- Hey carnivores. What's this dry brining thing all about? And does it really work? Stick around. I'll show you. (upbeat music) Hey carnivores. Welcome back
Al from eat more vegans here. for almost a year you've been hearing me
every time I show you how to make a steak, that you start by dry brining it, and you dry brine it overnight. but that means you got to
start a day in advance. You got to work for that steak. You can't just take it out of
the refrigerator and cook it. So I'm going to explore with you today whether it's really worth it. So I've got two steaks here. These are USDA prime
steaks from double R ranch. They're same people who own
snake river farms, and these as you can see are beautifully
marbled, wonderful steaks. but they're the same, right? They're both a little over an inch thick, they both weigh about a pound, and we're going to treat
them exactly the same, except one we're going to dry brine, and one we're not. So let's jump right in. Let's start by trimming our steaks. So, these are pretty well trimmed. They've got a little
bit of fat still on them but not too much, but
we don't need that fat. So we're going to just
go ahead and take it off. We want to make one cut when we can (upbeat music) We don't need to get all of it off, but we want to get any of the excess That's not going to be useful. Okay, let's go ahead and do the other one. This one, the same thing
also very well trimmed, but it's got a little
bit of end cap fat here. (upbeat music) Okay, trimmed well enough for cooking. And by the way, don't throw that fat away. I showed you guys how to
make tallow in another video. So make sure you save it for that. All right. Let's talk
about what dry brining is. It's a simple process that
can have profound results and hopefully we'll be able to
see those results when we get to the end of this video. But dry brining just means
that we salt our meat and then we store it
uncovered in the refrigerator, For some period of time. You can dry brine as little as an hour, you can dry brine as much as three days. If you saw that cowboy ribeye
video that I did a couple of months ago, we did
a three day dry brine. But the idea is that we
put the salt on the meat, we put it on a rack on a tray so that the air
can get all around it. And then the salt draws out
the water from the steak the excess water, and
then it gets pulled back in so that the salt goes all
the way down inside the meat, and you've got that
salt flavor all the way through and any excess
moisture has evaporated. And you might be asking
yourself, 'Well, wait a minute, I want my steak moist!'
the moisture in your meat doesn't come from the water. The moisture in your meat comes from that fat that gets rendered. And so you should see actually, a more moist piece of meat
from the dry brined piece, than you do with the piece
that's not dry brined because with the salt pulled all the way into the meat, salt helps to retain water. So here's the experiment
we're going to do. I'm going to take this steak right here and I'm going to dry brine it. And this steak right here,
I'm not going to dry brine. Instead, I'm going to vacuum seal it, and store it in the
refrigerator overnight, right next to this one
that I'm dry brining. And then we're going
to cook them tomorrow. So let's go ahead and get
the first one sealed up. (upbeat music) (vacuum seal machine whirring) Okay. And the other one we're just going to apply
salt to nothing else. (upbeat music) Okay. I'm going to go put
these in the refrigerator. They're going to sit in there overnight. At least for me, it'll be overnight. for you. We'll be right back. Good morning! So these have been in the
refrigerator for about 24 hours. Let's let's open this one
up and see what we've got. See if we can see the differences. Okay. Okay. So when we look at this we're going to see a lot of difference. So the first thing is this
one that we dry brined, You can see is dry. The salt that we put on the meat is gone. There's some left here on
the fat that didn't absorb but anything that was
touching meat got absorbed. You can't see this but if you feel it,
it's hard to the touch. This one is still wet. It's been in the vacuum seal all night. It's got, it's still Brown. It hasn't turned red. Like the salt has brought the red out. This one's more marbled, it started more marbled but the marbling's really pronounced on the one that we dry brined. So I think we're going to see
a difference in these steaks but let's go ahead and get them seasoned. So the first thing I'm
going to do is use a binder. I've got to use a binder
on the dry brined steak because there's no moisture
there to hold onto the spices. So I'm going to go ahead and use the same one on the
steak that we didn't dry brine. So before I put the binder on, I'm going to go ahead
and dry off this steak. We don't want any of that that water or moisture that's left over from the bag. Okay. So for our binder, I'm going
to be using Wagyu tallow. For those of you who
are new to the channel this is my favorite binder. I did a video on it a couple of weeks ago if you want to see how I make it at home but I'm just going to melt it in my hand. And then I will rub it all over the steak. Pick a little more for the other side. (upbeat music) Oops, I forgot to melt that in my hand. But if I just set my
hand down on the steak, it's going to melt just fine. Let's go ahead and do the
same thing on the other steak. (upbeat music) Okay, Now we already salted
the steak that we dry brined the salt from the brine but we don't have any salt
on the other steak yet. So let's go ahead and do that. And now we're just going to
put pepper on both steaks. Okay? So these need to come up to room temperature
before we cook them. So let's go get the smoker fired up. I'll meet you at the grill. (rock music) (charcoal bag seal ripping) (charcoal pouring) (torch humming) Hey, welcome to the backyard. If you've been here
before you recognize Darth our extra large, big green egg. Darth is running at 225° with
fogo premium hardwood charcoal and some cherry chunks in there. It's one of my favorite
woods to use with steak. So we're going to do a reverse sear. We're going to start by
smoking these steaks at 225°, until the internal
temperature comes up to 115° and then we'll be back and we're going to sear 'em. So let's go ahead and
get these on to Darth. Okay. So those are gathering smoke. And coming up to temperature, you noticed I put a couple of
temperature probes in there. They're connected to
my ThermoWorks signals. It's also controlling the
temperature of the grill. If you don't know about
those products, by the way I'll put a link right up here so that you can see the review
that I did of those products. But I'll be able to
monitor this on my phone. It's going to take about an
hour for me anyway, for you. It'll be about three seconds. Be right back. Okay. According to the ThermoWorks app, the steaks are at 115°. So it's time. I'm going to open up Darth, I'm going to pull those thermometers out, and we're going to sear. If you've been here before, You've seen me sear with the Su-V gun. If not, you're in for a real treat. (rock music) (torch humming) I love the Su-V gun from GrillBlazer. By the way, if you haven't seen the video I did a video about that one too. I'll put right here. So I'm going to take these steaks off, Let them rest for about 10 minutes. Be right back to taste. (rock music) Okay. It's finally time to tell. So Leah, I did an experiment today. You know how we always dry brine? - Yeah.
- One of these steaks is dry brined, one of these
steaks is not dry brined. So this video is, to brine or not to brine?
That is the question. - They look different. - Yeah, they are different. Well, I mean, this one's a little bigger, but you can see the
colors a little different, this one's got more moisture, which is a little bit of a surprise, you'll see why in a bit. And by the way, sorry
about the noise folks but I have another cook going
on here for another video. You want to see something cool? - What? Wait, I thought we already took this out? - Yes. But this is a goat leg and it's going to be done in a few hours. So hopefully you guys
are already subscribed. Have that notification bell hit so that you know when that video comes out. All right. You ready to taste these? - Yep.
- All right. So here is steak number one. Don't worry, I'm not going to cut you. Steak number one. All right. That looks
pretty, perfectly done, Doesn't it? - Yeah.
- All right. So, which side do you want me to cut from? That one? Okay. All right. So that one looks good. So let's cut off a piece. - Whatever one you see first. - And I'm going to cut
this into three pieces, one for Leah, and one for dad, And of course, this piece
pieces for you guys. So you taste this and let
me know what you think. All right, you ready? Cheers. Cheers. It's a good steak, right?
- Yeah. Yeah. So MTY: Moist? - Definitely! - All right, Tender, It is
as tender as I usually make? - It's very tender, yeah. - Very tender. Yummy? Yes. Okay. So we've got a good steak here. Alright. Let's see how we
feel about this other steak. - Wait, I'd rather give
that a 4.5 on yummy. - 4.5 on yummy? Not all
the way. Yummy? All right. So this one looks good too. All right. So we cut from
this side on the other one. So let's do that again. All right. It's only
4.5 on yummy over there. Right? I'm going to take
this off so we don't cheat, Cause that's the cap, but we'll
take a taste of that later. All right? So one piece for Leah, one piece for dad, And of course this one's for you guys. All right. I'll put that there for you. All right. You ready? Cheers. Cheers. There's a big difference, right? - That's so much better.
It has more smoke flavor. - It has more flavor, you
can taste the salt, right? And I think it's more moist. - Yeah.
- All right. So I've been telling you this all along. This is the first time I've
done a side-by-side experiment. but Leah, you won't be surprised. This one was dry brined, this one, I put the salt
on right before we cooked. It's still good. It's okay to make a
steak like this, but boy this is so much better, isn't it? All right. You guys heard it here, I've been teaching you all along, now you know how to dry brine. do that with your steaks and
you're going to be super happy. If you like this video, I've got another one right
here where I did an experiment, Su-V'd versus trying to grill SuVide on Darth. You should check that one out. And if you've already seen
that one, check out this one I think you're going
to like that one a lot. Thanks for stopping by. We'll see you next time on - [Both] Eat More vegans.
