The Steak thread

[gimpy117]

i do happen to work in a meat dept...any questions?

[razark]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

I've done that when I made bruschetta, and that turned out well. Never thought about doing it with steak. Good idea!

I learned it from my dad. He considers garlic to be a side dish. His garlic bread includes chunks of raw garlic, in addition to whatever gets baked on.

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Texans know meat! If you're referring to the fact that there's no grill involved in my method, it's because I live in an apartment, so I don't get to grill as often as I like.

Yeah, Houston isn't as bad as some areas. I've lived in a few towns that would have no problem lynching someone that cooks a steak inside. Most apartments had a grill on the balcony, or even in the parking lot.

[breadcatcher101]

Mine is pretty simple. I prefer sirloin, coat the pan with coconut oil and cook on mid heat. Flip the steak often allowing it to sear and cook evenly. When almost done add a bit of soy sauce and keep flipping and working it around in the pan until done.

(Grilled with charcoal is best though)

[U570]

I reckon the simplest (and tastiest) thing to do is to grab any steak (what ever you fancy or can afford), then get your BBQ (I hope for steak sake you have one) or use a large cast-iron pan, the do the usual oil etc. Put herbs in if you want, then grill the steak 5-7mins each side (7 for thick as bricks) and then eat. You could also experiment? might come up with interesting and tasty combos.

[Skybird]

Got surprised this monrning by an article in the news on how to do steaks. The author, who runs a steakhouse here, gave this recommendation when using a kitchen stove, not a BBQ grill.

Good meat, of course, you guys mentioned the important things already.

For a 200 gr steak done medium: a heavy black iron pan, using cleared butter, heating it up like hell until it smokes, then do the steak 3 minutes each side. After that, take it off, put in the oven at 180°C for another I think 6 minutes (on the griddle, not in the pan). After that, put it in alumimium foil and let it rest for another 5 minutes.

The baking in the oven in the second step is to make sure the heart of the meat gets well done, without burning the outside anymore and turning it into black ashes. The heated oil in the pan seems to create a hard skin very fast, preventing the juice to escape. The resting period is to normalise temperature so that the juice inside settles nicely and does not escape when you cut the meat immediately.

Sounds like a bit of more work than just leaving the meat in a pan all the time, but if it works...

However, I still do not know when to use spice like salt, pepper, garlic, rosary. Before or after cooking the meat? Garlic especially can burn to ashes if you put it into hot enough oil, it just takes seconds. And salt on raw meat extracts juice that normally you want to catch inside, don'T you. So: salt and spice before or after cooking?

Will get some work on the balcony done today, and then - try some of the advise here. I like yoiur precision approach, Mookie - its like I approached pizza and espresso - with timers, thermometers and precision scales!

The only thing I do not like about cooking steaks is that it makes a big mess in the kitchen, and oil everywhere...

If you guys ever happen to stay in Germany for a while and take an appartement, do not get the idea to BBQ on the balcony without making sure it is permitted. It can easily get you into trouble, even with police and lawyers involved. Many Germans hate people grilling in public parks (which can be a problem indeed, especially in Berlin where they do it in crowds of many hundreds), and in many houses it is forbidden due to the smelly cloud drifting away, and security concerns over open fire. We exaggerate it, I admit, and I do not agree with the strict ruling. The problem in Berlin is that hundreds of grilling people in Tiergarten and other parks often do not care to take away the waste they have produced. The park often looks accordingly. Which is a shame, since Berlin has many, big and nice parks. But the Berliners are a very dirty type of people, and Berlin is a very dirty city. Not even mentioning the mess caused by non-caring dog owners...

[joegrundman]

salt will draw out moisture, which is why i say salt just before cooking. this way the salt can dissolve into the skin of the meat. if you just sprinkle salt on afterward then you still have granules of salt on the steak, which is unattractive.

there is also a modern approach called sous vide. very interesting results can be obtained with this.

the technique is as follows:

seal your meat with any flavourings you desire in a vacuum bag.

immerse the bag with the meat in water at the exact temperature you require - e.g. 60 degrees C for a rare steak

leave for 7 hours or so

then remove from bag and quickly season and fry at high temperature to brown the outside

it produces extremely good results, but it is not so easy to manage at home

the long cooking allows the proteins to set and any toughness to loosen, but it doesn't overcook because it never gets hot enough

here's a link to an article on sous vide steak
http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/03/h...ide-steak.html

and here are some photos showing how a sous vide setup can be arranged at home for not much money

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...998339&index=0

if you are of an experimental frame of mind, you will have fun with this!

btw - the steak guy 's claim that browning the meat seals it and prevents loss of moisture is only partially true, as i'm sure you realise. if even that. High heat causes water to evaporate directly, leaving a dryer pan. a low heat causes water to exit the meat into the pan making it appear wet.

[Polak]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Kobe beef is extremely expensive (the most expensive there is), and I think the EU has a ban on it anyway. Never saw it in stores.

I also do not want to ruin my finances over just one dinner. I'm not a rich man - I just make myself sound like one.

No ban on Kobe beef in the EU, bought it in stores both in Poland and Sweden.

Lately I've started to give my stakes a quick soy sauce bath, I let the meat rest in soy sauce for about an hour, after that it goes straight down into a hot pan, thanks to this method you don't have to worry about the white death, salt.
I adjust the time spent on the pan to the thickness of meat piece I am cooking. When I judge that the meat is done I take it of the pan/bbq, apply freshly grounded black pepper, let it rest and after that I dig in.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Quote:
Location: Houston, TX

Mookie - I think Razark was angling for an invite to try your cooking skills.

I'm quite hungry now after reading this thread and think I'll suggest steak for a meal soon, but the wife's a veggie so she can have a nut cutlet or some such stuff.

Can't quite stretch to Kobe beef though

[Herr-Berbunch]

Originally Posted by Polak

No ban on Kobe beef in the EU, bought it in stores both in Poland and Sweden.

You can get beef from all over the world called Kobe beef, it's from Wagyu cattle the same family as Kobe but is interbred with Angus (not Young), and raised in the same way. Really it should be called Kobe style beef.

Japan has a ban on exporting the original Kobe beef.

[joegrundman]

in any case, i do not recommend wagyu or kobe beef for steaks. it is not really optimised for steak.

[Polak]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

You can get beef from all over the world called Kobe beef, it's from Wagyu cattle the same family as Kobe but is interbred with Angus (not Young), and raised in the same way. Really it should be called Kobe style beef.

Japan has a ban on exporting the original Kobe beef.

In that case I stand corrected.

[Skybird]

Wowh, I am just done with my steak today, and it was - wayyyy better than how I did it in the past. I used the method with baking it in the oven, which indeed worked wonders. I absolutely recommend to experiment with that.

It was a bit too bloody for my taste, which may be due to the piece of meat I had being bigger than the 200 gr the original recipe was scaled for. But by principle - hot, short roasting, then baking - that tip is worth pure gold.

I wonder if one can help the second stage by adding 1 minute of microwave treatement?

---

To use soy sauce for steak like Polak mentioned, never came to my mind. But why not. I use to do mixed vegetable-meat-pan s Asian style a lot, mainly sweet pepper, chicken, soy bean sprouts, and for that I use to marinade the meat in a bath of soy sauce, Sherry, soup stock, sugar, hot chilli. Use Chinese soy sauce if you want to give it a more salty taste, use the lekker-lekker Indonesian soy sauce if you want it more flourish and sweet (damn god stuff, this Indonesian Ketjap Manis or Ketjap Asin, I consume it by truckloads). Good Curry powder also is a good ingredient in that sauce. The marinade later can be used as the main sauce aqdded to the pan/Wok.
So, why not using soy sauce as marinade for steaks. However, I assume the taste is not the typical taste of what I imagine to be the typical taste of "steak".

---

Joe, thnaks for the explanation of "sous vide". Never heared of that, but it sounds interesting. I just doubt that I am willing to make that the method of choice, since it takes quite some time in advance preparation. But i will at least try it out.

But I wonder about the hygienic aspect. If the meat never gets warmed above 60°C in the inside, then this makes me think.

[jumpy]

Rub it in salt and coarse ground black pepper, drop into a medium heat frying pan with olive oil.
Fry for about 10 minutes. (for me until it's no longer bloody throughout)

Consume with lots of salad, potato wedges and red wine.

Simples.


....I don't like complicated cooking.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Wowh, I am just done with my steak today, and it was - wayyyy better than how I did it in the past. I used the method with baking it in the oven, which indeed worked wonders. I absolutely recommend to experiment with that.

It was a bit too bloody for my taste, which may be due to the piece of meat I had being bigger than the 200 gr the original recipe was scaled for. But by principle - hot, short roasting, then baking - that tip is worth pure gold.

I wonder if one can help the second stage by adding 1 minute of microwave treatement?

Bake it in the oven longer.

And the reason why I recommend doing it the other way around - bake, THEN sear - is that you end up with the same amount of "done-ness" from end to end in your steak. If you do pan then oven, I've found that you get a brown crust, a pink center, and a band of overcooked meat in between. By doing it in the oven first, you get your pink center, and then you develop your brown crust on the outside with a short amount of time in the pan. Too short to let that overcooked band develop.

Joe, thnaks for the explanation of "sous vide". Never heared of that, but it sounds interesting. I just doubt that I am willing to make that the method of choice, since it takes quite some time in advance preparation. But i will at least try it out.

But I wonder about the hygienic aspect. If the meat never gets warmed above 60°C in the inside, then this makes me think.

Sous vide is a great way of doing it. You don't need a real sous-vide machine to do it either. You can do it with just a plastic zip top baggie and an ice chest.

Fill up your beer cooler with water just a couple degrees higher than the temperature you'd like to cook your food at (to account for temperature loss when you add cold food to it), seal your food in a plastic Ziplock bag*, drop it in, and close your beer cooler until your food is cooked. It's as simple as that.

*FYI: The air in a plastic bag can be removed by slowly dipping the open bag with your food in it into the water, sealing it just before the water starts to pour inside. It's not as air-free an environment as a vacuum-sealed bag, but it's enough to keep the food submerged, and in contact with the water, which is all that's really important.

For a medium rare steak, you're looking at 140 degrees. Just get your water a couple degrees hotter than that, put it in your ice chest, throw your steak in a baggie in, weight it down with a plate or something, and close the lid. It only takes about 45 minutes to do. I finish it off with a quick sear on the stove. It's wonderful. The best part about sous vide cooking is that it's literally impossible to overcook something. It's only going to get as hot as your water is.

You don't have to worry about bacteria inside the middle of your steak. Steak just doesn't have the parasites like pork or chicken does - its too acidic of an environment for them. Bacteria can only live on the outside of a steak, and those are killed off when you cook it, no matter what level of done-ness it is on the inside.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3743657.stm

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Bake it in the oven longer.

And the reason why I recommend doing it the other way around - bake, THEN sear - is that you end up with the same amount of "done-ness" from end to end in your steak. If you do pan then oven, I've found that you get a brown crust, a pink center, and a band of overcooked meat in between. By doing it in the oven first, you get your pink center, and then you develop your brown crust on the outside with a short amount of time in the pan. Too short to let that overcooked band develop.



Sous vide is a great way of doing it. You don't need a real sous-vide machine to do it either. You can do it with just a plastic zip top baggie and an ice chest.



For a medium rare steak, you're looking at 140 degrees. Just get your water a couple degrees hotter than that, put it in your ice chest, throw your steak in a baggie in, weight it down with a plate or something, and close the lid. It only takes about 45 minutes to do. I finish it off with a quick sear on the stove. It's wonderful. The best part about sous vide cooking is that it's literally impossible to overcook something. It's only going to get as hot as your water is.

You don't have to worry about bacteria inside the middle of your steak. Steak just doesn't have the parasites like pork or chicken does - its too acidic of an environment for them. Bacteria can only live on the outside of a steak, and those are killed off when you cook it, no matter what level of done-ness it is on the inside.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3743657.stm

From one of Joe'S links, I take this:

Safety: Any time you eat undercooked meat, you are running a risk of food-borne illness. Use your own judgment to weigh whether or not your pleasure is worth this risk. And if pleasure is not your priority, seriously consider becoming a vegan. At 130°F and above, bacteria will cease to multiply, but lower than this, and bacteria will multiply at an accelerated rate. If cooking your steak below 130°F, do not leave it in the water bath for any longer than four hours.

130°F is about 54°C.

Beyond that, I understand that your method of baking first, searing second, kind of copies the sous-vide method, with different timing and temperature though.

I wonder if there is a way to use a microwave oven for the baking/waterbathing, and then grilling it? Anyone having tried microwaves on raw meat? If that is possible, it would be the by far most comfortable solution.