Come on then, how do I cook a really good steak?

[djar007]

I season steak into the vac bag with salt pepper and butter. Sous vide at 55 degrees for three hours. Needs to be tightly vac sealed to hold juices in the meat. Then I sear over charcoal until crust is to my liking. And rest for five minutes. I have also been seeing a lot of the TV chefs breaking the two big steak cooking rules. Salting before cooking and turning regularly. Especially when cooking on hot charcoal. Ymmv.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

It is because we eat beef, that is why there are so many and we eat far too much meat than what is healthy for us, everything in moderation, in the Horizon documentary, Michael Mosley came to the conclusion that meat should be eaten twice a week and processed meat a definite "No No"
I love a good steak but I do keep it to a minimum, try to eat fish three times a week and the higher protein legumes a couple of times a week. It was interesting that one study found lean meat to be the least healthy.

 

[Tahoose]

I want one of these Weber Q things too. Looked at the price of them, it might have to wait a little while though.

I had the first of my many steaks this evening using the Ducatibu Stu Method. It was pretty much the method I've usually used except I cranked up the heat more and actually had the steak at room temperature rather than straight out of the fridge. I think that made quite a difference. It turned out very tasty. The steak was a Woolies 100 day aged porterhouse. It was really good and far better than usual. I'm going to find a local butchers and see what alternatives there are and I'll try another method tomorrow. Steak week is on!

Two things.

+1 for the brilliant webber q's, be sure to buy them from a BBQ shop though not masters as those ones have the built in thermometer.

Try these guys welly
http://www.meatdirect.com.au/about_nt.htm

If its the same guys I used to get meat from it will be good. They used to be on Sabine road.

 

[technobabble66]

...

For anyone in Melbourne, Brenta Meats in Fairfield does THE best eye fillet you will ever have. No affil just a happy happy customer and was referred by a mate who owns a Squires Loft (they don't get their meat from there either)

+1 for Brenta Meats, their steaks are awesome. Well worth driving the 3 suburbs across to get there.
Their snags are pretty damn good too.

Edit: to keep on topic, i do the flip once thing. Seems to work well for me. Oh, and the rest thing - super super important.
Keen to try the Sous Vide process soon, tho i'm always a little too scared my vac sealer's going to suck the juices into it and die. Gonna have to just man up and give it a shot, i s'pose.

 

[Tahoose]

You can do sous vide with a sandwich zip lock bag and stc and a slow cooker/rice cooker if you really want to..

 

[DJ_L3ThAL]

.
Keen to try the Sous Vide process soon, tho i'm always a little too scared my vac sealer's going to suck the juices into it and die. Gonna have to just man up and give it a shot, i s'pose.

I haven't used this for sous vide, merely chopping up an eye fillet into portions and vac sealing them for freezing, but I fold a paper towel the width of the bag and sit it inside closest to where the vacuum sucks with a gap between the towel and the steak and it absorbs the juices/blood being otherwise sucked into the vac sealer.

You could then seal between the paper towel and the steak and chop paper towel section off though that just came to me as an idea while typing this.

Freezing vac sealed meat I notice almost zero difference in quality even after a month or two compared to fresh!

 

[pcmfisher]

If you really must buy supermarket steak, aging is the way to go.

Vacuum seal and leave in the fridge for a couple of weeks and you will certainly taste the difference. :icon_drool2:

 

[CrookedFingers]

Hope that's in jest, the reason there are so many cows is because we farm them for food/milk etc, don't think cows would naturally populate the Earth in such numbers had they been left to their own devices. They produce methane over their lifetime, killing them at the end of it is hardly saving emissions. But yeah, hopefully you were kidding.

Yeah fellas, I was three sheets to the wind and having a laugh !
I do love steak AND seafood.
I have beef maybe once a week. Same for lamb and chook.
Seafood twice at least as I am lucky enough to get out on westernport or port Phillip to catch dinner.

Call off the dogs !!!! Haha

 

[CrookedFingers]

Oh, BTW, I am a multi flipper of steak.
If it is good enough for Heston it's good enough for me !!

I like to season well with just salt and cracked pepper, whack on a piping hot whatever, flip a few times, then rest for a little while.
Yummo.

 

[DJ_L3ThAL]

But Heston could cook you something and tell you it's a steak, but it's probably mussels...

 

[manticle]

Simplify what is in common with most of these (expensive webers and 3hour sous vide methods included). Turn as many/few times as required to get a tasty brown crust on a hot surface. The steak will cook evenly if both sides get even time with even heat.

Good cut, room temp and dry, season, good crust, rest time. That's it - fiddle with the details according to preference.

The burnt pepper thing makes me smile though. Ever tasted the horrible acrid nastiness from burnt pepper or did someone tell you that? An excellent chef with whom I worked with (marco pw apprentice, ex head chef vue de monde, now runs tippling club in singapore) once told me you need to season with pepper first because salt makes the pepper bounce off. While I admire/admired the man much and would hold his advice as close to gospel as anything, even very good chefs sometimes say ridiculous things that commonly found experience can easily demonstrate are bollocks.
Maybe pepper burns but when it burns on a properly cooked steak, it is ******* delicious.

 

[CrookedFingers]

But Heston could cook you something and tell you it's a steak, but it's probably mussels...

Haha.
Too true.
The tricky bugger.

 

[brzt6060]

Good quality meat and bring the steak to room temp before cooking.

 

[WarmerBeer]

I've been playing around my last couple of steaks trying the "reverse sear" method.

Get a good chimney full of charcoal (or heat beads, if you must) going, and place the steak in the Weber kettle on the opposite side to the coals. Lid on.

Wait for the steak to cook to around 50-55 internal temperature (use your electronic brewing thermometer, or better yet, buy a Thermopen).

Then, lid off, and give the meat a minute or less each side over the coals, this will give the Maillard reactions you want for flavour and crispiness on the outside.

Yum, I know what I'm buying to dinner tonight.

 

[Dave70]

If you want something healthier, and to refrain from dragging your carbon footprint all over the planet have a look at this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2etKshkdMvA

Only problem is, any half pissed yob with zero concept of safe food handling can burn a steak on the BBQ's galore Beefmaster and not send his guests home with the rib cracking agony and projectile vomiting / diarrhea that accompanies shellfish poisoning.
I'm extremely dubious about buying any food of that nature from anywhere other than a sea side co-op.

On the other hand, I do enjoy the odd hotdog, so more putt off by the threat of food poisoning than eating nitrate infused hog anus..

 

[Kumamoto_Ken]

On the other hand, I do enjoy the odd hotdog, so more putt off by the threat of food poisoning than eating nitrate infused hog anus..

 

[stux]

I've been working on trying to perfect the perfect steak for a while now

I use a few different approaches depending on the grade/thickness of the steak.

But there are commonalities

Always bring the steak to room temperature, liberally salt and pepper. I don't bother oiling, as I always buy steak with the most marbling I can get, but I used to use grape seed oil. Grape seed oil is a high temperature oil like peanut oil, but doesn't cause anaphylaxis in my wife...

If the steak is a cheap thin cut (15mm or less) then I will make up a basting sauce/wash, generally pick some various bbq sauces, add some chilli, garlic, soy etc to taste, and then dilute about 50% with malt vinegar. I don't marinade the steak.

My preferred cut is a bone in rib eye or scotch fillet, that actually tastes like beef. Ideally I'd get this cut to 1", but if I'm after a real special steak I might get 1.5", 2" or even sometimes 3". I've cooked 3" thick T-bones.

If the steak is very thick, its very tricky to cook.

So, I generally use my Weber Q, its a Baby Q 120, but I do use the big 4 burner beefmaster if I have a crowd to feed. Make sure to pre-heat it for 10-20 minutes to get it super hot.

When doing a thin steak, the steak goes on the lid goes down. Sizzles for 30-60 seconds, then I flip, and wash the now grey exposed (and sanitized meat). This ensures you're not contaminating the wash with raw steak juices. size flip, wash, down, flip, sizzle wash etc.

The basic idea is a thin steak like that is going to lose so much moisture that I want to try and keep the exterior wet, and with a crappy steak, most of the flavour is coming from the sauce... by applying many layers of a thin sauce I seem to get a nice thick sticky coating.

Test with a thermapen and pull off at 55C, after putting some more wash on. And rest on a heated plate covered in tin foil. I pre-heat the plate on the wok burner on low.

The thicker the steak, the longer you have to rest. Helps to pre-heat the serving plates if you have a looong rest period!


Now, a thicker steak, is basically the same, but you turn the heat right down after searing both sides. Continue to flip and cook until the internal temp is where you like (me that's 55C which gives a perfect medium rare after resting)

A really thick steak, you only want to pre-heat the bbq to about 3/4 heat, but its the same as the thick steak, just takes a looong time. The main difference is you can't afford to super sear the outside or it'll be way over cooked by the time the core temperature is where you want it.

For something extra I'll normally use my BBQs wok burner to light a chunk of mesquite and then throw that on the grill with the steaks. The smoke just adds that steak house something.

My goal is basically to melt all the marbling throughout the steak, develop a brown crust and a red/pink interior. If the marbling is melted right, then the steak will look like its been stabbed and poked a bunch of times.

Re pepper on before or after cooking. I've tried both, and I find the pepper tasted much better "burnt".

The best steaks I've ever had have either been Texas BBQ, dunked in butter, smoked etc, but that's a different technique, or cooked over a mesquite grill. I lust after a pellet grill, and have thus far failed to master cooking steaks on a charcoal grill, but I'm still working on it



Dry Aged Ribeye

 

[Spiesy]

Just had such a nice rib eye.

Nothing crazy here: olive oil, cracked black pepper and ground sea salt to taste, rubbed in. Steak brought up to room temp. Grill heated to high (was around 150 under the hood). Cooked this inch and a bit rib eye for as long as seemed reasonable each side (one turn, maybe 4-5mins a side), rested on a pre-warmed plate wrapped in alfoil for 10mins. And served with a smear of Dijon, because that's how I roll.

So. Good.

 

[Black Devil Dog]

If you want something healthier, and to refrain from dragging your carbon footprint all over the planet have a look at this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2etKshkdMvA

Love mussels and couldn't believe how cheap they were in France back in 2010 compared to what we pay here. 10 euros for a freaking shitload!



The best cut of steak in my opinion, is rib on the bone, can't be beaten. I've butchered one or two (PTP) and they're still awesome.

Get a rib on the bone and season it to suit. I cook on med - high heat to get the outside crunchy and keep the inside juicy. I like my steaks medium and only turn them once, when the juice starts coming out after I've turned them, they're ready to devour.