There was an air of chaos as Tyler Harris transported a pile of extension cords, tin foil, a speaker and other necessities in a wagon. These are all the items deemed critical to cook steaks in Stephens Lake Park on a Saturday morning in late November.
Harris arranged a group of people, mostly through the Columbia Reddit page, to come hang out and cook the steaks — not on a grill, but in toasters, the instrument most commonly used to toast bread.
Amid the hubbub of the first several successful toaster steaks, Harris had to move the gathering across the parking lot to another smaller pavilion because a wedding party arrived to stake their claim on the spot. Harris was pretty sure he had reserved the pavilion for several hours, but decided he wasn’t going to interrupt a wedding for toaster steaks.
“I asked them if they wanted us to cater,” Harris said. “They were not interested.”
Local photographer Jonathan Asher met Harris in the line of the Mizzou surplus store a few days before the event.
“He was buying a bunch of extension cords and power strips, like a huge giant crate of them, and he said it's for this event that he then invited me to,” Asher said. “So I met a guy a couple days ago and he invited me to this event. And now I'm here cooking steaks in a toaster.”
After much experimentation, the group figured out that the best way to cook the steaks – without them catching on fire – is by wrapping them in tin foil. Asher shared his method.
“They said no foil tends to catch on fire right away. So, I took the bottom off my toaster so that the fat wouldn't, when it drips off, doesn't drip down into the catch pan that catches crumbs and catch on fire,” Asher said. “So I have well-seared outsides to my steaks.”
He walked over to his toaster to check the status of his New York strip steak, turning the toaster upside down and plopping the steak onto a plate.
“They look really good. They’re well-browned on the outside,” Asher said.
Harris was inspired to put on this event after seeing a buddy he met on a military deployment post about an annual toaster steak event he attends in Oregon.
“He was back home on the West Coast and posted a photo on some sort of social media that said, ‘Made it home for steaks this year.’ And it was a photo of a steak and a toaster. And I was like, ‘That shouldn't happen. So tell me everything.’”
“He kind of let me in. I got a little bit of the original steak lore, I guess,” Harris said.
Harris figured, why not try it in Columbia? He got to work.
“I made flyers and took them around town,” Harris said. “I was like a kid again, making punk rock posters running all over town, hanging up flyers.”
"When you think about it, who's the kind of person that shows up for toaster steaks? Well, it's exactly the kind of person I want to meet."Tyler Harris
The Reddit post was flooded with confused but intrigued commenters. One user wrote ‘This seems unsafe. See you there!’ Another person wrote, ‘What a terrible idea. Brilliant,’ and someone said, ‘Deliberately ruining steaks? In this economy?!’
One attendee, Steven Hudson, came because of the Reddit post.
“I texted my friends I was going to this and they said, ‘Dog, what are you doing?’ Like, really, that's what they said. They're like, ‘Why are you there?’ And I was like, ‘I mean, I love a story.’
Hudson decided that instead of leaving the event because of the wedding interruption, he would follow Harris’ lead.
“I was like, well, now there's a wedding to save, of course,” Hudson said. “So I grab my bucket basket and I pull it over here. And the lady, she's like, ‘Thank you so much.’ I was like, ‘Well, it's a wedding.’ And people were saying, we're like, ‘It's toaster steak. We can't stop a wedding for toaster steak.’”
Joan Hermsen, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Missouri, researches food pantry use and food insecurity. She was surprised by the group’s choice to cook something so expensive.
“It's not an inexpensive piece of meat or just something to cook to do on a whim,” Hermsen said. “But that also means there may be more investment in sort of being present for it, for those that are showing up.”
She said the novelty of the event may serve a purpose.
“There is something about some quirky commitment … some sense like we are in this, we share this experience and it's very unusual, even if it costs us money to do it, we’re going to do it, which may be no different than other people spending a lot of money to go and test the different bourbons around Columbia,” Hermsen said.
Tyler Harris thinks people should be getting together more often for what he calls “dumb ideas like this one.”
“When you think about it, who's the kind of person that shows up for toaster steaks? Well, it's exactly the kind of person I want to meet,” Harris said.
As people wiped away steak drippings and packed up their toasters, they exchanged phone numbers and said their goodbyes. Hudson said they’re already discussing another toaster steak meet-up for next year.
