steak, experiment #1

[afuna]

I bought a couple cheap steaks to experiment with -- tonight was a perfect opportunity because I was home alone and could just eat my failure. And PHP 330 (approx USD 7.50) didn't seem too much for two nice thick pieces of porterhouse. (What is porterhouse? I dunno. It was the only one that came thicker than an inch or so, though!)

How to Grill a Steak, a Complete Guide is a fantastic resource. I highly recommend it.

Two things that tripped me up though:

It says "salt well" which I took to mean "rub a handful of salt over both sides of the steak". I'll try to salt a little less well next time: too salty!

No hint how long to cook a medium rare steak for. I didn't have a thermometer, and it says cut in there to check -- fair enough, except I have no idea how to tell what a well-cooked steak should look like (note: well-cooked, not well-done!). So I ended up with something well-done rather than medium-rare.

Now the cut I got didn't have a lot of fat webbed through it, so I used a tip from Master Chef (hehehe) and poked bits of fat into the body of the steak.

That must have helped because, even though the steak was chewy, it was very tasty in the end.

Oh oh! Also I tried a red wine jus from a random recipe on the internet (more master chef influence hehehe): I lacked port, and I only had dried herbs, but we were making bulalo (beef marrow soup) for tomorrow, so I had a lot of tasty beef stock on hand :D I was concerned about overreducing so I stopped too early, and ended up with something a bit thin (sad).

Anyway, in the end, the steak was overcooked, overlarge, oversalted. But here's the thing: my hands smell amazing. They're slightly beefy, slightly oniony, slightly buttery, and all around awesome.

I didn't burn the steak though, and I didn't burn the sauce, and I didn't accidentally destroy any cookware. For a first time at making steak, this seems reasonable.


ETA: OH NO. I didn't notice the link at the bottom to an actual recipe, which says it should take about 10-15 minutes (to cook on low heat), and then 2 minutes on high. I overshot that by a fair few minutes /o\ I still have the other steak to play with -- I'LL GET IT NEXT TIME.

Comments

[pauamma]

tonight was a perfect opportunity because I was home alone and could just eat my failure

IOW, there wasn't a lot at steak if it didn't turn out exactly right the first time?

[afuna]

It was a lot of steak! But yeah, not too much, as long as I didn't have anything else for dinner *g*

[afuna]

...oh I just got the pun.

[pauamma]

SCORE!

[pinesandmaples]

I've always thought Mark Bittman's oven-grilled steak was an interesting technique.

[marahmarie]

Link? You linked to Afuna's OP, not to the oven-grilled thingy.

[pinesandmaples]

Monkeyballs. Here's the correct link!

[marahmarie]

Ah, thanks! :)

Reminds me, my mom's favorite way to oven-grill steak was to heat the oven to 500/broil, marinate/season the steak as desired, then when the oven was piping hot, put the steak inside right under the broiler on a pan she made out of two layers of tin foil that she actually folded up to work like a pan. She liked steak still mooing/running around the house, while I like it medium-rare, so she'd cook it to somewhere between those two temps and ah, it was so good.

(Problem with steak, the reason I don't eat it much anymore, is even filet Mignon is so tough nowadays - switching the cows over from corn to grass - or "grass/corn-finished" - what bs! - has made the meat stringy, grisly, and in many cuts, almost entirely flavorless. I haven't had a good steak outside of London Broil, which still cooks up OK but is not the juicy, meaty kind of steak I like to dig into, in maybe 5-7 years, and I've tried them all - Mignon, rib eyes, porterhouse, chuck - which used to cook up exceptionally well, especially on the BBQ, up until maybe 10 years ago - but I just can't win. So I've decided that grass-feeding must be the problem, and it sucks.)

[afuna]

Thank you -- saved the link! Bonus, it's a lot easier to turn on the oven than to fire up a grill *g*

[pinesandmaples]

Grills intimidate me. (Because I'm a wuss.)

[afuna]

They terrify me too /o\

[shadowspar]

Heh. Steak is one of those things everyone has their own "perfect" method for. Our method here is to crank the grill up as high as it can go, then give the steaks a quick sear of 45-60 seconds on each side, then around 4 minutes per side for medium. (IIRC... I've been veg for around five years now, so it's been a while since I cooked a steak. ^_^;)

[afuna]

Mmmm that sounds lovely. Thank you for the tip <3

[rainne]

We have Very Strong Opinions about steak in our house. Feel free to ignore the following:

We prefer rib-eyes, especially well-marbled ones, because they tend to be more tender. My mother seasons them by shaking some meat tenderizer, garlic salt and Lawry's Seasoned Salt on, not coated but fairly covered, and then also a large spoonful each of A-1 Sauce and Heinz 57 sauce. This to both sides.

For cooking, here's how I do it. First get your grill very hot. Then turn it down to medium heat and put the steaks on. I cook a one-inch-thick steak for three minutes, then turn it over and give it three more minutes. Then I turn it over again and give it a minute and a half to two minutes. Then I cut it open and check the inside.

For a tender steak, I like the inside to be a very light pink. It should not be red, (and definitely not bloody) but it should not be totally brown, either. If it's too bright red, turn it over again and give it a minute or so, checking every so often to see what color those cut edges are. Once you get them to a light pinkish color, they're done.

Overall, I would say never leave a steak on for less than six minutes (three to a side) or more than about nine minutes.

I actually put some pictures of my technique up on my now-defunct cooking blog, and you can see them here: http://thelousycook.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-we-cook-steak-at-our-house.html These were done with some bacon-wrapped filets, but the same technique applies with any cut of meat, IMO. I will try to remember to take pictures of the inside the next time I cook steak, so you can see what color I'm talking about on the inside. (We just had steak last night; I wish I'd known then that you were trying this on!)

[afuna]

Heee thank you, I am always up to listening to strong opinions about steak! :DDDD (in particular just the general idea of the timeframe is /o\ I definitely overcooked mine XDD)

[exor674]

Also, assuming the steak is okay quality, you can't really undercook it and not be able to eat it. You'll just have the beef be a little less cooked then you'd prefer.

[afuna]

Hm, that is a fair point, especially since I like my steak a bit on the rare side anyway.

[alexbayleaf]

On the subject of marbling and steak... I have found this to be, ahem, interesting because the US typically like their steak very well marbled while Australia likes it lean. In the US, marbling is largely achieved by grain-feeding beef in massive feedlots, using vast amounts of corn which is subsidised by the government, and therefore cheap. In Australia, OTOH, our cattle is more likely to be grazed (i.e. left to wander around and eat grass and stuff) which gives a leaner cut of beef, and supposedly better flavour (the better beef in the US is grass-fed and then sometimes corn-finished, or something, I think).

My point -- and I do have one -- is that if your local beef is lean, you might like to look for Australian recipes rather than American ones. Sites like http://taste.com.au/ might be a good start, but I'm sure you can use the Googles as needed.

[afuna]

Huh that's a very good point, and that explains why the steak I've been finding here has been nothing at all like what I've seen illustrated in recipes online. I think we also import some Australian beef (closer than the US anyway).

Thanks for the pointer!