In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto demonstrates how to make the best steak at home. When it comes to cooking steak, patience is key. From browning the meat to letting it rest, your steaks will never be sad and dry again.
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00:00I'm Frank Proto, professional chef and culinary instructor,
00:02and today I'm gonna show you the best way to make steak,
00:05Frank style.
00:06We're talking how to go from a sad, gray, flabby piece
00:10of meat to a perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked,
00:14happy piece of steak.
00:15This is Steak 101.
00:19My perfect steak is a really nice marbled piece of meat
00:23with some fat in it.
00:24It's seasoned and crusty on the outside,
00:26and it's soft and juicy in the middle.
00:28There's two secrets to getting your steak right,
00:31seasoning it properly,
00:32and then cooking it to the proper temperature.
00:34I want you to take a second, relax, be patient,
00:38season your meat right, and you're gonna get it right.
00:44In front of me, I have a beautifully marbled
00:46New York strip steak that's cut to about an inch and a half.
00:49This cut and this size is where you're gonna get
00:52the maximum amount of juicy inside and crunchy outside.
00:55You're not gonna find that in the shrink wrap,
00:58in the shelf, or in the cooler.
00:59You have to go to the butcher
01:00and ask them to cut it this size.
01:02Most butchers will not charge you extra
01:04to custom cut it for you.
01:06Before we cook this, we wanna season it,
01:08and I'm gonna show you what I feel is proper seasoning.
01:11I like to start out with salt and pepper.
01:13I go light on the pepper.
01:15You'll notice that I'm seasoning high up.
01:17When I season higher,
01:18I get a better dispersion of the pepper.
01:21Don't forget the top and the sides of your steak, please.
01:24I like to go light on the pepper,
01:25because it tends to burn,
01:26so I'm not gonna put too much on.
01:28I just want a little bit of that flavor there.
01:29And then I have kosher salt here.
01:31People will say I use table salt.
01:32I think that that's horrible.
01:34I think the table salt is too salty, believe it or not.
01:36So I get a nice handful of salt, go up high,
01:40and I wanna get a beautiful kind of like,
01:42it looks like a lightly snow-covered field.
01:45Make sure that we get all the sides.
01:47I'm gonna season the outside generously,
01:49but none of that salt gets inside the steak.
01:52So I'm gonna get a nice salty crust on the outside.
01:55The inside is basically unseasoned,
01:56so when I take that bite of the crusty outside
01:59and the juicy inside, and it mixes in my mouth,
02:02the seasoning turns out perfect.
02:03It's not gonna be salty.
02:05I tend to be a minimalist
02:06when it comes to seasoning my steak.
02:08I don't really do any rubs or marinades with my steak.
02:10For me, I spent the money on the steak.
02:12I wanna taste the meat.
02:13Steak is seasoned.
02:14It's time to cook.
02:16I have a cast iron pan here, and I have it on medium heat.
02:22I am making sure I have everything I need
02:24within arm's reach.
02:25There's a lot of differing opinions
02:27about what temperature the steak should be
02:29when you put it in the pan.
02:30I feel like if I let my steak sit out
02:31for 15, 20 minutes before I cook it,
02:34that's the perfect amount of time.
02:35Once we start cooking the steak, everything happens quickly.
02:38I have a little vegetable oil in my pan.
02:41I'm letting it heat up in medium-high heat,
02:43and then I'm gonna wait until I start to see
02:45little whisks of smoke,
02:47and then I can put my steak in the pan.
02:48You can use cast iron.
02:50You can use stainless steel.
02:51It's all up to you.
02:52The only thing that's gonna change
02:53is the amount of heat that you have on the pan.
02:56My steak has been sitting over here.
02:57If there's any moisture there,
02:59I like to get it off of the steak.
03:01Moisture is the enemy of browning.
03:04I'm gonna drop it in the pan away from me
03:06so I don't get splattered with oil.
03:10I see smoke here, and that's okay.
03:12I just don't wanna see billowing smoke.
03:14If I start to see the smoke really getting
03:17and overtaking the room, I have to control my temperature,
03:19lower my heat, and all I really wanna do
03:22is start to get this caramelized on the one side.
03:24Most novice cooks start to get nervous.
03:27They start moving things around.
03:29Take your time.
03:29It's gonna take at least three or four minutes on one side.
03:32After a few minutes, if you wanna check on your progress,
03:35you can always just lift it lightly
03:37and see where you're going.
03:38We really don't have any color yet,
03:40so I let it go and get some color on it.
03:43The only thing I might do is move it around in the fat
03:46so that the fat is touching the bottom of the steak
03:49so that we get nice browning on that side.
03:52It's good three or four minutes on this side.
03:55One thing that most people neglect is this nice fatty side,
03:58and that fat cap has a lot of flavor,
04:00but you don't wanna eat fat that is not cooked enough.
04:03You want the fat to kinda get crispy
04:05because fat that's just warm
04:06is like chewing a fatty beef bubblegum,
04:08and you don't want that.
04:09I'm just gonna hold it on the fat cap side
04:12before I put it down on the opposite side.
04:14If you look at this side of the steak,
04:15it has a nice brown crust.
04:16It's not burned, and that salty crust
04:19is what's gonna make our steak delicious.
04:21And at this point, while the steak is cooking,
04:24I can get my aromatics ready.
04:25I just got maybe two or three cloves of garlic,
04:28and this is what you see chefs do in the restaurants.
04:30I just want to break the garlic
04:32so that we get some of that garlic scent.
04:34It adds flavor, but it doesn't overpower it.
04:37I have some sprigs of thyme.
04:39The butter goes in the pan now.
04:41The reason we don't add the butter at the beginning
04:43is because it'll totally burn,
04:45and it'll be black butter, not brown butter.
04:47Brown butter has really nice flavor.
04:50I'm gonna lower it to a medium heat,
04:52start taking my butter, and start basting my steak.
04:56Sometimes you'll see there's bald spots
04:58or light spots on your steak.
05:00Baste in that spot.
05:02That's what this is for, not only for flavor,
05:05but it's gonna aid in browning on those bald spots.
05:08It smells delicious.
05:10My butter is nice and foamy.
05:11You'll see that I'm tilting my pan.
05:13My steak is not sitting in the butter.
05:16The butter is down at the bottom,
05:17and I just baste as I go.
05:20You can see that my steak is nice and golden brown,
05:23and that's what I want.
05:26I'm gonna temp my steak now.
05:27A lot of people will complain,
05:29you should never stick meat with anything sharp.
05:31All the juices are gonna flow out.
05:32As a great man once said, it's a steak, not a balloon.
05:35A couple of pokes with a thermometer
05:37is not gonna ruin our steak.
05:39Right now, at the center point,
05:41we're at about 100 degrees,
05:43and you'll notice that when I take a temp,
05:45I'm not taking it on the ends.
05:47I'm taking it right in the center of the steak.
05:49I'm not sticking into the fatty parts.
05:51Fat gets hotter faster than the meat does.
05:55For a finished medium steak,
05:56I want it to be about 140 degrees.
06:00Give it like another minute,
06:01and then I'm gonna take it out and let it rest.
06:03Let's take our steak out.
06:05It's golden brown on all sides.
06:07It's nice and crispy.
06:08We have a nice crust on it.
06:10We're gonna take it and put it on our rack to rest.
06:13We don't want the steak to sit in the juices.
06:15If it sits in its own juices,
06:17it's gonna steam in its juices.
06:18When the steak rests, the juices can drip off.
06:21We have to let it rest for about five to seven minutes.
06:24If you don't let it rest,
06:25your steak is gonna be bleeding everywhere.
06:27All the juices are gonna run out,
06:28and you're gonna have a dry steak.
06:29The other concept I like to talk about
06:31is carryover cooking.
06:33Even though it's on a resting rack,
06:34it continues to cook, right?
06:36And usually it cooks up about five more degrees.
06:38So if I want it to be about 145,
06:41I'm gonna take it out at 140 and let it rest.
06:43So we're gonna give this about five to seven minutes
06:45to rest, and then we're gonna slice it
06:47and plate it up and eat it.
06:49My steak's been resting, but before I cut it,
06:53I wanna talk about a couple of tools that I have.
06:55This is just a standard plastic cutting board.
06:57It's got two separate sides you can work off of.
06:59This is a flat side,
07:01and the flat side is mainly for chopping.
07:03But what most people don't know
07:04is that the other side has this groove,
07:06and this is called a juice groove.
07:08It's actually for slicing meat.
07:09If any juice flows off of your meat,
07:11it gets caught here and it doesn't go all over your table.
07:14And then I have a slicing knife.
07:15You can tell a slicing knife
07:18because it has these little scallops on the side.
07:19A slicing knife has these scallops
07:21so that the meat won't stick to the knife.
07:23Without further ado, let's slice our steak.
07:25I got a nice plate.
07:26Now, with certain cuts of steak,
07:28you have to be really mindful of how you slice it.
07:30With a cut like maybe a flank steak or a skirt steak,
07:33there is a very visible grain,
07:35a grain in which the muscle grows.
07:37And with those steaks, you wanna cut across the muscle
07:39so the muscle fibers get really small.
07:42Whereas with a New York strip,
07:44it's kind of the top of the animal.
07:45It doesn't get used a lot.
07:47So it doesn't have a very defined grain.
07:49So you have to worry less about how you slice it.
07:51I'm just gonna slice it so that it looks good on the plate.
07:53So I'm gonna go at a nice steep angle.
07:56It's got some nice red juiciness going on.
07:59Love it.
08:00I use my knife as my spatula
08:02and I'm just gonna kind of fan it out a little.
08:04We can see that it's still nice and juicy on the inside.
08:06Look at that.
08:07It's a little more on the medium rare side, but that's fine.
08:10Just a few thyme leaves around.
08:12And then I have a nice coarse sea salt.
08:14This is just to give it a little crunchiness
08:17If you want, you can add a sauce now
08:18or have a sauce on the side.
08:20And this is how I cook the perfect steak at home.
08:23Time to taste.
08:24Let me get a nice slice off of the end over here.
08:28It cuts super easy.
08:33It's juicy on the inside,
08:35but it's got that really nice salty crust on the outside.
08:38Because I cooked it medium, it has a nice chew to it.
08:41It's not rubbery.
08:42It's not bouncy.
08:43I'm not sitting there for a half hour
08:45trying to get through it.
08:46Cooking steak can be intimidating,
08:47but with proper technique and practice,
08:49you can be just like a restaurant chef.