well, wet things do brown, through caramelization. But you want the maillard reaction, which does require it to be dry.
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Indeed. However, the Food Labs perfect pan seared steak has a different method than mine, and I have not yet tried theirs.
But the pictures sure do look yummy.
Look, i read the article and i disagree with some things they said as well as agreeing with some others, now i can only talk from my experience as a chef and years of cooking. I am a skeptic when it comes to online food blogs and in that sense i may be biased, but ive seen a lot of the worst advice come from sites like this one (yes including serious eats) so i prefer to remain a skeptic and weigh their claims with my knowledge to understand what may be good advice and what may not.
Now on the matter of the aging
you are comparing articles that in essence are aiming at two different cooking methods oven + searing, against pan seared, now in an oven due to lack of direct contact with the heat source and heat that middle zone of grey overcooked steak is very easy to get and the temperature increase is slow thus no maillard reaction.
However when pan cooking (or even grilling) a steak the temperature at which the steak is cooking is much higher thus the added "aging" process is unnecessary and as i explained already detrimental to the overall "quality" of the steak.
i like medium well. but always cook with fat side down first so you can rend the fat and use the melted fat to spooon over your steak when you cook the other side.
You are right, however I can only go by my experience as well. I find the overnight drying makes for a wonderfully tasty crust and a nice tasting interior.
Meh. I probably need to get a better grade of meat anyways.
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Sous vide then sear otherwise I feel like whatever crust you form will turn wet.
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Put it out to get to room temp, preferably for a couple of hours. Pan on high heat. Pepper on one side, cook the other side for 2 minutes. Flip the steak, and put salt on the top. Cook for another 2 minutes and then sear the edges. Done.
That is why the fish sauce method noted above, give a much better approximation to dry age.
i've heard you sear it first and then the juices flow during the sous vide and bring the the flavor from the sear deeper into the meat. Maybe sear, sous vide, then sear again?
we'll see i'm about 24 hours in, will be dinner tomorrow. Have a nice Chianti Classico to go with it :)
i don't like spices on my steak, just clean, on the bbq (can add a little bit of rosemary) or in a frying pan with some butter with heat up high for a few mins, steak bleue. mmmmm. almost raw.
Done !
so i cooked a pretty large chuck steak sous vide at 130F for 3 days then seared in a pan.
I'm wondering if it will get more tender if i leave it in even longer... There were a couple spots slightly more tender than the rest, i think they were either slightly more or less cooked than the rest, i imagine if i cook it even longer the protiens are going to break down even more...
That looks nice.
From what I've read on food labs, if you sear and then sous vide you end up with more "medium/well done" transition layer than if you sous vide first.
Is that a chuck steak, or a chuck roast? If it's roast, I always braise mine in a bit of coca cola, beef broth paste, Worrcerstershire sauce, red wine, basalmic vinegar, and steak marinade. With carrots, a crap load of onions, and potato's.
@hvmkim you sound like my dad and uncle. They both take their steaks with no seasoning, same with their burgers. I've never understood how they could do that. I like to at least season mine with salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder. Then again, I get my steak from a commercial grocery store and not fresh from a butcher.
You need to adjust your cooking time to the cut of meat.
It is not so much the proteins but the sinew / collagen in meat make it tough hmmm and yum. So most cuts that work hard have lots of collagen. As collagen denatures/cooks it turns into gelatin.
So if you put a whole eye fillet in sous vide for 3 days it will probably not be very good as the texture will have been destroyed.
I can say form experience that I have had medium rare lamb/venison shanks that took 4.5 days to cook. They were bloody amazing.
So happy experimenting
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I think this is why my attempt at making Demi Glace failed miserably. I came away with some dank broth, but didn't get the gelatinization that I was supposed to, because I used marrow bones instead of veal knuckle bones.
I think my marrow bones didn't have enough collagen.
Still, dank ass broth though. Add a little roux or corn starch and water and instant perfect gravy.
Ok you add starch,
As long as there is a little bit of fat in there, you can also add lecithin which will emulsify your sauce.
but you could also look at this.
I plan to make this sauce excl. xanthum and pectin then add that to my beef stock and then reduce the dren out of it.
P.S.
I am not a vegetarian, but sometimes I eat their foodz
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if i don't leave my steak out to get to room temp it's cold in the middle after cooking :(
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I think the idea is to do both before and after and just not do it very heavy at all before. You just want a little bit of the maillard reaction to take place and then once in the sous vide when the juices are moving around, they're moving through this maillard surface and moving deeper into the meat bringing the flavor with it. After is when you do the heavier sear for the crust.
Isn't a chuck steak basically just a roast that's been cut into smaller pieces, just a matter of size?
i think my next steak is going to be chuck, and i'm going to sear it lightly before, put in the sous vide with a little EVOO and my new favorite type of wine, Nero d'avola and then do it at least 4 days, probably 5. This means i'll need 2 bottles of the wine because it won't stay good for 5 days after opening...