All for 'steak'

Meredith was away so I decided to try making a steak. I bought the smallest NY Strip steak I could find and followed a combination of many oven/pan cooking methods. I needed to keep the oven at 400 for the brussel sprouts so that limited me. I let the cast iron pan heat up in the oven (took a long time), I sprayed olive oil pam on the room-temp steak and sprinkled salt and pepper on it. After the pan was hot, I put it on the burner on hot for a bit longer. Then I put the steak on and seared each side for 1 minute without moving it. I put it in the oven with the pan. Most recipes said to cook four minutes on each side in the oven so that is what I did. When I took it out, I am glad I decided to quickly check the temp since it was still raw inside (not rare, raw!). So, I cheated a bit, I switched from the instant read thermometer to the one that has an in-oven temperature probe. Using that, and filliping one more time, I brought it up to about 135-140 for medium. It was a very thick piece so it wasn't too surprising that it took longer. I did let it rest for 2 minutes but it may have needed more to absorb more liquid.

Overall, it was the best steak I have ever cooked but that doesn't say much. It still was not amazing. I do not know what I am missing. Maybe it really does need butter? Since Meredith doesn't like steak, I do not imagine I will trying again anytime too soon but when I do, I'll investigate rubs. One nice thing about cooking my own piece is that I knew where all the fat was starting out so I could easily cut it off.

I also had roasted brussel sprouts. Always a favorite of mine. However, I got a bit nervous and took them out a tad too soon for my taste even though it was probably the right time for most people (I like all of my cooked veggies overcooked apparently)

This was not a very successful meal. My goal was to make a good (but small) steak and some roasted beets. I let the beets roast for a while, maybe 40 minutes at 450. That may have been too much, but was going well. Then I tried to cook the steak like I did before. I bought a small (8 oz) NY strip steak. I put it on a really, really, really hot cast iron pan. It started pumping the apartment with smoke, but I kept going. Then, I threw it into the oven after the flip. This pumped the oven full of smoke, but also added a lot of heat to the oven, and being that the pan was very hot, it probably added a lot of radiant heat.

Well, in the time it was in the oven, the steak got a bit overcooked, but the beets BURNED. They tasted awful. Even the ones that were less burned tasted like smoke, The steak was okay, but a bit overcooked and not all that good (even though I let it sit to reabsorb juices, etc). Also, the apartment had a 4 foot visibility from the smoke. Once it started smoking, I took off the fire alarm so that was one less thing to worry about.

I made steak and roasted cauliflower. The steak was an 11oz NY strip. I rubbed a bit of olive oil on it and then used salt and pepper. I did it on a hot cast-iron grill pan. I did about 6 minutes on the fist side and 5 on the other. I was aiming for medium. See the photo below. It came out about right but I think the outside could have been a bit more cooked with this redness inside. I wonder if I should have used a hotter pan (this was around setting 8 on the induction). After it was done, I covered it with aluminum foil and let it rest for 5 minutes.

I think this is the best steak I have ever made, though I have most certainly had better. It was pretty juicy; not overcooked and tender. I'd definitely try making it again.

I also made roasted cauliflower. I used the curry cauliflower recipe but with a mixture of chili powder and cayenne (with a bit of olive oil)

Meredith has been talking about this soup for a while so I finally decided to give it a try. First of all, I am not totally sure what it is supposed to be called so I'll stick with my boring name (but it will always be Meredith's Soup in my book).

As far as following recipes goes, I guess I was pretty close (I even used real garlic when called and actually grated it as best I could)

The soup was incredibly good. Lots of flavor and complexity. It was also pretty hearty as a meal given the egg and the beef. It would actually probably be fine with ground beef in the future and maybe (just maybe!) lentils (not really sure)

I was debating trying to lower the olive oil and I still may try to do so but honestly, I didn't think that 1/8 cups == 2 Tbsp (plus whatever else from the rest) was really_that_ bad.

I would definitely do it again. And I imagine soon enough, I will be adding it to my recipe book once I tweak it to be where I want it.

2014-03-12 Update: A few notes having eaten this for lunch two days later. The first is that I shouldn't have added the croutons for lunch until I was about to eat. They just disintegrated. The second is that it was a bit....for lack of a better word... udgy cold. Too much oil and a strange texture. I'll heat it up next time.

We made a sous-vide steak on salad. We were going to make two small steaks and something else, but we weren't very hungry so we just did the steak and a salad.

We sous-vide cooked it like Valentine's Day but since this was sirloin, we did it as 57°C (134.6°F¹) which is hotter than for tenderloin but makes sense for sirloin. We set the slow cooker on High and set the tolerance as low as possible. I didn't super watch it but I know the temperature fluctuated a bit.

Also, I got the water to the right temp and then added the steak. This brought the temperature down a bunch and got messed up. Next time, I will try to get it to temperature with the steak in there already.

It cooked for about 2 hours. I then topped it with a bit of oil, salt and pepper, and then seared it.

They came out ok. A bit overcooked given how thin they were. And they were just not a good of a cut of meat. Also, there was some liquid from the steaks which I used a dressing on the salad.

The controller only work in °C ↩

While we've done sous vide before with my home-brew fridge controller but it was a pain in the ass and didn't work well. We recently bought a controller since it was on sale.

Anyway, we cooked two Delmonico cut steaks. We did it for about 1.5 hours at 136°F (easily exactly done with the controller). I then seared them on a super-hot pan.

They came out pretty good, but I was not really thinking it through when I bought the steaks. It was a really high-end cut but it was also very fatty. We spent most of the time eating it cutting away (or spitting out) fatty parts.

The sous vide process went well but the steak itself was just not for us. I am looking forward to doing more things with it (but leaner).

We also made calabacitas by just cooking some onions in butter, and then adding a chopped zucchini and two yellow squashes.

The only seasonings with used on both the steak and the calabacitas salt and pepper.

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The original plan was to do something of a Meredith meal with some sous-vide steak too but we ended up not being very hungry so we just had the steak.

We went with a sirloin. Our favorite of sous-vide steaks was the tenderloin, our least favorite was the Delmonico. This one seemed pretty lean and was also a good price.

It was pretty good. The problem was it needed salt. I forgot it until the steak was already in the bag. I tried to add some salt but since it was in the bag, only some got salted. Those were the better parts. I do not know the pros and cons of salting before or after cooking, but either way, it could have used more.

We made steak with chimichurri. The chimichurri was from The Kitchn (LOCAL ¹). Meredith prepped it ahead following the same closely except using lemon instead of lime since we didn't have it.

I made the steak with the sous-vide using the same temp as 2016-07-01, that is 136°F for about an hour to an hour and half. This time, I salted it before since we missed it last time. I then seared it on the cast iron with ghee and a bit more salt.

Finally, we roasted some brussel sprouts at 400°F for 30 min or so with some fox point.

I liked the chimichurri a lot and I think it worked really well on steak. But I also think the steak was a bit tough. It could have been cooked at a bit lower and/or less time on the sear. It was still good, but could be better. It was also not the highest quality level of steak, so that may help in the future.

U: guest, P: name of my Boston Terrier, all lower case ↩

KitchenKatalog

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