How to Cook a Great Steak Part 1

I like meat. This should not come as surprise to anyone. I am not easy to please when it comes to my meats, steak in particular. I have found while a lot of people cook steak, very few cook it well. I found myself going to restaurants ordering and receiving steak that was either bland or overcooked. It was rare that I found myself truly enjoying a nice quality steak. In hindsight I realize now that was because I was going to restaurant chains like Longhorns, Ruby Tuesdays, Applebee's etc. when I should have went to a place that specializes in steak. Non the less I decided to master steak on my own. I have spent count less and ruined many a piece of meat to get where I am now, where I feel I can make a good steak at anytime. I have decided to share some of my techniques with you guys.

Now the first part of making a great steak has nothing to do with cooking. Yes that is right, now back away from the pan and turn that stove off.

First we need to talk about meat. Not all steak is the same. Sure it may look similar but what kind of steak it is can and will make a difference on how the final product. Steak is usually graded like this

From Wikipedia:

U.S. Prime – Highest in quality and intramuscular fat, limited supply. Currently, about 2.9% of carcasses grade as Prime.

U.S. Choice – High quality, widely available in foodservice industry and retail markets. Choice carcasses are 53.7% of the fed cattle total. The difference between Choice and Prime is largely due to the fat content in the beef. Prime typically has a higher fat content (more and well distributed intramuscular "marbling") than Choice.

U.S. Select (formerly Good) – lowest grade commonly sold at retail, acceptable quality, but is less juicy and tender due to leanness.

Now you may be wondering why fat  content matters. Trust me it matters a lot. You get a lot of the flavor from the fat. In addition to flavor prime and choice beef will be more tender than select as well.

I look at it kind of how I see alcohol.

Select= Mr. Boston/Budlight
Choice = Three olives/Shocktop
Prime = Grey Goose/ Special Made Craft Beer

Choice is what I buy. It is what you will find at most quality supermarkets and butchers. It is easier on the wallet and can still be cooked to a great steak. I bet you are ready to cook now aren't you?

NO YOU ARE NOT SIT DOWN AND KEEP READING!

You must first decide what type of steak you want to cook. There are a lot of pieces of meat with the word steak on it. It can be rather confusing. I like this chart to help keep track.

For this article let us ignore the tenderloin roast. Astute observers will notice the tenderloin and the porterhouse look very similar. Correct you are. There is much debate over this, but basically they are both a combo of two steak, the NY Strip on one side and the tenderloin on the other. The difference being the porterhouse has more tenderloin on it.

If fat were to equal flavor you would be able to easily guess which of those steak would have the most flavor. As you can see the rib eye [rib steak above] has much more marbling than the other ones and therefore can often times be more flavorful. In contrast you see the coveted filet mignon has next to no fat yet we all know how expensive it is. It has a lot to due with how tender that piece of meat is. This is a purely subjective matter, and really you should buy what you like. I prefer the Ny Strip and the ribeye.

Now that you have selected your steak, you are ready to cook right? Great! let's go turn on the heat..........................................
























And read Part II, which is coming soon....

Edit Part 2 is now up. Glad you didn't have wait huh?

Homemade Pizza Is Easier Than You Think

The other day I was sitting around craving pizza. Now I knew I could run across the street to the Dominos or down the road for Papa Johns (gross) or Pizza hut. I didn't really want to spend the money on it though. So I figured why not make my own.

The first thing you need to do is make the dough.

Basic Dough Recipe

3 and a half cups all purpose flour
2 and one fourth teaspoons active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive or grape seed oil
Around 1 to 1 and one fourth cups of water

**Before you start this clean off a large flat area and coat with a healthy layer of four.**


1. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Make a small well in the center of the dry stuff and add in your oil and one cup of water. Mix it together(Get your hands in there!) until it starts to form a dough. If you want a softer dough or if needed add more water.

2.  Roll your dough out onto your flowered area. Knead the dough until it has become elastic and smooth.  ( A link there in case you don't know how to knead). Once you are satisfied with the consistency of the dough roll it into a ball.

3. After you get the dough into a ball, wash and dry it. Lightly drizzled the oil of your choice inside the bowl, place your ball in the bowl and roll it around until it is fully coated. Place a layer of saran wrap, or a towel over the bowl and leave it in a warm place for an hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

4. Once your dough has risen, take it out of the bowl, preheat your oven to 425 F and cut the dough into fours with a + type of cut. On a floured surface using your rolling pin roll the dough out into circles or near circles, whatever don't judge me.

Once you have your dough rolled out you can coat it in whatever you want. Below is mine before and after it went into the oven. 

 Yes the pizza is almost the size of a cookie sheet.

All that food for the cost of ingredients you probably having laying around anyways. I would give this a 10/10 for cheap eats.

Nacho Casserole

The other day I got a craving for nachos. After eating them, it didn't go away fully. While sitting with my little brother an idea popped up in my head.

Guys and Gals, I present,

Nacho Casserole

First thing to do was of course buy the ingredients. I am a simple person, so I did not have many ingredients, this dish can be customized to taste. Yes that is Cheerwine in the background.

First thing I did was open the ground beef, season it and line the bottom of the tray with it. [I discovered something about this, more on that later]

After getting the beef in the dish, I then coated it with a nice thick layer of cheese.

Now while this was going on, I had another pot on the stove. What was in it you ask? Nothing but that BACON...................with some jalapenos.

I let it cook down till the jalapenos were soft and the bacon somewhat crispy  It smelled soooooo good with the jalapenos in it.

After the bacon was done I  dumped in and spread on top. A layer of crushed tortilla chips were added in on top of the bacon

After that on went another layer of beef, and more cheese, this time White Queso. [Yes I know queso means cheese, but dammit that is what called on the label lol]

After the white cheese went down I sprinkled more of the bacon/jalapeno mix on top the coated that with yellow cheese.

Finally I added one last layer of crushed up chips.

Sideview of things. See how the ground beef is sticking up? Yea, that should have caught my attention....

Into the oven it went for 40 mintues at 350, no pics of that,  I am sure you know that an oven looks like.


IT'S DONE ZOMG.

It was grea i f I do say so myself and I do. However I made a few mistakes. First off since I did not cook the ground beef prior I ended up with tons of grease from the meat . Also while the bottom ground beef was done through all the way the middle layer was almost raw in some places. I had to put it back in the oven. Next time I will also cook the bacon in the oven and crispy it up as well as using a food processor to grind up the chips. to get a more even coating. I will also use more ingredients  such as salsa, a smidge of sour cream, more cheese, more peppers.

As I said before this has lots of ways to customized it. For those of us who  don't eat beef, turkey or chicken could easily be subbed in, as well as salsa, sour cream, chives etc. So it can definitely be made to taste.