The Perfect Steak

Absolutely bloody gorgeous, actually. The few extra degrees hadn’t made as much differences as we’d feared. The inside was really lovely and moist, and the outside was crispy and generally fantastic.

Very cool – but your license should be a link to the webpage on the CC site, and you should provide a download link for the video if it’s available CC…

Plus, more text on the page would be good – a clearer/longer explanation of the three parts of the meat, and what you’re doing at the different temperatures would be nice!

Damn good start though.

Brilliant!
I want to see you on TV!
james

Bloody brilliant!
This is the cooking show I’ve always wanted to do but never had the huevos to do myself. Thank you gentlemen for a great bit of pain-free, tasty science.

Oh, though I should add: one of you needs to speak just a WEE bit more slowly. I shan’t mention any names. :-) I just don’t want to miss any of the fun.

If fillet is an unused muscle, what’s it there for?

Perhaps not very accurate to say an ‘unused’ muscle… wikipedia describes it as “”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filet_mignon">non-weight bearing", which makes more sense.

It seems to be used mainly to draw the legs forward, if its function is anything like that of the corresponding human muscle.

the times the same for every comment :)

Times on comments – yeah, I’ve noticed that too. Fixing it tomorrow, hopefully.

Just watched it for the 10th time ;) This time on youtube, now as a regular tuber I think you guys need to give your channel a bit of work! Also for episode one you need kamikaze cookery as a split keyword as it currently doesn’t show up on a search! Also, get a description metatag on your website! For the video pages generate a dynamic one based on the video titles, hurrah. SEO rant over, roll on next Wednesday!!

Hey Hugh, Your description metatag is what shows up under your website title in search engine results. Defo not depreciated, if you need any help with that give me a shout, SEO keeps me in clothes ;) For the tube channel, make yourself a nice 1440px × 1850px background image that fits around your channel :) That should give you room for your new videos as they come. Setup your colours and add lots of nice info on the series. Then maybe get a playlist setup early for series 0 and add the first vid. Look about, there are some nice examples. Remember as soon as you post a youtube video they get duplicated all over the web on multiple video sites so fill it with keywords and links back to your site and get all the info 100% right before you publish it. Happy days.

@Julian – thanks.

@Padmini – ah, yeah, the old “ninja hands” as a friend of mine described them. Have done that for years – I’ll try and keep it in check…

Fantastic! Funnier than hell, and I’m thinking of trying it as soon as I can afford steak. And a plumber’s torch. And a vacuum…

Still, absolutely brilliant work! I’ll be back for seconds.

Thanks, guys!

@Erik – Thanks! Hope your students enjoy it.

The vacuum cleaner isn’t necessary, I must admit. We used it for two reasons – 1) it utterly prevents you getting meat juices in your mouth, with hilarious E. Coli-based results, and 2) it’s very funny to watch. But yeah, if you’re careful it’s often easier to just suck. So to speak.

Water temperature – yeah, I agree on all points there. If you don’t mind, I’ll suggest the half cold/half boiling approach in our mini-episode on Monday.

Of course, ideally you’d use a temperature-controlled water bath – they’re cheaper to create than you’d think. Again, I’ll cover that on Monday.

Thanks! It does, doesn’t it?

I just stumbled upon this website and I have to say that I am ridiculously impressed. The concept of a practical-application molecular gastronomy show is a brilliant one. My only qualm is that I feel a bit more attention should be paid to explaining why these cooking methods are superior to traditional ones, in order to help sway reluctant viewers.

Fantastic stuff, keep it coming.

We weren’t sure whether to do the “oh, it’s gorgeous” shot – we actually filmed it, but it looked a bit rubbish, and we were worried about looking too much like a “normal” cooking show.

However, after the feedback, we’ll definitely make sure to do it next time.

Glad you liked it!

I don’t think you need to worry about this looking too much like a “normal” anything.

Very entertaining!

Thanks, guys! Glad you liked it!

@Justin – I’ll have to try sous-vide ribeye. I must confess, I absolutely love my fillet steak – it’s expensive but so worth it.

Is ribeye not a bit fattier? That’ll work less well at lower temperatures.

Update – Paul tells me that no, you can cut the fat out. Interesting.

Age – you’re absolutely right, we missed a trick there. D’oh.

I actually didn’t know that the meat’s mostly from bulls without bollocks – I’m sure Harold McGee mentions it somewhere, but I didn’t see it. Really handy info – thanks!

@Hugh: the fat in ribeye is mostly in one big lump in the middle. Some people don’t like that and get sirloin instead as a result, which is drier. These people are far too precious. You can just cut the fat and leave it on the side of the plate if you don’t like it; nobody’s going to stop you from having dessert if you haven’t eaten everything.

Beef is a dense meat, and it needs some fat in it to break it up—-I should talk about marbling on the blog at some point.

I thought that the main reason why beef comes from boy cows⁰ is that all the girl cows¹ are working in the dairy industry. And the reason they come without bollocks is that, with bollocks, they tend to try to kill you if you get in the field with them.

I’ve met ill-tempered bollock-toting bulls before. It wasn’t fun.

⁰ ‘cattlebeasts’
fn1. ‘cows’

@Murray: I don’t think there was any deliberate Brass Eye homage in the episode. There was one on my personal blog during filming.

Hmmm. All the best Steaks I’ve eaten didn’t need Steak Knives, just an average eating knife. Mind you all the best Steaks I’ve eaten were cooked by Good Chefs who knew exactly what they were doing with a pan.

There’s a lot of debate as to whether it’s necessary to rest sous-vide cooked meat. For a temperature that low, it really shouldn’t make that much difference, as the muscles have barely contracted.

Having said that, the steak actually gets a bit of “resting” time whilst you’re blowtorching it. It seems to work, either way.

Heston B’s recipe is probably better than ours, I’m afraid. The 50 centigrade cooking time stimulates enzymes that rapidly age the meat, improving it. But yes, it is a massive faff.