How to Tenderize a Cheap Steak? - Steak Experiments

welcome back to barbecue and bottles and on today's steak experiment we've got the cheapest steaks that we could get from our local butcher and we're going to be putting to test two different tenderizing methods to see if we can get a usda select steak to be just as tender and juicy as a usda prime so if you're into that kind of thing stick with us so we've got these usda select new york strips here and so we have enough different stakes for our test we're just going to cut these in half so we're going to try two really popular tenderizing methods first we've got our usda prime which is going to be a control stake we've got another stake that we're gonna do just our traditional salting with which will also be a control then these two will be our last ones this one's gonna go into a pineapple puree and this one we're just gonna absolutely cover and salt for an hour so let's get into this so the first one here we're just going to completely cover in kosher salt and don't worry we're going to rinse this off afterward before we actually cook it so this isn't the normal amount of salt that we season a steak with so you've just taken kosher salt put that on a tray now we're going to put this into the fridge for an hour now before we actually do our pineapple puree we're just going to season up our control stakes so we're just going to go in with a light amount of flour to sell this is our regular flaky salt that we typically season our steaks with flip that over do the same on the other side as well get the sides again now our control steaks are ready now for the pineapple we've got a full pineapple here just gonna take off the top then we'll take off the sides take out the core i'll just chop that up into smaller pieces get the end pieces off and now we're just going to get the pineapple chunks into the food processor so now we're just going to puree this until you get a really smooth consistency just like that we'll put the steak in the bottom and actually because we have so much pineapple we're gonna take one extra and we'll just pour this in over top smells incredible don't know how this is gonna turn out but we'll see get as much air out of this as we can all right get that closed up now we'll make sure that we've got pineapple puree over all the edges and sides of this steak beautiful just like that so we've got all our steaks here they're ready to go into the fridge so just for the economics here the select steaks they were really cheap we got these steaks for about ten dollars a steak versus our usda prime it's a thinner steak and it costs us 25 bucks so that's really what this experiment's all about seeing if we can save a little bit of money you know who doesn't want to see if they can turn a 10 stake into something that's as tender as juicy as a 25 steak so now we're gonna get these into the fridge and we'll bring you back in an hour now don't forget timing's really essential here there's enzymes in that pineapple that you don't want your steak marinating in it for more than 45 to 60 minutes otherwise it'll break the tissues down way beyond what we're trying to accomplish here and same with the salt that's supposed to go for an hour so we'll bring you back at 2 15. we'll see how these steaks turned out so we've had our steaks in the fridge for an hour now let's check in on these guys so you can see with the steak covered in salt we've actually pulled a bunch of moisture out of the steak you'll see the salt on the top and some around the edges has a bit of a pinkish red hue to it from the myoglobin in the steak that it's pulled out we've got the pineapple still looks like just steaks covered in pineapple and then of course our controls so the first step we're just gonna rinse the salt off of this guy just like that get this over here and then we'll do the same with our pineapple marinade steaks so we're just going to dry these guys down with some paper towel you want to get these as dry as you possibly can so i want to bring you in here really close just to see the difference in the steaks at this point now first off there's just a difference in color you can see the pineapple steak it's really it's kind of grayed and you can tell that there's been some kind of enzyme working away at this in particular if you just look at the actual grain of the steak it's almost like the steak is pulling apart it's really tender really soft really supple just to the touch so i'm really interested to see how this one turns out the salted steak it looks pretty similar to what it looked like when we actually put it into the fridge so we'll see if there's any difference at the end here and then our control stakes just like look like normal steaks that we'd be cooking up here so now for our control steaks we've already salted those so we've gotta salt our pineapple steaks here again seasoning on both sides flip them over great and then the one that we smothered in kosher salt we're not gonna salt that anymore we put a ton of salt on this and i think it's already absorbed enough that kosher salt to internally season that steak and we don't want to go too much overboard here so here we are let's head out to the grill and get these steaks on so we're out at the grill we've got this preheated and we're going to be doing these reverse sear method so let's get these onto the grill the grill is preheated to between 225 to 250 here because we've got nice thick stakes that's going to make sure we can really control the doneness and make sure we get an even level of doneness throughout all of these stakes so now we'll get our temp probes in we're just going to put those into the thickest part of the stake so perfect now we've got the temp probes in here we're just going to close the lid down and we'll monitor the temps from the inside so we've just hit 120 on one of these stakes so we're gonna get that off and just get it resting while we bring the rest up to 120 and then we'll finish this off with a sear so now we're just going to get the grill set up here for a sear so we're going to open up our vents fully and we'll get the slow roller out of the middle so we've got our grill grates back in we're just gonna keep this open up and let this charcoal get ripping hot so we can finish those steaks off with us here so we're just gonna go on first with the pineapple steaks you can really feel it with the tongs just how tender those guys are then we're gonna get the salt steak down on there we'll get our two control stakes for a quick sear here as well so all we're trying to do is bring a little bit of color to these steaks rotate those periodically just make sure you're not burning them [Music] beautiful just look at the color we got then our last steak we'll just take that off the grill and i'll bring these inside so i've had our steaks here resting and we haven't added any compound butter rosemary garlic or anything we really want to taste the difference in the flavor profile the juiciness and just the overall tenderness purely as a result of the differences in the preparation method here so you can see these guys they're the ones that we did the pineapple puree on and look like it's almost like they're falling apart they were really tender to the touch on the grill this guy was the one that we just smothered in kosher salt then here's our usda prime and then here's the usda select both of these being our control stakes let's slice into this and just see how they turned out wow this is really tender just to be slicing through all right so we're gonna take a slice of each of these perfect so given its winter outside for the blindfold test i'm just going to put a toque on it and then pull the rim down make sure i can't see anything here so we've got four steaks to taste test here let's see okay there's the that part of the fork pretty chewy kind of unimpressive okay that's either gonna be the usda select control or the usda fully salted one i've got to go through this to rack and stack but i'm almost positive that's one of those two results way too chewy for it to be the usda prime i'm thinking it's too chewy to be the pineapple so let's move on to the next one okay now for number two now that is a steak my guess is that's the usda prime that's really really tender you can tell there's been a lot of marbling that's just rendered down really juicy steak i'm almost positive that's the usda prime okay on to the third one here wow that is tender okay immediately you get a bit of sweetness really tender and supple that has to be the pineapple steak i've gotta say that steak is almost as tender as the usda prime it might even be a little more tender but there is a sweetness element to it now for the last one that one was actually quite tender so i the one i was a little bit uncertain about was the first stick that i tried and i'm gonna say that that one was the usda select control because it was really chewy the one i just had a similar flavor profile but it was much more tender so i'm gonna peg that steak as the one that we smothered with kosher salt so time to lift this up and see if i nailed the results so you mix up the one you smothered with kosher salt with the usda really i mixed up two of these so 50 that's not bad it'd be a great batting average so i'll tell you right now though these two steaks the ones that was smothered in kosher salt and the one that was just the regular usda select were just miles apart from the usda prime and the actual pineapple so that's the end of the experiment folks if you ever want to try and just buy a cheap steak if that's what's in your budget and then up it to be just as tender as a usda prime why don't you try smothering it in pineapple puree i was really impressed with this i didn't think it would work but man really good outcome and we were even able to get a crust on these steaks so if you enjoyed this video consider giving it a like if you think we've earned it consider subscribing to the channel because we've got way more of these steak experiment videos to come thanks for tuning in

Channel: BBQ and Bottles

Views: 5,001

Rating: 4.9354839 out of 5

Keywords: BBQ and Bottles, BBQandBottles, steak experiment, how to tenderize steak, cheap steak, tenderize steak, best way to tenderize steak, pineapple steak, pineapple experiment, how to tenderize, how to tenderize meat, tenderizing steak, tenderize steaks, tenderizing steaks, How to tenderize a cheap steak, how to prepare a cheap steak, budget steak, grocery store steak, how to cook a grocery store steak, does pineapple tenderize steak, does pineapple tenderize meat

Id: z2EuEJvEO5w

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021