4 Levels of Steak: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

hi I'm Emily and I'm a level one chef I'm Julie and now I'm a level two chef I'm Adriana and I've been a chef for ten years the last time I cooked steak was probably just a couple weeks ago I make steak once a month I would make it once a day if I could but help I came out with this recipe because I lived in France and I wanted to combine my love for cooking meat and a little bit of the experience that I had in France so for my steak today I have selected a flank steak it's available in most grocery stores and it's pretty cooked too quick this is a beautiful sirloin steak we call it a New York strip steak a lot of people like to cook with the bone I do not that bone releases so much flavor and you can tell the difference by far today I'm gonna be preparing for you a bone-in dry-aged rib eye steak you want to find a piece of beef that is beautifully marbled you've got a lot of veins of fat running through the beef and that's where the flavor is this is probably about an inch thick wine 1/2 inch steak you can really get in there with a sear cook the perfect perfect medium-rare or rare steak it's a little different from your average steak because it's a little bit thinner usually it's not quite as thick a steak cut it can be a little tough but you just sort of do cooking things to work your way around that first things first we're gonna season or me I like Montreal steak spice which you can just buy in the grocery store so what I'm doing is I'm gonna mix coriander and black peppercorns and some other stuff but first have to smush up the coriander and pepper so I'm just gonna use a pan this is called Bry seasoning I'm gonna mix a little bit of the salt and the bride together to create my rub we're gonna take a paper towel and blot it I just don't want any like blood or water or juices I'm gonna make for you one of my favorite marinades this is work shows two sauce tamari mushroom powder and yuzu anchovy paste roasted garlic last but not least a shallot so I'm just going to take these and put them in a little bowl and then I'm just gonna add some salt right down and red pepper flakes what I'm gonna do next is paint my B with a little olive oil just for flavor and it also will help the rub adhere it soon being very gentle because I respect the beef so now I'm just gonna put some of this rub on each side of my steak and you just want to press it in a bit so that it all doesn't come tumbling off when you begin to see her go heavy on the salt a so this is the final result all right so we've got the rub on the steak now and we're just gonna give it a few minutes to rest and let the seasonings meld in for minimum five minutes twenty four hours in the fridge and in the meantime we're gonna make our steak sauce purists say a beautiful piece of meat should never be ruined by sauce but sometimes I like to get fancy schmancy I'm going to cream together blue cheese and butter look how nice and easy that is so we're gonna make a log have a piece of cling wrap here and then you see you roll that up that my friends is a blue cheese butter log so ingredient number one ketchup and some other stuff too so vinegar pepper salt little bit of hot sauce this is sugar we're gonna do Worcestershire sauce some mild flavored molasses and then I'm just gonna combine these I'm just mixing them together all right and this is our steak sauce okay so now we're gonna make our delicious Verna sauce so what we need is equal parts of vinegar and wine two shallots that we're gonna cut very roughly these are some peppercorns the peel of any citrus that you like I love Meyer lemons my lemons are more aromatic so now we're gonna bring this sauce to a boil and then we're gonna reduce it down halfway we have wine and we want to evaporate the alcohol and we want to concentrate all the flavors perfect stays will take about five to six minutes to cool down and then it will be ready to use it for our brunette sauce I'm gonna cut my mini lemon and some herbs that I have here so I'm gonna do basil mint and thyme we're gonna start separating four eggs just a joke that's gonna be the base of our sauce it's gonna emulsify with the butter and the pickling liquid that we did before I previously melt down the butter and cool it down because if you don't cool it down and it's hot while you incorporate it to your eggs your sauce it's gonna separate and you're gonna start seeing how the sauce starts getting you know thick and rich that's it see it's creamy but it's not super thick and that's what we're looking for the last ingredients that I like to add are the herbs because we want the herbs to still be very fresh and the mushroom powder and that's it just mix it I love it exactly what I was looking for all right so the next thing I'm gonna be doing is cooking mistake so I'm using a nonstick pan not everyone has a cast iron skillet okay you see before you the Holy Grail a cast iron pan I've been heating this up in the oven with just the slick of neutral high smoke point oil we're gonna cook it in our sous-vide machine what sous-vide machine does is that keeps the temperature the same for a long period of time it's a hundred and thirty Fahrenheit so we're gonna leave the steak here for an hour and a half and then we'll come back to it when he's ready so you just want to wait for the pan to actually be hot I just I have a tendency to like put it on and then be like okay get it so I'm gonna try and be patient an hour and a half later our estate gets ready to go we're gonna take it out of the water it's very important to dry it very well because it's not you're not gonna get that perfect sear you all right we're going yeah you got a little bit of a sizzle there I'm gonna sear this on each side for about four minutes three minutes three to four minutes till it gets very very very crusty and now we wait here's the hardest thing about the searing method Haitian I know you're not here but it smells so like brown butter garlic that marinade that we previously made the fat from the mead so good so good great I think we're about ready to go lip whoo hello there we go and we're flipping handle this pin itself hot alright look guys can I just tell you what perfection is is so perfect and then I add some fun I know that's where the flavor is it's a great way to get like a nice juicy tasty buttery steak and then time a little bit more flavor and this is the beauty of the cast iron pan it conducts heat so beautifully and it holds heat so I think that this is probably around as much as I want to cook it I like might be pretty rare to medium rare with this thickness of steak as much as you really want to do this sous-vide machine cook the steak to the perfect medium-rare so what we're doing here right now is just searing the meat because you don't want to overcook it this old girl is ready to roll we're good we have a nice sear a nice cross we're gonna turn this off now we go into a super hot oven let's say eight minutes see in a bit so beef meat is ready to go and we're gonna put it in our cooling rack and then we're gonna let it rest going no I don't know what I'm doing you gotta rest it because if you slice it right away after cooking all the juices are gonna come out and you want the juices to not coming so while this is resting gonna take my blue cheese butter which I've had in the refrigerator we're just gonna slice look at that what we've got that sliced up and now it's time to slice it and plate it so the grain was this way and so we're just gonna slice it this way I like to cut against the grain because it's a little more flavorful and tender if you cut it the other way the steak it's gonna be tough and you don't want that I mean come on awesome so some of the juices coming out because I made it may have wanted a little longer the rest but that's okay I'm level one all right okay oh yeah it's bleeding pretty heavily we're gonna pleat it right here okay here we go and then you take your beautiful butter and you kind of put it between your steak slices I'm just gonna add a little steak sauce on the side I'm just gonna put it a little like a dipping sauce kind of thing almost put a little parsley on top of our steak just a little bit and now it's ready to serve here's my steak friends this is my steak this is my steak [Music] all right so it's time to eat hmm this is good steak yeah that turned out great I mean I mean it's like steak levels of chewy but not like wow chewy delicious I'm gonna take another bite just to make sure it's good you know mmm very good mmm all three of our chefs chose different cuts of beef seasoning and sauces to make their steaks Emily used a flank steak which tends to be a tougher cut of beef because it has more connective tissue and less fat it's a hindquarter cut and is often used in making commercial ground beef Julie used a strip steak which is a more tender cut of beef and marbled with more fat than the flank steak that is flavor the strip is also from the hindquarter from the muscle called the longest moose Boram it's more tender because it's not used for movement of the steer meat tenderness is inversely related to the amount of work the muscle does while the steer is alive Adriana used a bone-in rib eye steak which comes from the rib section of the animal and is full of flavor and fat her rib eye was dry aged dry aging is a slow chemical process in which enzymes and microorganisms make the meat more tender and flavorful by converting proteins into savory amino acids glycogen into sweeter glucose and fats into aromatic fatty acids and that releases a lot of flavor it happens by hanging dry unwrapped large cuts of beef at a low temperature over a month or so hanging the meat also helps to stretch the muscle filaments and prevents them from bonding which reduces toughness in meat cooking meat on the bone also adds another layer of flavor it helps retain moisture and reduce shrinkage and meat because the bones holds the meat in place bones heat more slowly than me so overall cooking is slower and more gentle on the proteins in meat Emily used a dry spice rub which works well on a tougher and thinner cut of meat like the flank steak that's what I've always heard the acidic spices and salt in her spice rub disrupt and weaken muscle fibers and increase their ability to retain moisture she also used some spicy hot ingredients like red pepper flakes I couldn't do it that'll taste good but I'll mask some of the beefy flavor you get from just a salt based rub Julie used a South African braai spice mix prior to cooking this is a special dry salt based seasoning which brings out the flavor of meat so of course I brought a lot of it home with me salt can suppress bitter flavors and meat which come from amino acids like arginine and tryptophan or compounds like an serine or carnosine adding to a more pleasant sensory experience adriana used a wet marinade that included rich ingredients that are high in glutamate which enhances the meaty umami flavor glutamate is an amino acid naturally occurring in meat and fish like the entropies she included and has spent some plant-based foods like mushrooms and tamari sauce she also marinated her ribeye for several hours in a vacuum sealed pouch so it had more time for the flavors to develop marinades add flavour to the surface of meat and the longer the marinade time the more flavor development with salty marinades be careful though if you have acidic ingredients like vinegar you may get some sour notes if you marinate the meat too long fluids released by the breakdown of muscle fibers during cooking stimulate and intensify flavors and aromas and meat there's maximum fluid release when your steak is rare to medium-rare which is the temperature all three of our chefs went for I'm a little if you continue to cook the meat it'll shrink in size because fluids are no longer present and you'll end up with a tough dry steak that may taste a bit like liver Emily added oils for a nonstick pan while adding oil increases the temperature at which the meat will be seared it's not necessary in this case Julie brushed her steak with oil before adding it to the heated cast iron adding oil prevents the meat from sticking to the skillet and add some richness to the steak Julie finished her steak in a hot oven a dry heating method which works well for cuts of meat like New York Strip I have a higher fat content the meat stays moist and juicy while it's in the oven Adriana used a technique called sous-vide her ribeye was vacuum sealed in a bag that was placed in a water bath and held in a constant temperature you can do this for several hours and the meat will not exceed the temperature of the water just before serving Adriana took the meat out of the pouch and seared it searing meat doesn't seal in juices as most people think but it does increase mayor Browning's imparting rich roasted flavors and colors unique to beef sous-vide is a reliable and consistent way to cook steak but you do need special equipment Emily made a quick steak sauce with some acidic components like ketchup vinegar and molasses which had sweetness and tang but also helped to tenderize her flank steak by breaking down connective tissues Julie added additional fat in the form of butter combined with blue cheese at the end this gives an earthy piquant and slightly tangy taste and smooth texture to her New York strip steak the blue cheese is a sharp complementary flavor to the mild and succulent strip steak blue cheese butter never heard a thing Adriana finished her ribeye with garlic butter and thyme as a base she also added flavorful Bearnaise sauce incorporating Meyer lemons which are sweeter than regular lemons and mushroom powder to enhance the umami richness of the sauce bearnaise is a complex sauce based on an emulsion an emulsion is when two liquids that don't normally want to form a mixture do with Bearnaise sauce phospholipids and lecithin in egg yolks emulsify the water-soluble flavoring components into a rich velvety topping for your steak there's lots of different ways to cook in seasoned steak next time you're in the mood for a great steak I hope you'll use some of these tips

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 8,730,279

Keywords: 4 levels, food scientist, steak, steaks, steak recipe, how to steak, how to make steak, 4 levels of steak, 4 levels steak, amateur steak, pro steak, professional steak, amateur chef, steak 4 levels, 4 levels epicurious, 4 levels of, professional chef, homemade steak, steak epicurious, make steak, grilling steak, grill steak, how to cook steak, how to grill steak, food scientist steak, best steak, make best steak, epicurious

Id: rRRUrhomU3o

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/bkervick]

Was just watching this. Video implies she said 3-4 minutes per side to sear. I wonder if it was actually 3-4 minutes total and they just edited it in with when the other girl said per side.

We don't see a cross-section, but there's no way she wouldn't get a grey band with an 8 minute sear.

[u/AK_fishing]

Just confirmed, I'm a level 3 chef

[u/backattack88]

Should be at 134 for a ribeye imo. Also, 3-4 min sear, wtf? That's how you ruin out!

[u/NotSure2505]

Why would this make us angry?

[u/throwawaymedaccounto]

Respect the beef

[u/stevebri]

Actually it made me hungry

[u/NotSure2505]

Emily has been in all of these videos so far, I think she’s ready to graduate to level 2.

[u/wgolding]

Interesting. I've seen all of these videos, but steak is the only one I actually tried to cook. I don't do anything fancy with it. Salt & pepper, pan fry. Watch Guga for some tips like pineapple tenderising. It's strange seeing how extravagant even the lvl 1 cook is.

It's like those music/film/tv/game critics that "hate everything", so you assume it's because they have high taste. Then they criticise something you know inside out (not just a casual viewer of) and realise it's entertainment, a persona. They're not talking shit, but they're not the expert you thought they were. Epicurious cooks are not the experts I thought they were.