Saturday Night

We were both feeling a little protein deficient recently, so I decided to make some steak for dinner. Since we don't eat beef all that often, and steak even more rarely, I thought some good USDA Prime beef (as people repeat endlessly on TV shows, Prime is less than 2% of all beef graded by the USDA - the best beef most supermarkets stock is one grade lower, Choice) would be a tasty move.*
Now, I don't normally like America's Test Kitchen recipes. Their exact proportions, instructions, and hints strike me as just so much paint by the numbers. I like my food to seem like food rather than a chemistry experiment, and I'm willing to give up some exactitude to get there. In any case, it always baffles when they measure out salt or pepper into a recipe by the teaspoon. I understand the importance of measures in baking, and obviously, if you're trying to scale up a 4 person savory recipe to 300 for a military mess or some such, I understand that exact measures might be useful. But cooking for your family? How about you taste the food instead?

But anyway, watching the show last week, they did have an idea which made sense. I've always had trouble cooking steak so that the crust is crunchy and caramelized, and yet the inside is a good medium well. If you go with the high heat method, the outside chars nicely, but the inside is bloody, which I like but others do not. And if you turn down the heat, you get grey crust. Their idea to help this problem is to put the meat into the oven at 225 fahrenheit for 20 minutes. This brings up the internal temperature so that when your char is done, the meat is medium well too. I tried the technique, and as I think anyone would agree, the results were positive.

And yes, that's girlfriend's real camera, not my Iphone. It turns out to make a difference.




* Yes, yes. Prime beef is corn fattened, not grass. Grass is better. But USDA corn fed prime is a different food, and though not as healthy, has its own special flavor profile a lot of people like.