This video was made possible by Nord VPN Today I'm gonna share with you my
journey to cooking a perfect delicious and impressive cast iron steak that will
make your mouth water. And the best part it is easy. Knowing the do's and the
don'ts is the key to success. I'll be cooking for different types of steaks to
give you options so you can cook it using anything you have at home.
Including a ceramic stove, a powerful gas stove, the wood pallet smoker and
obviously to finish it off a charcoal grill. This is mastering the cast iron
steak. So let's do it! And these are the star of the show. They
are four bone in New York Strip. If you like your steaks medium-rare the perfect
thickness is one and a half inches thick. And if smaller you can run the risk of
overcooking it. And as you can see the marbling in these steaks is impressive.
That's these little white speckticles you see throughout the meat. Always look for
a well marbled steak. Instead of adding oil to the pan I'll be spreading it
throughout the steak. This avoids extra unnecessary oil into the pan. Which
normally you would have to strain it anyway before butter basting it or
making your sauce. Once fully coated I season it well with coarse salt and
freshly ground black pepper. I do recommend freshly cracked pepper as
I can guarantee you tastes a lot better. Make sure you season it well an
unseasoned steak is like a burger without bread, or a pizza without cheese
or rice without beans. I think you got the point. And these are all the
ingredients I'm gonna be using to cook along with these amazing steak. Remember
exact amount and ingredients always in the description down below.
This right here is beef stock. I made it myself using a few ingredients like beef
shank, carrots, celery and onions. But to make this easy for you to make it at
home you can buy the pre-made one. The next ingredient is whipping cream. Adding this to the sauce will give a nice smooth flavor and most important it will
make it creamy. If you enjoy a thick sauce a thickener is a great thing to
use. There are several types of thickeners here's an easy one for you to
get started mix water with cornstarch. this creates a slurry which you can add
to the sauce and bring it to a small boil, and it will thicken your sauce
nicely. Just remember don't add too much because it can make it real thick. Since
I'm using my home stove the first thing I need to do is preheat my cast-iron
skillet. Set your stove on high preheated for about five minutes. Once
that's done add your steak. Remember that we already added the oil to the steak so
there's no need for additional oil in the pan. Make sure you have all windows
open in a well-ventilated kitchen because there will be smoke like there's
no tomorrow. Whenever you browning meat or fat that
this will happen you can't avoid the smoke so long as you are aware of it
you're good to go. After exactly one minute you want to
flip it to the other side. At this stage the first side is not ready yet but we
will flip it once again to finish it up for an additional minute. In essence your
goal is to sear both sides for an exactly two minutes each, this should
give you a nice crust. Do not forget to sear the fat raw fat does not taste good.
But a well caramelized fat is like sweet candy and one of the best part of
the steak. Once the steak has been seared lower temperature down to medium low
heat and throw in your butter crushed garlic and rosemary. The goal is to let
your butter brown that is the flavor you crave on a perfect steak. Never let your
butter turn black. If your heat is too high that will happen and you will ruin
your steak. You want to baste it for about one minute per side this will give
you our one and a half inches thick steak a perfect medium-rare doneness. If
you like it medium just baste it for one additional minute per side. Once the
steak is done quickly remove it from the cast iron and throw it into a plate. Add
the wonderful butter and the herbs. You must let your steak rest anywhere from 2
minutes to 6 minutes. This will allow it to continue cooking and redistribute the
juices. The time all depends on your room temperature if you are in a very cold
environment don't let it rest for too long. I usually
do four minutes and it's always perfect. now there's left to do is to slice it
and enjoy this amazing steak. As you can see it was perfectly cooked. It's juicy
and he has a good crust but it can be improved and I'll show you how to do
that on my next steak. But first let me show you how easy it is to make this
amazing sauce. And here's how to do it Using the same pan under medium heat add
your beef stock and deglaze it. This means to remove all the funk that is
stuck into the pan when you were searing it. Make sure you leave nothing behind.
Then throw in shallots and garlic you don't want to cook them for too long or
get any color. If your beef stock starts to evaporate just add a little more to
make sure we have plenty for our sauce. Then throw in heavy cream and mix
everything well. Now you want to reduce your heat to medium-low
heat and taste it for salt. Since my steak had a good amount of salt there was no
need to add any more. The same goes with black pepper. There's no need to add as I
got it from the steak. To thicken it up I threw in my slurry and bring it to a
light boil. Keep stirring it and your sauce will go from something liquidy
to a perfect sauce. And now all there's left to do is to taste it. Before we move
to the next steak we're gonna actually try this one while it's still hot huh.
What do you think about that? I'm not opposed. I'm definitely not opposed. Let's do it
then. I guess some of that juice from the bottom. Perfectly medium-rare everybody
cooked to perfection I hope he came through the camera. There's a few
disadvantages about cooking that inside and also on the stove. You tell me, first
thing. First of all if your wife was home you would have gotten an earful cuz it
looks like there was a fire in that house. There is a lot of smoke. Smoke
everywhere you're searing fat you making that maillard reaction amazing. You know
you want that crust and that crust makes smoke, all right. Yeah and then on top of
that that stove doesn't get hot enough to get the crust nice and quickly so you
gotta work for it. You got it. Right. But at what cost. I know. You know what I'm saying. And the most important thing to do is to try and let you know cheers everybody.
Mmm even my dog wants some mm-hmm that's nice. I will say this if you have a high
quality steak you really don't need to make a sauce but it's a good practice
it's already there you just gotta add a few ingredients and rock and roll.
So here you go Angel. I'll try it. Cheers everybody. Oh that's a nice sauce man. With that
being said we're gonna go ahead and move on to the next one. And on that one I'm
gonna cook some things that my nephew Angel might not enjoy very much but
we're gonna see how he likes it. For my second steak I'll be adding some green
stuff, as my nephew calls it, it's also known as asparagus. It is easy to do and
also healthy. To season the steak I use salt, freshly ground black pepper and
garlic powder. Since I won't be using fresh garlic garlic powder works great.
Unlike my previous steak which I used time to tell the temp. This one I'll be
using a wireless thermometer. This takes out all the guesswork. I can flip it as
many times as I need get my crust as hard as I want and does not matter what
I'll do it will ensure perfect doneness when I'm done with it.
For my asparagus I first like to blanch it. This does two things;
it improves the color making it bright green, and it also cooks to perfection as
I can stop the cooking process by using an ice bath. To me the most flavorful
part of the asparagus are the top. Usually by bending it it will break at
the perfect section leaving you the best part behind. So to save time I usually
break two, I tied the rest and cut it off with a knife. This leaves me with the
best part of the asparagus. To finish off my steak I will also be basting with
butter. That is a key ingredient to turning a good steak into an amazing
steak. And for this cook I'll be using a way more powerful stove. This will give
you a much better browning since its gas it's much more powerful just like they
use on their restaurants. I started by adding a little bit of grapeseed oil. You
don't want to use extra virgin olive oil. Grapeseed oil has a high smoke point and
it's neutral in flavor. Then I threw in my steak. Since I'm relying on my
thermometer I kept flipping it as many times as
needed to get the perfect crust. That's the beauty of using technology to your
advantage. Once that was done I lowered my heat and throw in my butter to start
basting. I want you to notice that my butter is brown and not black. I can't
emphasize enough how important that is. Do not use black butter. To finish it off
I caramelized my fat. My internal temperature was a hundred and
twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit or 52 degrees Celsius.
once my wireless thermometer warned me I took it off and let it rest. Do not
forget that beautiful brown butter that is like an amazing sauce for your steak.
As I mentioned before when you're letting it rest the steak temperature
will rise and mine rose to 135 degrees Fahrenheit or 57 Celsius. As that was
happening I cooked up my asparagus by throw it into boiling water to know it's
fully cooked just take a paring knife and stick it into you whew no resistance.
If it feels like butter it's ready. Then you want to throw it
into an ice bath to stop the cooking process. Season it flaky finishing salt,
freshly ground black pepper and a good olive oil and your asparagus is done. Now
there's left to do is to slice my steak. I first started by removing the bone
then I cut it up into perfectly sliced piece of steak heaven. Hey looks good!
One for me one for you. Why are you laughing, that was not a joke. Why are you laughing? Before we go to the next steak everybody we're gonna give it a try and
my wonderful nephew here is also going to try. The steak! Green stuff bro.
Alright everybody enough talking we're gonna give this a try. Cheers. Mmm oh yeah.
Boy that's soft too! If you had one thing in this. Yeah. Then both of those steaks
would have been perfect. What? But it's missing. What? it's MIA and I'm not
talking about Miami. What are you talking about? Charcoal bro! That's right. You gotta have some charcoal bro. I agree with you. You're gonna give it a try? No you won't try it at all? No. Just smell it look how good it smells. Mmm that's so good try. I'm sorry people, that's not my thing. Take his word
for it you know he never lies to you guys so you could just take his word all
right if I try it on my lie be like mmm I love it, blah. Yeap, no green stuff for my nephew Angel. With
that being said my next steak I wanted to push the limits and cook it on my smoker.
I kept the seasoning the same with salt freshly ground black pepper and garlic
powder. I made sure to season all sides. For my next attempt of my nephew Angel
eating some green stuff I will pan sear some zucchini. When you
do this it becomes soft almost like a pureed type. And hopefully he will give
this one a try. I cut them into nice even thin strips. This will ensure even cooking
and browning on my pan. I won't be seasoning it now but will once it's done
cooking. Under medium-high heat I seared it until we're had a nice golden brown
color. When I got my smoke I got with a side
burner called sidekick which is perfectly for searing a steak. I wanted
to see if the actual smoker could cook it. So I added directly on top of the
wood fire heating element, threw in my grapeseed oil and let my pan preheat. And
to my surprise when I added a steak it was sizzling I cooked my steak using the
time method. Remember one minute per side and flip. To see if there was gonna be
any smoke flavor added to the steak I didn't butter baste it. I just let it
cook with the lid closed and gave it an additional three minutes to finish it
off. When he was done it looked like it worked perfectly and hopefully it will
give a nice wood flavor taste to my steak. And to finish up the zucchini I
seasoned it with flaky salt and freshly ground black pepper and it was ready for
my nephew to give it a try. Cutting up the steak it was perfectly cooked to
medium-rare. And saying that it was juicy it was an understatement. What do you think
about this method Angel? Ah it took a little longer. Yeah I agree. Maybe we get a little different flavor? There's no butter basting on this one
it's straight-up flavor yeah. I don't taste that much wood flavor. No there's no word flavor at all. It tastes phenomenal but it doesn't taste like smoke. It doesn't have the
wood flavor. I wasn't expecting it to have a little bit of a wood flavor
so I was like it might be the best one. That's why you gotta use it without,
without the cast iron. Just put it on in your smoker yeah. Now to the exciting
part are you ready? Yeah! No. Would you try it for me just for me? Just a little bit.
If you don't like it you let them know yeah. But that's so embarrassing. I can see I can see
the eye convincing him for me come on bro. Oh now just cuz of that no. For your uncle bro. I'll try a real small, small, chiquitin. Cheers everybody! Where are you going? Angel where are you going Angel, c'mon! It's delicious how can you not like it? Mmmmm. Yummy. Felt like a banana. Cooking is something you
do with passion and knowing what your family likes or dislike is key. So my
final steak I'll be hitting all marks and making it the best cast iron steak
there is. I started by dry brining the steak. This is my number one go-to method
when seasoning beef. It sounds fancy but it's pretty simple. All you have to do is
to season it like you normally do with salt. As always make sure you coat all
sides. Transfer it to a cooling rack and let it rest overnight in your
refrigerator, this will allow the salt to penetrate deeply into the meat. Yes it
does dry out moisture but it goes right back in. Salt is too big to pass through
a cell membrane but water molecules can fit. Since everything wants to reach
equilibrium the only thing that can float to create equal concentration is water.
This is a real-world example of what's called osmosis. The very next day you
can clearly see that all salt is gone. That's because it's all inside of the
meat, making it perfectly seasoned. Another benefit of this method is the
outer layer will be drier which will make an awesome crust. To go along with
our steak I'm also making the perfect side dish which is mashed potato. And
here's the easiest mashed potato in the world.I started by peeling them and
cutting them into one inches cube. This will ensure they cook evenly. Boil them
until it's nice and tender. To make sure all you got to do is get a
paring knife and if he feels like butter it's ready. Drain the water add butter,
cream cheese and using smasher while everything's still hot combine all the
ingredients together. Finish with a little bit of milk and salt. Mix
everything well and your mashed potato is done! Now going right back to our
steak. I season with freshly ground black pepper and garlic powder. Do not add any
additional salt remember it was dry brined overnight. To finish it off I'll
be using thyme and butter and the time method you already know how to do. But
now I say it is enough talking and it is time to cook the perfect cast iron steak.
So let's do it! All right everybody our last and final
steak. What do you think Angel? See now now we got two good things going. We got
some charcoal in the steak and a vegetable that I like. Mashed potatoes! Thats not. The most important thing when you are cooking a steak everybody is to cook with love and cook
the things that the person you are cooking for likes. You ready for it?
Cheers cheers everybody Oh! That's what I'm talking about! I'll tell you one
thing right now the perfect combination is this one but with that being said
here's all the do's and don'ts and everything I have learned cooking with
cast iron. Check it out! Do this, do this one! Before I give you my final tips to a
perfect cast iron steak I want to talk to you today about NordVPN which is
the sponsor of today's video. As you know VPN stands for virtual
private network. I use it whenever I'm at home or if I'm traveling it does a
number of things that I found very useful. One of the things I do is connect
to a server here in the US whenever I'm travelling abroad. So whenever I
connect to netflix comcast or other sites like that which connects
differently in other countries they work the same as if I was just here at home.
Another thing is if you ever got a notice of a video that is not available
in your country, with a click of a mouse you can actually teleport to a different
country and that video will now be available to you. That is awesome this is
so useful because in some countries like China they will prevent you from
watching YouTube because of their firewall. Also when I connect to our
hotel network they cannot monitor my internet. And Nord VPN does not log data
or any of its user data which means that it does not keep track of any of its
site that you visit. Now for a limited time you get 70% off NordVPN. This special offer means that your subscription is just three dollars and forty nine
cents. So you can browse and shop securely online. Keep in mind that
NordVPN is compatible with any device you might be using if it's an
iPhone if it's a Mac of it's a PC you're good to go. So please check out NordVPN.com/Guga or use my code Guga and get an additional month free. Thank you NordVPN for sponsoring this video. Here are my five tips for a perfect cast
iron steak. Number one; be aware you will create a lot of
smoke when searing your steak. So if you're doing indoors make sure you open
all windows and have a nice ventilated area. Number two; get your pan hot. If not
instead of browning your steak you will steam it and there's nothing worse than
a boiling steak. So get it hot. Number three; when searing is done lower
the temperature and baste your steak with butter.
Never let your butter turn black, if it does throw it out and add a new one.
Don't ruin your steak with black butter. Number four; use some types of aromatics
like thyme and rosemary. It doesn't matter whichever one you like best. Put
them on top of your steak and butter baste it. Make sure you get every single
edge that will give your steak an amazing flavor. Number five; and this one
is the most important of them all. Cook your steak the way you like it. Using a
thermometer makes it easy. My preferred doneness is medium rare, but
if you like it medium cook at medium, Now if you like it well-done we all know how I
feel about that. But as long as you having fun doing it your steak should
come out perfect. Just practice. The good ole saying of practice makes it perfect
is true. And there's nothing wrong with practicing and eating amazing steaks. I hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did enjoy it make sure you give
it a thumbs up. If you're not a subscriber
be sure to subscribe for future videos. Remember if you're interested in
anything I use everything is always in the description down below. Thank you so
much for watching. Which one is your favorite? This one. And we'll see you guys
on the next one. Take care everybody bye-bye.
