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steak, experiment #1
Saturday, May 19th, 2012 09:13 pmI 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.
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.
