How to Salt Your Steak

today we're gonna be taking you through the steps on how to dry brine a steak and these simple tips are gonna let you turn any choice or select steak into one that's just as tender as a USDA prime so stick with us right through the end and you're gonna up your state game so the idea for this video actually came from you the community we are doing a dry brine and someone suggested in the comments that we ought to compare that to the method where we just season the steak an hour before putting it into the cast-iron pan we love reading your comments so if you've got any other ideas for steak experiments feel free to leave those in the comments below and you know what maybe it'll result in another steak experiment video so here we've got two one and a half inch New York strip steaks we have them specially cut they're from the same line we know they're from the same cow we talked to the butcher and really wanted to understand where these grass-fed animals where they core Mon free or they antibiotic free and sure that's gonna cost a little bit more but it's worth it and you can taste it in the cut of beef so to start with we're just gonna move one of these steaks out of the way and then we're gonna get ready to dry brine and we're using sea salt you don't have to worry about the fact that these are large chunks the 48 hour drive iron's gonna give these chunks more than enough time to absorb into the steak itself and we like the minerality of the sea salt over a traditional kosher salt but of course kosher salt is absolutely fine too now that we've got this site seasoned up we're just going I want to flip it over and get the other side as well and go on generously you don't have to worry about over seasoning a steak this thick so be really generous with that salt and now let's just make sure we've got the edges here pick up some of that excess salt that's hit the cutting board perfect just like that now I've got a perfectly seasoned steak and we're ready to transfer it to the cooling rack that'll just lift the steaks up a little bit and ensure we've got proper air circulation over top of the steak and underneath it as well and then we're putting that cooling rack on a cookie sheet as well and that's just in case there's a little bit of juice that drips out the bottom we just don't want to make a mess in the fridge so now we're just gonna take our fun seasoned steak here and put it back into the butchers paper and wrap it up I'm gonna wrapping it up fairly tightly because we don't want this to oxidize in the fridge at all so we'll put this back in the fridge we'll let both of these steaks sit there for 48 hours and then we'll come back and sear these states and cast iron and we'll check out the difference see you in 48 hours now we're not gonna have to worry about this brining method drying out the steaks what its gonna do is gonna pull some moisture out of the steak but that moisture it's gonna be infused with all of the salt that's encrusted around the steak and over the next 48 hours it's gonna be reabsorbed into the steak and just provide a perfect level of seasoning that's even throughout the steak that brine is also gonna break down some of the inter muscular tissue and that's what's gonna lead to a tremendously tender outcome here so it's 48 hours later and we're back with the two steaks we took these out of the fridge and now we're gonna do a little bit of a comparison so we'll open up the one steak that's been in the butcher's paper we've got the one that's been dry brining for 48 hours here and then we've got the one that we just took out of the butchers paper here as well so if you look at the difference between these steaks you'll definitely see a richer red on the dry Bryant's steak and that's also just to its touch this is absolutely bone dry on the surface of the steak so that's really gonna help when we put it into the cast-iron pan because all of the energy from the cast-iron pan is gonna go into caramelizing the surface in the buyer reaction so that should lead to a better crust here we saw some moisture will Pat that down but it's also just a redder steak and it looks like it just came out of the cooler at the butchers so what we're gonna do now is we'll season this one up again going on with a generous amount of seasoning now with that sake seasoned up we're gonna need to let this sit for an hour just so that salt absorbs in but in the meantime I want to show you one other unique thing that highlights a difference here if we lift up this cooling rack but you'll see there's no moisture on here so all of the moisture that's come out of the steak that's been dry brining has just reabsorbed back into the steak and that salty moisture is now just gonna provide a perfect seasoning evenly all the way through the steak now we'll let these rest for an hour before we fire the cast iron pan and sear these off so now we've had this steak resting for an hour and that's allowed the salt to primarily absorb into the state but it's also will add the sticks to come up to room temperature before searing it in cast iron the other ingredients you're gonna need for this cook we've got some rosemary and you're gonna want to ruffle this up a little bit just scrunch it in your hands before we use it we've got some peeled garlic cloves that we've just lightly crushed some compound butter and some regular butter and then finally we've got a little bit of water because that's what we're gonna use to just check the temperature of our pan before dropping in our steaks so we're starting with a 12-inch cast-iron pan we're gonna ignite the burner put it on high and get our pan down warming up so now that we've got our pan heating up here just to make sure it's at the right temperature we're gonna dip our fingers in the water and release a few droplets onto the surface of the pan if those water droplets instantly evaporate like this you know you're at the right heat for searing your steaks so once you're at the right temperature we're gonna add in some avocado oil and avocado oil has a smoke point of a five hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit and we need that when we're searing on high heat here you don't want to use olive oil very low smoke point so make sure you're using something like avocado oil grapeseed oil those types of high smoke point oils now when we drop the steaks in the pan we're gonna leave them in there for four minutes we're gonna get the heat of that pan reacting with the surface of the steak and a Meyer action to create an incredible crust throughout the four-minute mark we're just gonna flip these over now we're gonna add in some butter the garlic the rosemary we're also gonna make sure we on the side and we'll let these sear for another four minutes or until we hit an internal temperature of a hundred and twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit that's the temperature that we're looking for to a perfect medium-rare steak we're gonna let them rest untended and we'll add in a little bit of butter the compound butter that we've made it will just melt so now that we've had these resting let's just take a look and do a comparison here to me it's pretty obvious which is which we've got the 48-hour dry brown over here and we've got the salted one hour before the cook right here let's just check the difference between the crust and the way I like to do that just drag your steak across the surface you can hear the crust that's formed on this guy now let's try it here you can still hear there's a bit of a crust but it's just a little bit lighter it's not quite as hard and quite as formed so it'll be just a little bit less texture when we bite into it but both of these steaks look absolutely incredible so now let's slice it all right before we cut in it is kind of noticeable that there's more juice that's already seeped out of the steak that wasn't the 48 hour dry brine so we'll see if that makes any kind of difference in the taste test nice medium-rare right there we'll see if we got the same outcome over here oh yeah Beauty so now we're just gonna take a few pieces out of the middle here and see how this turned out alright so we weren't expecting any difference in the doneness we've got a decent amount of grey around the edge but that's just because we're searing off in a hot cast-iron pan and we've got some relatively thick steaks so now let's go for the taste test hmmm that is a great steak nice crushed grape flavor profile you can taste the salt but it's not too overpowering there's no crystals of salt left on this steak this is you know all around a really really good outcome nice and juicy very tender no complaints on this one really but now let's try the 48-hour dry Brown mmm oh my gosh that was absolutely incredible now folks the tenderness on that steak was just remarkable it was melt in your mouth this just it almost fell apart it was absolutely delicious you've really noticed a difference from a tenderness perspective from an actual taste perspective there's definitely more crunch from the crust than the other steak but the overall seasoning I think it's actually a pretty similar profile to the one that we seized into an hour before the cook so all in all I'm obviously going to give the win here to the 48 hour dry brine but there's an important caveat if you don't have the time to pre season your steak for two days then just don't do it at the end of the day barbecuing is supposed to be fun and you can accomplish 90% of the outcome just by seasoning an hour before you do your cook thanks for tuning in if you like this video give it a like below if you haven't subscribed to the channel and you thought this video was good value consider subscribing we've got loads of more steak experiments to come and if you haven't checked out our other steak experiment videos there's links here on the screen to a few others that you might want to go check out thanks again

Channel: BBQ and Bottles

Views: 635,125

Rating: 4.8494372 out of 5

Keywords: BBQ and Bottles, BBQandBottles, how to salt your steak, when to salt your steak, how should you salt your steak, salt, steak, how to salt a new york strip, how to salt a NY strip, steak experiment, when should you salt your steak

Id: JJnPUgI4vnE

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 15 2020