Steak cooking advice

TheDean said:
Ehh? So you want to take the moisure away?
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The point is it doesn't take the moisture away, it takes the water away. The moisture and juiciness comes from the fat within the muscle breaking down during cooking :). After all, water itself tastes of **** all and the water moisture within a dry hung steak is negligible. You need to separate water moisture from fat moisture.

Still, most steaks I cook do not use this salting method and I don't think it's necessary with the right piece of beef, as you say.
 
Robbie G said:
The point is it doesn't take the moisture away, it takes the water away. The moisture and juiciness comes from the fat within the muscle breaking down during cooking :). After all, water itself tastes of **** all and the water moisture within a dry hung steak is negligible. You need to separate water moisture from fat moisture.

Still, most steaks I cook do not use this salting method and I don't think it's necessary with the right piece of beef, as you say.
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If you have to salt to take 'water' away from the meat, you need to find yourself another butcher because the meat has not been hung correctly and/or for long enough ;)
 
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Steak should be cooked at room temperature if possible. So take it out the fridge 5-10mins before cooking and leave to stand. I only pepper my steaks and I heard that you should not salt a steak before cooking or during cooking. I also never put the frying pan too hot and keep turning it constantly, so that you can cook it through without crusting it.

I like to fry my steak with some mushrooms and a tiny bit of oil, top with some pepper sauce.

If you want to cook a steak on the bbq (or braai) the key is that the coals should not be too hot, you should be able to hold your hand over the bbq at grill level for 5 seconds. Then keep turning it constantly.
 
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^ I'd say get it out of the fridge at least half an hour before cooking. It won't be at room temperature on the inside after five minutes. Also I thought the turning it thing was to keep the juices even throughout the steak. I'm sure that's what Heston says. A crust on steak is a good thing and turning it won't really change the crust that develops.

TheDean said:
If you have to salt to take 'water' away from the meat, you need to find yourself another butcher because the meat has not been hung correctly and/or for long enough ;)
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Absolutely. At least it seems that you finally understand the application and principle :p. In the article I linked to, it even says in the url: 'how-to-turn-cheap-choice-steaks-into-gucci-prime-steaks'. Not having seen a picture of the OP's steak and not having visited his butcher, clearly I'm not going to know how good his butcher is.
 
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Robbie G said:
The point is it doesn't take the moisture away, it takes the water away. The moisture and juiciness comes from the fat within the muscle breaking down during cooking :). After all, water itself tastes of **** all and the water moisture within a dry hung steak is negligible. You need to separate water moisture from fat moisture.

Still, most steaks I cook do not use this salting method and I don't think it's necessary with the right piece of beef, as you say.
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I agree with your points in general - and fat is indeed the most important factor, but are you sure about the water? Water would be stored in the cells within the muscle fibres, which would follow the process as described in one of the links above:

•Immediately after salting the salt rests on the surface of the meat, undissolved. All the steak's juices are still inside the muscle fibers. Searing at this stage results in a clean, hard sear.
•Within 3 or 4 minutes the salt, through the process of osmosis, will begin to draw out liquid from the beef. This liquid beads up on the surface of the meat. Try to sear at this point and you waste valuable heat energy simply evaporating this large amount of pooled liquid. Your pan temperature drops, your sear is not as hard, and crust development and flavor-building Maillard browning reactions are inhibited.
•Starting at around 10 to 15 minutes, the brine formed by the salt dissolving in the meat's juices will begin to break down the muscle structure of the beef, causing it to become much more absorptive. The brine begins to slowly work its way back into the meat.
•By the end of 40 minutes, most of the liquid has been reabsorbed into the meat. A small degree of evaporation has also occurred, causing the meat to be ever so slightly more concentrated in flavor.
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So yes, there will be some evaporation of water, but not a great deal. Surely ou can't possibly have meat without any water to start with either, even if it's been hung for months!

Either way, I can't see why you would ignore this method in cooking steak. Yes, you'll struggle to produce a steak as good as Goodman/Hawksmoor at home using this method, but unless you've got a josper grill pumping out 500C heat in your kitchen (and hopefully an enormous extractor fan) you're never going to be able to create a perfect steak. What you can do is do your best with what you can control - in this case preperation. So yes, go and reject the science of cooking if you wish - but if you want to get close to perfection at home you would be wise to investigate further.

groen said:
If you want to cook a steak on the bbq (or braai) the key is that the coals should not be too hot, you should be able to hold your hand over the bbq at grill level for 5 seconds. Then keep turning it constantly.
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Why would you want to cook a steak on a barbecue at a moderate heat? Unless you're cooking something ridiculously thick, surely you want it as hot as possible, otherwise it'll either be medium-well done with a crust or medium-rare and grey?
 
mangobreeder said:
look it does not really matter whether or not you salt the steak or not. The actual moisture drawn out by the salt is negligible, compared to its flavour enhancing qualities.

Steaks do not automatically turn into leather because you salt them, they turn into leather because you overcook them
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I agree with this chap.

My preferred method:
Oil both sides of the steak and season one side immediately before cooking with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper (gives a nice crust on the top of the steak). Like Robbie G, I prefer a flat bottomed pan (cast iron in my case - gets really hot :cool:). Couple of minutes on each side for a 1" steak and rest for at least 5 minutes to give a lovely rare steak. De-glaze the pan with a generous glug of good whisky and pour over the steak.
Serve with boiled new tatties (Jersey Royals are great at the moment), fried mushrooms and char-grilled asparagus.
 
oli collett said:
I agree with your points in general - and fat is indeed the most important factor, but are you sure about the water? Water would be stored in the cells within the muscle fibres, which would follow the process as described in one of the links above:



So yes, there will be some evaporation of water, but not a great deal. Surely ou can't possibly have meat without any water to start with either, even if it's been hung for months!
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Well I never said there wouldn't be any water, I said 'negligible' which was intended to convey the fact that there'd be far less water in a well hung piece than your average cheap supermarket cut. Obviously there'd still be some water (unless it had been sat in a freeze drier for a week), just far less.

Secondly, I'm not talking about water loss through evaporation, I never even mentioned the word. The salt draws the water to the surface at which point you pat it dry:

Steamy Kitchen said:
And now 1.25 hours – see all that water? You can also see that there’s still salt on the surface of the steak.

The next step is to discard the water, rinse the steak really well to rid of all the salt. Pat very dry. Very very dry with clean paper towels so that absolutely no moisture is left on the steak.
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Bottom line is that you don't want lots of water in your steak.
 
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TheDean said:
I personally wouldn't do the salting as it would draw the moisture from the steak, and that is exactly the opposite thing you want to do.
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Agree 100%, was about to say the same thing.

Absolutely you want to season the steak, but do that just before you cook it, don't leave it with lots of salt on it for ages!
 
Que Alton Brown;

Part 2 has the cooking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiQ0VOJmCbg

Part 1 has some stuff about beef: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KrjeJDNKUA

Jamie Oliver uses a similar method, though stripped down a bit.

I also popped open my copy of Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavour by Hervé This, which has a section on salting steaks. This guy is the daddy of scientific cooking. Without going in to too much detail he argues that Osmosis will have little to no effect due to the collagen that surrounds the muscle fibres, that a sensible amount of salt draws out a negligible amount of water over time (though it draws moisture out of some meats faster than others) and that most of the salt is washed out of the meat during cooking. To get a noticeable effect you need to over-salt the meat.
 
boxman2000 said:
Agree 100%, was about to say the same thing.

Absolutely you want to season the steak, but do that just before you cook it, don't leave it with lots of salt on it for ages!
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Nononono, when you're salting a steak you want to either do it immediately before you sear it or salt it well in advance (4h+ uncovered and in the fridge), in between it gets all wet and not so good but the moisture will get drawn back into the meat if you give it time. A long salting seasons the meat internally where a short season can't, it also breaks down protein in the inside of the meat somewhat.

@OP

The best way to cook a steak is to get a nice cast iron pan(retains heat real well, dirt cheap, literally the best ever), heat the hell out of it, oil the meat, not the pan (better sear), 1.5 min on each side without fiddling with your meat (assuming your steak is at least an inch thick), finish in the oven to your desired level of doneness with compound butter.

Remember to always always rest your meat for at least half of the overall cooking time so the juices redistribute from the center of the steak because the pressure from the heat drives it to the center and when you cut it open it gushes all over your plate rather than your mouth.

Cuts like sirloin with a strip of fat up the back really appreciate bing seared a little on the edge where the fat is before you go to town on the rest of the steak because the fat wont really render that well otherwise and rendered fat=flavour.
 
A quick word on resting your steak before eating.

I was told once that a steak takes ten minutes from the start of cooking until it's ready for eating. So, if you cook it for 1 1/2 mins each side you should rest it for 7 mins; if you cook it for 2 mins each side rest for 6 mins etc.

If you cook it for any more than 3 mins each side, don't bother letting it rest - you've already ruined it :p
 
Imma just come hop in now.
I've done many things to a a beautiful piece of meat to become a steak.

I don't season the steak at all until near the end or at the very end, pinch of salt and pepper to finish it, flat pan frying it with a few tsp of oil (olive oil isn't in my great favor since it adds an additional taste).

a steak will take longer to cook with more blood right? so if i had a big chunka meat, i slap it in a bowl of water for the night in the fridge and take it out, pat it dry and proceed the usual. I found this sometimes able to make it softer too! (less blood = less cooking time = less leather like)

but hey, that's my verdict
 
You what, why, how..... Mental.

You should be banned from this forum.

Blood, soaked in water over night. What the hell. Cooking time hasn't got anything to do with blood.
 
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