How to Cook a Great Steak Part 2

For those of you just tuning in this is the second installment of how to make a great steak. Which should be pretty obvious with the 2 in the title but no one is judging you. When we last left off you had that big piece of meat in your hand ready to toss it in a pan. Before you do that though you need to gather your ingredients.

Kosher Salt
Black pepper (if you don't have a pepper grind, which you should, the ground box stuf works)
Butter
Olive or Grape Seed Oil.

You also need to let your meat come up to room temperature. We are almost there, I am promise you. I am going to presume that you have chose to cook a ribeye or new york strip. Why? Because those are my favorite steaks and you know being like me means you are awesome. Go ahead,

The first thing you need to do with your lovely piece of meat, other than unwrap it is to blot it with paper towels. You want to get the excess blood off it. I like to use a meth similar to the below photo where I take the steak and kind of roll it up so I can blot it all over at once. [PRO TIP: Do NOT use cheap napkins or paper towels that tear easily. It will just cause you to have to peel it off.]

You want to get the meat as dry as possible though don't go over board with it. You don't want to start rubbing off flesh. Just blot it. Depending on size you will like need more than one. If your meat is still cold this is the time to let it come up to temp. This can take a few hours if you have a thick piece of meat. 

Once the meat is clean of the excess moisture lay the out on a flat surface. Take a bit of your chosen oil the rub the meat down with your oil. You don't want it dripping wet. You want it basically to coat the surface of the meat. Once your meat is coated grind or sprinkle your black pepper on the steaks. On top of that give it a generous amount of kosher salt. You want to make sure that the entire surface is coated in salt and pepper. 

 Up close food pr0n's

After you salt and pepper both sides I like to let my sit a bit to let the meat suck in the seasonings. No more than 10 minutes usually. Now you need to take your favorite skillet and get it HOT. On a good electric stove that means 7 or 8. Once it hot go ahead and lay your steak down. Immediately set a timer for 60 seconds.

 While the steak is sizzling away on the pan grab a pair of tongues or your hands if you are crazy like me, and press down on the meat making sure to get as much surface area in direct contact with the pan as possible. You may be wondering why? Well salt and heat on red meat has some type of effect which forms a crust on the meat. This is quite tasty so you want that crust, this is how to get it. When a minute is up flip the steak, turn the heat down to 5 and let the other side crust up.

The reason for turning the heat down is that the steak will cook longer on this side. This will also be the side that is plate up.So you get a strong crust along with the steak cooking slowly.

Some people swear that you only need to flip a steak once, but I am not one of those. I flip as often as I feel is necessary though I don't flip it constantly either. I like to add butter to my steaks and let it brown on it to give it a bit more flavor.

Once the steak is done don't forget to grab the tongs and put the fat strip on the skillet too. 

Speaking of being done. Let us pause for a second. You may have noticed that I did not add any cooking times to any of this. Well there is a reason for that. Cooking times can vary a lot depending on how thick a piece of meat is. I like to go by feel. Let me borrow someone's hand to show you. The below chart seems silly but it is actually spot on. Once you get a few steaks under your belt you will be able to judge the time, until then stick to the chart. 

This is a chart that gives you a good understanding of the different degrees of steak doneness. I will say though this chart is a tiny bit misleading. If you look at this it looks as if rare and medium rare are completely raw in the middle. Which is not true at all if you cook it properly. Now if your steak was cold, and you quickly seared the outside it could be raw in the middle. Now this chart is clearly bias but I do agree that well done and medium well are both too done for a good steak. I eat mine medium leaning towards medium rare.

Once you get your steak to your desired doness, which I hope isn't well done, you need to let it rest. DO NOT CUT INTO THAT STEAK!! If you do you will ruin your hard work. When meat gets hot it expands, the juices flow. If you cut into it all your juices will run out onto the plate. Wrap it in some foil and sit it aside for at least 10 minutes.  Edit: It has been pointed out to me that you do not need to wrap your steak in foil. If you are going to keep it warm then you can just tent the steak with foil until ready to serve. 

Once you do you will be rewarded with a steak that is juicy (unless its well done) and tender. That was a good steak. 

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?

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.