Steak sacralidge: how to best prepare well-done meat?

Cafe Society
41

That article makes no sense. It says both that marinating doesn’t tenderize meat and that over-marinating can make it too mushy. It says a marinade will make your meat taste worse, so instead you should apply the same flavors in a drier form, to make them stronger. What?

I almost never marinate meat. I like meat flavor. But I do have a nice Indian marinated lamb recipe, and I’ve been known to marinate a London Broil. Both of those preparations certainly flavor more than the surface of the meat, although for the lamb, I like to include some big chunks that won’t be flavored all the way through, for the contrast. And I’ve never hand any trouble creating a “crust” on my marinated meat, in fact, the residual ginger fibers of the Indian marinade add a nice crunchiness and heft to the crust.

42

Sorry, bulgogi and carne asada are too delicious for me to ever consider giving up marinated meat.

43

You don’t have to sear it but it’s much better if you do. I’ve never had a problem ending up med-rare. Cook the steak at ~129/130 for 1-3 hours. Meanwhile get a cast iron skillet as hot as you can. Take the steak out of the pouch and dry it on some paper towels. If it’s not really dry on the outside, this won’t work Put a drop or two of oil on the pan and plunk in the steak. Cook it for at most 2 minutes per side (I go for 30 seconds to 1 minute, tops. More than two and you begin cooking it.) and then eat (you don’t need to let a sous vide steak rest)

44

Only salt gets deep into the meat. Everything else is at the surface. For more on why, visit Salting And Brining: Flavorize, Moisturize, Tenderize. Also mushy doesn’t mean tender. Tender meat is good. Try leaving meat in a papaya or pineapple based marinade too long, and then you’ll find how unappealing mushy meat is. I remember a Next Iron Chef contestant, Ming Tsai, getting severely dinged for doing this (pineapple marinade) on one of his challenges. All the judges dinged his mushy meat.

Lastly, I said it impedes crust formation. For a thick cut, like most london broils, there should be time for the marinade to evaporate and a crust to form. Thinner cuts, like many pork chops, however, might not spend enough time over the heat to overcome the evaporation and develop a crust before being done. This can be partially overcome by using sugar (or other natural sweeteners) in the marinade, as they brown easier and faster. Residual oil from the marinade will also speed browning, but only once the other liquids have evaporated.

45

[Archer]Are we seriously not saying ‘phrasing’ anymore?[/Archer]

46

I don’t care about your theory, as I have actual experience to back my opinion. I have taken my London broil, and carefully cut the center of the meat away from the exterior, and eaten just the exterior to determine whether it tasted of marinade. It did.

Perhaps the ingredients I use are different from what Amazing Ribs uses. But as I said, I have conducted this precise experiment, and I’ve repeated it on a few occasions. And as I mentioned above, when I marinate my butterflied leg of lamb, I intentionally leave some pieces large enough that the center won’t be imbued, but all the smaller pieces are completely seasoned.

Also, I have never used a marinade that didn’t have some sugar, and in my experience, the sugar on the surface of the meat aids formation of a brown “crust” more than the moisture interferes. It is true that I’ve never marinated a thin cut, like a pork chop.

I have found that you need to be careful with salt. I like a bit less salt than most people – kosher meat tastes too salty to my palate. It is painfully easy to over-salt meat if you brine it or add salt to a marinade. I’ve also found that brining poultry significantly interferes with the skin getting crisp and delicious – it ends up tough and leathery, instead. I never include salt, and try not to use too many salty ingredients (like soy sauce) when I marinate. And I’ve stopped trying to brine.

47

Bought two giant New York Strips yesterday. Sous vide 2 hours @129 F, an intense 20 second sear, and possibly the best meat I’ve ever eaten. Impressed my gf (which is not easy).

48

Hmmm. Maybe i should look into these things…

49

Leave his gf alone.

Would you say the immersion sous vide gadgets work as well as the self-contained tubs? Much better for counter space.

50

I don’t know about immersion versus tubs because I’ve only used the immersion, but I love it. I have the Anova Culinary precision cooker with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, because why wouldn’t you get the one with Wi-Fi? It’s great for steaks, chicken, pork, the salmon was sublime, and the job it does on eggs is amazing. It has made my life exponentially better. I’m planning a leg of lamb as soon as I get a chance.

I can finally make my wife a well done steak without ruining it.

51

That’s the same one we have. A chef friend was in on the Kickstarter for the unit and he urged me to get one the second it became available commercially.

52

Around here at least, Costco also has prime cuts, and they are labeled as such. (Costco is actually my favorite place for beef in terms of price and quality. In fact, that’s pretty much the only reason I have a Costco membership–the steaks and the olive oil.)

53

Costco has excellent meat in my area, too. It’s the only place I buy steaks now (that I’m not paying someone else to cook). But their marinades are not as good as the local Vallarta supermarket’s.

54

Its funny how the membership clubs has the best steaks.

We often get steaks at Sam’s Club. They’re much thicker than what you find at the grocery.

55

I read a comparison once that said the self-contained tubs were marginally better at even heating, circulation, etc if you’ve got a lot of food in the tub, but not nearly better enough to warrant the price difference and the counter-space difference. The article said that unless you’re running a restaurant, the immersion ones were by far the better value.

56

Every well-done steak I’ve had from a restaurant sure tasted like it was marinaded, with the flavorings permeating the meat. And I tend to cook well done at home (as cheap beef it cheap), and find the marinade helps.

I would not assume it would cook off–the water might, but I would expect the other stuff to stay. And that matches my experience.

57

I have a Sansaire (sadly, 220 VAC, so I will have to buy another) and a Bluetooth cooking thermometer with four probes (iGrill2).

Neither the Sansaire nor the the iGrill are NIST calibrated, so I don’t which one is correct, but the following experiment was pretty good for me (I should create a Google spreadsheet to share):

Boneless, skinless chicken breast of unknown weight, four pieces, starting with room temperature water of unknown volume in a tamale steaming pot of unknown volume (it’s a big pot, and the water level with the chicken was about a centimeter below the max. fill line of the Sansaire).

All four probes of the iGrill! Placement wasn’t scientific, but I tried to keep two of them deep and two of them shallow, and about 90° apart from each other.

Until the water hit 60°C the probes tended to record similar but not identical temperatures (0.1°C precision, unknown accuracy). The probe close to the outlet was consistently a degree or two above the coldest probe.

If I throw out the pre-60° data, all four probes recorded temperatures within ±0.6°C of each other. I only calculated maximum differential, but using the raw data I suppose I could perform a more detailed analysis. For my purposes (entertaining myself with the new iGrill at the time) it was good enough.

Things I would do differently if I were willing to sacrifice my expensive probes and tamale steamer:

[ul]
[li]Use known volumes of water and carefully controlled starting temperature.[/li][li]Weigh the chicken and record the starting temperature.[/li][li]Get another iGrill and four more probes, having 8 total.[/li][li]Drill holes into my tamale pot and array the probes at different depths and distances from the wall.[/li][/ul]

But, yeah, no, I probably won’t do any of that, unless… maybe… I decide to build an automated full grain home brew system.

58

I heart the Dope.

59

How about pepper steak? That’s pretty tasty well-done.