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Steaks, supplementary

Paul
2008-10-09 17:31:00 UTC

Not surprisingly, the three of us disagreed over how to cook the Perfect Steak. If you watch us for long enough, you’ll notice that this is likely to be a running theme.

As mentioned in the programme, Heston Blumenthal (or Dr B, as he’s known) does it differently in his book In Search Of Perfection. There are good reasons for all of the steps he takes, but his version takes about 48 hours to cook. We settled on our version because it can reasonably be made in a domestic kitchen by someone who has a job to go to.

You don’t need an atomic crockpot that auto-regulates the temperature⁰. You don’t really need to use a vacuum cleaner—-you can create a pretty good vacuum seal with your mouth if you don’t mind a face full of raw beef juice. You don’t even need a blowtorch, as we discovered, and then instantly fell out about.

We made two steaks over the course of filming. The one you see in the episode is the one that was sous-vided and blowtorched. The other one was sous-vided in the same way, and then I browned it on the outside the conventional way, by frying it in a pan. Both were marvellous, but opinion was divided on which one was more marvellous. My opinion was that the blowtorched steak had a faint whiff of propane to it, which is not necessarily what you want in a steak. Mine tasted more meaty and steaklike.

The important points you need to get right are: heat the entire steak to 55°C but no higher, which is the perfect temperature for medium rare; and then, heat the outside to (well) over 140° to get the Maillard reactions going¹. How you go about doing that is up to you.

Personally, I find that frying in oil not only develops the Maillard reactions in the meat, but it contributes to the flavour, too. My preference is for peanut oil, which goes really well with the beefy taste of the beef. You still have to be careful not to heat up the inside of the steak too much, so fry it quickly, on a high heat.

Then there’s sauces. Disagreements abound here as well. I’m quite fond of a nice peppercorn sauce, but my flatmate insists that the only possible adulteration for steak is a small pile of salt on one side. He’s right in a way, except for the bit about the salt.

Then there’s the cut. We used fillet and it was amazing. Fillet isn’t generally considered an everyday cut of meat, though, unless your name happens to be Rockefeller. Sirloin is popular, but it’s overrated—-it lacks the fatty chunk that you get in the middle of rump steak, but as a result, it’s drier,less tender, and less flavoursome.

Above all, though, the important thing is this: if you’re going to spend ninety minutes watching a water bath to ensure your steak is perfectly cooked, make sure you buy a good chunk of meat in the first place. This is easy to do if you know how. Support your local butcher. He spends all day chopping up dead animals and watching people pass by his window, then returning from the local supermarket with something unidentifiable wrapped in plastic. It breaks his heart. If those people would stop in to see him instead, he could provide them with a well-aged hunk of deliciousness specially selected from a happy, grass-fed cow.

Once you’ve got hold of a chunk of quality meat, the rest is easy.

⁰ Hugh has one, and it makes it a lot easier. Once we find out how to mass-produce them, you’ll find them in the Shop.

¹ We’ll have more information about Maillard reactions in an upcoming episode. Here’s a short summary for the impatient: Maillard reactions are awesome, and you want to have more of them.

Comments

SpudTater | 2008-10-09 19:24:04 UTC

There again, last time I decided to buy myself a good bit of steak, I almost went into the butcher’s before I saw the prices. Then I went to the supermarket and bought a better cut for a tenth of the price.

No exaggeration in that last sentence. Go into the supermarket fairly late and hang around the meat counter. You can often pick up some insane offers.

(Same goes for fish.)

pajh | 2008-10-09 20:18:23 UTC

You have a meat counter in your supermarket? They’ve taken them all out of the ones around here.

Hugh | 2008-10-09 22:43:06 UTC

The meat counters are dying around here, too, although Tesco still has one.

I’m surprised your butcher was that expensive, though. I’ve found that their prices are generally a little higher than the supermarket, but that you make that back by being able to specify exactly how much meat you want – although obviously you can do that at a meat counter too.

SpudTater | 2008-10-10 10:57:04 UTC

Well, the butcher in question is Stanley’s in Gorgie, which AIUI is a rather expensive one.

The supermarket is Sainsburys “Murrayfield” branch. I do like the fact that they have a meat counter — the meat is generally better quality and fresher than the packaged stuff.

Christer | 2008-10-10 11:15:48 UTC

Using a drinking straw to suck the air out of a ziploc bag is a trick I’ve seen used before, probably on Good Eats.

epee | 2008-10-10 11:21:44 UTC

I loved your first video – watching out for more :)

Two practical questions:

“heat the entire steak to 55°C but no higher, which is the perfect temperature for medium rare”

… I prefer my steak a bit more than medium-rare, more like medium or even medium-well. So, what temperature should the water bath be for that?

And second question – you singe the outside to 140+C to kill the bacterial slime that’s growing on the surface as well as for the desirable Maillard reaction. Somewhere on teh site you said that the nasty slime is killed at 65C or 66C anyway. So, if you (like me) prefer steak to be M to MW, why not just cook the meat at 66C?

Hugh | 2008-10-10 12:10:18 UTC

@Christer – Yeah, that’s another good trick. Alternatively, you can wrap the meat in clingfilm / saran wrap, but then you’ve got to be really careful to seal it and not leave air in there. I’ve tried both ways and I prefer the ziploc bag, but if you really want to avoid juices getting into your mouth, clingfilm or vacuum cleaner’s the way to go.

@epee – For medium to medium-well, I’d recommend about 60 to 63 degrees, maybe up to 65 or so. Beyond that, you’re in serious danger of ending up with boot leather.

If you cook to 66 for any length of time, you’ll most likely have killed all the bacteria, you’re right (see the episode links for more on that). However, you really want to sear the outside of the meat anyway, to stimulate the Maillard reactions which give the meat a lot of its flavour – the “browning” is the sign of a series of very complicated organic reactions going on. I’ll talk about them more in a future episode.

Ben Sanders | 2008-10-10 12:19:19 UTC

One question: how long can you leave between the water bath stage (to heat the meat evenly to 55 degrees) and the final blowtorch/frying step for the Maillard reactions?

Could one, for example, leave the meat overnight in the fridge before the last step?

pajh | 2008-10-10 12:50:30 UTC

Spud: that’s the gigantic stadium-sized Sainsburys. I live in town, where we have all the smaller and less useful supermarkets. And there’s still the issue that, if you shop there, forty per cent of your money stays in the local economy and the rest goes to Mr Sainsbury.

I don’t mind meat counters so much, if you’re lucky enough to have one within an hour’s commute—-the quality is quite reasonable. But you never know how long the meat has been sitting out, and it’s very difficult to engage the sixteen-year-old shopgirl in a conversation about interesting recipes.

And think about poor Mr Stanley, whose children are going without shoes. Every time you shop in a supermarket, a local butcher somewhere feeds sawdust to his starving child. “Why does my stomach hurt, daddy?”

pajh | 2008-10-10 13:46:10 UTC

Ben: you could, but then you’d have cold steak, and that’s not nice. When you remove the meat from the water bath it’s at delicious eating temperature. Brown it straight away and serve.

Theoretically, if you’ve vacuum-sealed it properly, you should be able to leave it in the water bath for as long as you like without any adverse side effects, as long as you keep the bath at 55°. I’ve not tried this, though. Hugh might have some more information, and I plan on experimenting at some stage.

Hugh | 2008-10-10 14:15:18 UTC

@Ben – Yes, in theory you could just leave the meat to cool, then reheat it. This is what’s known as “cook-chill” in the restaurant trade.

However, there are a number of reasons why in practise this is a really bad idea. Most important is the existence of a pathogen known as bottulinus. It grows anaerobically, meaning that your vacuum-pack conditions are perfect for it, its spores can survive some really serious heat, and it causes a number of fun symptoms including vomiting, paralysis, and death.

Professional chefs cook-chill using very fast chilling methods and damn cold refrigerators. I’ve done a lot of research on sous-vide, and my conclusion on cook-chill is “don’t go there unless you’re Thomas Keller”.

You can also keep the steak in the waterbath at 55, in theory, but there are some issues here too. Firstly, there are a number of very slow reactions which will start to happen above about 3-4 hours’ immersion, which will degrade the texture of your meat. I’ve heard of chicken breast being distinctly unappetising after about 4 hours in a water bath.

Secondly, as mentioned in the episode, 55 degrees is right on the borderline between bacterial death and ideal growth temperature. If your temperature was to fluctuate down a bit for a few hours, you could see a massive growth of bacteria. I don’t know if the blowtorching would kill all of them off.

I regularly do sous-vide with meats in the waterbath for 24-48 hours, but that’s at much higher temperature (normally about 67-70 degrees, around the temperature that collagen starts to degrade), and the meat stays in the waterbath until it’s served. Having said that, you can make some truly gorgeous meals from tougher meats like pork belly and mutton leg this way.

epee | 2008-10-10 15:43:29 UTC

Huge, why isn’t bottulinus an issue when you’re cooking the meat at 55C? Is it the slow cooling that’s the problem here?

Hugh | 2008-10-10 15:57:08 UTC

A factor of time combined with temperature.

(I should stress that I’m not a doctor or a microbiologist, and if you really want to know the details on botulinus, you should consult a medical or toxicology professional.)

Basically, it takes a while for nasty things to germinate – more than an hour or so. Plus, in theory 55 degrees is high enough to actively inhibit the growth of the bacteria, I believe.

But the short version is “this is where my scientific knowledge starts to run out”. I’m mostly going from information I’ve read from people who know their stuff which says that over short time periods (a couple of hours) in sous-vide bath conditions, botulinus isn’t a problem. Don’t push the time period when cooking at these sorts of temperatures – personally, I wouldn’t even think about cooking anything below about 60 degrees for more than about 3 hours tops – and eat it fairly soon after taking it out of the water bath.

If you’re really concerned, I’d recommend having a look and maybe posting at the forums on egullet . Those guys really know their stuff.

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