Steaks: Educate me

[Shinomaster]

This little steak was good. A grass fed strip steak from Australia of all places. Even though we have tons of Steer in Washington and Oregon, my local grocer feels a need to import beef from another continent? Oh well.. the oceans are effed anyways. It was tasty and full of flavor.
This one I seared in a plain stainless steel saute pan which I then used to make this killer mustard sauce. .

Pierre Franey - Recipes - Steak à la Moutarde de Meaux <----- GOOD

[rwsaunders]

My business partner and his wife raise grass-fed cattle East of Seattle, so I asked him for some beef 'tips" and he directed me to this website.

Retail Beef Cuts Poster

[BShow]

Man, I'm famished. It's snowing today and I may well fire up some coals tonight.

I chickened out and used a pan. It was cold, windy and snowy and I didnt feel like tending to the grill.

I stopped at the market on the way home Friday evening and picked up a steak for the wife and I. She likes filet best, so I got her a little medallion and picked a nice ribeye for myself. I salted both and let them sit in the fridge for a couple hours. During that time my wife decided she didnt want steak, but I was already committed. I threw them both in a hot pan for a couple minutes per side. The thinner ribeye came off the heat to rest and the filet went into the oven for a couple minutes to finish. Red in the middle is fine, but I dont like to see red on the sides.

Anyway, With preparation being nearly the same with just salt and pepper, the difference in flavor was staggering... The filet tasted like trash next to the flavorful ribeye. Surprisingly the ribeye was also every bit as tender. Ribeye... I'm a believer.

[Cookietruck]

yeah i like ribeye

on doing them in pan, use a good amount of butter so you can tilt the pan some and spoon that butter over the steak so you don't have the red on the sides. now you can eliminate that oven from the process.

[echelon_john]

...and leave them out for that couple of hours with the salt on them instead of in the fridge. starting at or near room temp makes a HUGE difference.

[BShow]

...and leave them out for that couple of hours with the salt on them instead of in the fridge. starting at or near room temp makes a HUGE difference.

I've heard conflicting reports on this. Can you (or anyone) talk about the how and why of this? Some say its an old wives tale and other swear its a necessary step.

[Cookietruck]

i imagine you can salt them in the fridge with no problems, but before you cook you want to let the steaks warm to close to room temp.

[jdp211]

Its absolutely an old wives tale that you need to leave meat out to "come to room temp." If you check the Serious Eats article I posted before, they break down exactly how insignificant the temp change is from leaving the meat on the counter.

[GrantM]

Its absolutely an old wives tale that you need to leave meat out to "come to room temp." If you check the Serious Eats article I posted before, they break down exactly how insignificant the temp change is from leaving the meat on the counter.

Agreed. The theory is it goes from fridge temp to room temperature after about 5 seconds on the grill

-g

[Cookietruck]

might be right, idk. i guess it could matter more or less depending on how you like the middle of the steak to be...and how thick it is
i don't even bother with steaks unless they are atleast 1.25" thick...

[BShow]

What is the argument for bringing it to room temp? Even cooking? How long out is too long on the counter? I'd imagine that after a while it starts to stink up the joint.

[echelon_john]

Wives tale? Maybe, I guess. But it makes a difference, especially for pan-frying. If you think about it, the whole goal of cooking a steak is to get the internal temperature where you want it, whether that's 130, 135, 140...

Ideally, you want to get the interior there without completely torching the exterior. So having the entire steak at, say, 70 when you start means significantly less time on the heat to get the interior to 130.

You balance this out by resting the meat on the other end, which is the other most important part of cooking/grilling beef. You're letting the temperature equalize through the piece of meat; the middle will continue to come up, as the outside cools down.

I have cooked lots of steaks both ways, and the ones that were at room temp to begin with cooked faster, more evenly, and made for more of the steak cooked perfectly, vs. overdone on the outside and underdone on the inside even after resting.

YMMV, of course.

And as far as timing, I wouldn't leave it out all day. But with thick steaks, I'll regularly take them out and salt them at 4:00 to grill at 8pm. Less in the summer heat.

[zetroc]

What is the argument for bringing it to room temp? Even cooking? How long out is too long on the counter? I'd imagine that after a while it starts to stink up the joint.

I'm in the room-temp-or-bust club. Maybe it's me, but I don't want my steak to be cold on the inside and normally pan-fry them in a cast iron skillet. They seem to cook more evenly.

My process, if I can't leave it out before dinner:

Remove steak from fridge, grind salt (and pepper if I feel like it) onto an oven-safe plate. Turn oven to 200-225. Put the steak on the plate and salt/pepper the top side. Let it sit in the oven for about 10 minutes while my skillet warms up (high heat). Steak comes out, gets patted dry on both sides, then goes into the skillet for minute and a half. Flip, then another minute. Rest 5 minutes, done.

Like John says, YMMV.

[ericpmoss]

Most Michelin-starred chefs on the web say to leave them out before cooking:

Blumenthal (a couple hours):
Ramsay (at least 20 minutes):
Blanc (>= 30min, 1 hour preferred):

That doesn't mean they are right. Maybe they only repeat what was beaten into them by their old wives. Or maybe they are right but not for the reasons they claim. Or, maybe they are wrong, but do something else that negates the difference. I only mention these guys because I *would* be surprised if they pointlessly recommended something that takes extra time, given that time is money in a restaurant.

[jdp211]

Here's the pertinent excerpt from the Serious Eats article. A bit wordy, sure, but definitely worth the read:
Myth #1: "You should let a thick steak rest at room temperature before you cook it."

The Theory: You want your meat to cook evenly from edge to center. Therefore, the closer it is to its final eating temperature, the more evenly it will cook. Letting it sit on the counter for 20 to 30 minutes will bring the steak up to room temperature—a good 20 to 25°F closer to your final serving temperature. In addition, the warmer meat will brown better because you don't need to waste energy from the pan to take the chill off of its surface.

The Reality: Let's break this down one issue at a time. First, the internal temperature. While it's true that slowly bringing a steak up to its final serving temperature will promote more even cooking, the reality is that letting it rest at room temperature accomplishes almost nothing.

To test this, I pulled a single 15-ounce New York strip steak out of the refrigerator, cut it in half, placed half back in the fridge, and the other half on a ceramic plate on the counter. The steak started at 38°F and the ambient air in my kitchen was at 70°F. I then took temperature readings of its core every ten minutes.

After the first 20 minutes—the time that many chefs and books will recommend you let a steak rest at room temperature—the center of the steak had risen to a whopping 39.8°F. Not even a full two degrees. So I let it go longer. 30 minutes. 50 minutes. 1 hour and 20 minutes. After 1 hour and 50 minutes, the steak was up to 49.6°F in the center. Still colder than the cold water comes out of my tap in the summer, and only about 13% closer to its target temperature of a medium-rare 130°F than the steak in the fridge.

You can increase the rate at which it warms by placing it on a highly conductive metal, like aluminum,* but even so, it'd take you at least an hour or so to get up to room temperature—an hour that would be better spent by, say, actively warming your steak sous-vide style in a beer cooler.

*protip: thaw frozen meat in an aluminum skillet to cut your thaw time in half!

After two hours, I decided I'd reached the limit of what is practical, and had gone far beyond what any book or chef recommends, so I cooked the two steaks side by side. For the sake of this test, I cooked them directly over hot coals until seared, then shifted them over to the cool side to finish.* Not only did they come up to their final temperature at nearly the same time (I was aiming for 130°F), but they also showed the same relative evenness of cooking, and they both seared at the same rate.

*Normally I'd start them on the cool side and finish them on the hot like in this recipe, but that method would have obscured the results of this test.

The cooking rate makes sense—after all, the room temperature-rested steak was barely any warmer on the inside than the fridged-steak, but what about the searing? The outer layer of the rested steak must be warm enough to make a difference, right?

It takes five times more energy to convert a single gram of water into steam than it does to raise the temperature of that water all the way from ice cold to boiling hot.

Here's the issue: Steak can't brown until most of the moisture has evaporated from the layers of meat closest to the surface, and it takes a hell of a lot of energy to evaporate moisture. To put it in perspective. It takes five times more energy to convert a single gram of water into steam than it does to raise the temperature of that water all the way from ice cold to boiling hot. So when searing a steak, the vast majority of energy that goes into it is used to evaporate moisture from its surface layers. Next to that energy requirement, a 20, 30, or even 40 degree difference in the temperature of the surface of the meat is a piddling affair.

The Takeaway: Don't bother letting your steaks rest at room temperature. Rather, dry them very thoroughly on paper towels before searing. Or better yet, salt them and let them rest uncovered on a rack in the fridge for a night or two, so that their surface moisture can evaporate. You'll get much more efficient browning that way.

[Tamu8104]

I don't let my steaks come to room temp but I'm also a big believer in the reverse sear and wood/charcoal. Sorry, I've done cast-iron and it's not the same. Ceramic smoker to 220-250, put the steaks on for 5-7 minutes per side depending on the thickness. Pull them off, lower the grate, and bring the smoker up to 650-700. Put them back on for 45 seconds per size and you have a beautiful medium rare steak.

[Cookietruck]

i usually let the steak sit out while i'm preparing all the other stuff, i don't stress about things so minute
then salt pepper and oil
out on the weber grille, fire hot enough that the oil and fat makes the flames flare up
usually give each side about 30 seconds with the lid off then lid on to kill the flames, about 3.5 mins per side total
we eat thick steaks and we eat them pretty much rare, i'm fine with really dark red in the center or black and blue...

in the cast iron...eh, not great but it'll do when it's really cold outside

[Shinomaster]

You guys let your steaks rest for 10 minutes? I can't say I always do that..maybe 4-5 min.. . but I try to heat up my serving plate in the oven so It stays warm. Wouldn't your steak get cold after 10 minutes?

[echelon_john]

Minimum 10min. Warm plate is fine.

You guys let your steaks rest for 10 minutes? I can't say I always do that..maybe 4-5 min.. . but I try to heat up my serving plate in the oven so It stays warm. Wouldn't your steak get cold after 10 minutes?

[joosttx]

I believe its about the quality of meat than the cut. Beef production has changed so much that the quality of meat has been affected. A ribeye 10-15 years ago was my choice of cut but today it has become too fatty unless you select a quality (read pasture fed) steer. At a restaurant I order a fillet. Linked is the best quality meat I can find.

Belcampo Meat Co.