ounce steak to anyone who can gobble the thing in under an hour, also serves a nice, comparatively lil' 6-ounce filet.]

Previous posts in the Resolutions That Work Series:

Fruit of the Day

Pay Attention to What You Eat

Eat Your Greens

Plan Ahead to Eat Well

Size matters: No wonder this little fella looks nervous. He's yours--free!--if you can eat him in under an hour.

I’m on Day 3 of my cross-country road trip–with dog and cat in tow, in a Mini. Driving along the I-40 for 10 hours a day is bound to lead to a few epiphanies:

1. Obama’s plan to create new jobs to shore up our nation’s crumbling infrastructure is smart. I thought I’d lose a kidney while bouncing over the rutted stretch of I-40 in east Oklahoma. 
2. I am a modern-day Okie. The car is packed to the gills with crap and animals. There’s even a soup pot–albeit an All-Clad–on the front seat (I’d forgotten to pack it). So I can always stop and whip up a roadkill soup if things get really bad.
3. Texas is all about big.

Of course, the third item isn’t really anything new, but I still enjoyed many examples while driving across the Texas Panhandle. It’s home to some of the swankiest rest stops I’ve seen. In Gray County, heading east from Oklahoma, there’s an environmentally sound welcome center built into the hillside. On the westbound side of the interstate, in neighboring Donley County, they’ve upped the ante with a huge, Art Deco-style rest stop. Places like these are enough to make you think, “I should stop for a spell to check this out.”

The largest cross in the Western Hemisphere.

A scene from "The Life of Brian"?

In Groom, just east of Amarillo, you can stop to admire the largest freestanding cross in the Western Hemisphere. It’s a soaring, 190-foot-tall, cement achievement that even a heathen like me can appreciate. Although the Stations of the Cross sculptures surrounding the main event made me think of “The Life of Brian.”

Driving away from my stop at the cross, I was greeted by huge (of course) billboards touting the Big Texan in Amarillo. The Big Texan is a cheerfully gaudy Route 66 landmark, as it’s the home of the 72-ounce steak–free, if you can gobble the thing in under an hour. It’s not a challenge I was up to (though my dog Rascal would have been happy to take it on). A free 4 1/2-pound steak is the ultimate in eating cheap–if you succeed. But you must pay the $72 upfront. It’s refunded if you meet the challenge, and 8,500 people have since the Big Texan opened in 1960.

You have to admire people who are willing to create their own grandeur on such a breathtaking scale–not just a steak, but an enormous one. 

Ultimately, the emphasis on superlative size is what I admire about this part of Texas. There’s not much there, really, just miles of barren, windswept (T. Boone Pickens is right about harnessing that wind to generate some energy) ranchland. You have to admire people who are willing to create their own grandeur on such a breathtaking scale–not just any cross, but the biggest one; not just a steak, but an enormous one. I usually subscribe to the less-is-more school of thought. But in Texas, bigger really is better. Or at least more entertaining.

Big and gaudy, that's the Texas Panhandle.