[laughing]
- Let's say it at the same time.
Ready?
- [Both] You guys
have so
many questions about--
- I can go faster.
- [Both] Steak.
- And we're gonna--
- [Both] Answer them.
[upbeat music]
- Steak questions, lay it on him.
First question.
- "If you don't have a meat thermometer,
"how many minutes per side
when grilling/cooking a steak
will get you to medium rare?"
- Such a classically flawed--
- [Both] Question.
- How many minutes per, oh god.
- It entirely depends on
how thick the steak is.
- Is it cold, is it room temp?
- There's no answer.
Is it a skirt steak?
- Is it this fat?
- Is it a four bone rib eye?
- I can't answer
this question.
- What cut?
- What cut is it?
- How hot is your grill?
- How hot's your grill?
- How hot is your pan?
- You could do the old
right here test, okay?
- Basically the point is
when your steak cooks,
the proteins and like
muscle fibers tighten
so a steak that feels very soft
that is, that gives when you press
and doesn't spring back is a raw steak.
- Loose is rare, real rare, raw even.
Firming up, medium.
[grunts]
Overcooked.
- Oh, way overcooked.
- And it's a really accurate model.
- Okay, let me see.
- It's true, this is a useless test.
When the proteins cook and
tighten it'll spring back
and be firmer so you
can kind of poke at it.
- Use a little intuition.
Stop, just think about what you're doing.
- Linda Heston asks.
- "Cast iron or grill?"
- Grill.
- Cast iron, yeah.
- Cast iron, more contact, more--
- More contact.
Cast iron on the grill's great.
- I also do that when I have a grill
which is at my parent's house.
- What do you like about the grill?
- I feel like you get so much
more of the smoke flavor.
You get a better crust on a cast iron
but you don't get the flavor of smoke.
- I'm totally team cast iron cause I want
a nice crunchy, crusty crusty crust.
- Okay, so this is the grill cooked steak
and this is the cast iron cooked steak
and I feel like you're developing
so much more of a crust
when you're using a cast iron
than you are when you're using a grill
because all of the slats
in between the grates
aren't making contact with the steak
and then you aren't getting
that caramelization.
- But then you do also get from a grill,
if it's a wood fired grill,
you would get smokey flavors,
you would get that outdoor ambiance,
and I feel like if you move
your steak around enough
which is a thing I do,
eventually you could get a good crust.
Right.
- Like, this grill,
no thank you.
- Totally.
I agree.
- Grill in your freaking backyard?
Yes, please.
- Sure.
- "What is the best way
to get a good crust?"
[thoughtful sighing]
- Okay, crust lady.
- [Rick] Ooh.
- So you wanna start by making
sure there's no moisture
on your steak so you
get a good sear, right?
- Mm-Hmm.
- You feel good with
where I'm going so far?
- One, dry out the steak.
So leave it uncovered in
the fridge, paper off.
I even like to, if it has a bone
or if it's sturdy thick enough steak,
I'll stand it on its side
so that the both cut faces
start to dry out.
- You can leave it like that
in the fridge totally uncovered on a rack
for like a couple of days.
- Good crust, make sure your heat,
make sure your pan's heated all the way.
You don't wanna [slaps] throw your steak
on a cold pan.
- Right, right, right.
- So you want a really hot cast iron
and I start with oil and
then finish with butter
because the butter's gonna burn.
[food sizzling]
And then do you do,
are you into the just keep flipping?
- No.
- No?
- I'm a just keep flipping.
- Of course you are.
- And then also don't disturb your steak.
Let it hang out.
The people like,
people's inclination is--
- Playing?
- Always like, oh I gotta
touch my food all the time.
- I like to flip it every
30 seconds to make sure--
- Really?
- You get a really even crust
and it like cooks evenly.
- If your steak is thick
enough, so at least an inch,
inch and a half, I really do love
the frequent turning method.
- Wait so oh, that's like.
[laughing]
That is gnawing at my soul.
- It's gonna get crusty I swear.
- It's gray, it's gray.
- [Sohla] We're just gonna keep flipping.
- [Rick] Okay, now explain
to me the logic in this.
- Every time you flip it's
like the surface is cooling off
so then when you get back onto that side,
it helps develop a better crust.
Kinda like when you do the
triple cooked potatoes.
[food sizzling]
- Oh that's nice.
- You wanna see the crust?
- [Rick] I do.
- Vanna White hands.
Best way to get a good crust on a steak
is to use a hot cast iron.
- Flip about 1,000 times.
- 1,000 times precisely and?
- Butter baste?
- Butter baste.
You read this one.
- "What is the best way to make steak
"without smoking up my entire apartment?"
Grill it, outside.
- I always cook steaks in cast irons,
but instead of coating
the entire cast iron pan
in a slick of oil, I coat the steak in oil
and keep the cast iron dry
so that when the steak
[claps] makes contact
with the pan, the only oil that's actually
going up in smoke is
the oil that's directly
on the steak and there's
not all of this extra oil
that's getting hotter
and hotter and hotter
as the steak cooks and
causing more and more smoke.
- That's a good tip.
I also personally really
like the reverse sear method.
- Slow roast it in the oven, pull it out.
- Hit it with a little, little oil
and then [slaps] ha, ha,
just hit it real hot!
- Prefer to broil mine.
You literally want the
flames to be touching the top
of the steak and so it is
actually like grilling.
- "What's the best way to season steak
"and at what point do
you season the meat?"
- First of all, let it sit out
at room temperature--
- Temper your steak.
- For like an hour.
- Temper your steak.
- That's what you do first.
First you temper, then
you season aggressively.
- And then after you slice,
a little flakey salt on all the slices
because if a really
steak, even if you season
it way in advance, you
still need a little extra
for those center cuts.
- So we disagree on this one.
I am very much a season in
advance at least an hour before.
I want the inside of the
steak to be well seasoned.
You want salt on the
outside for the crust.
- Because I can't plan very well, so.
- I mean, you bought a steak,
just like season it as soon
as you get back from the market.
- Stop yelling at me, Rick!
- "What's the best oil
to pan fry steak in?"
- I don't like the term pan fry.
- I feel like I'm inclined to just start
with a neutral oil like
canola or safflower
or grapeseed or something like that.
- You can use any vegetable oil really.
I use olive oil, I use grapeseed oil,
I use canola oil, I use peanut oil.
- Personally for me I always--
- Something neutral that's not
gonna give out a lot of flavor
unless you want it.
- I do a cheaper olive oil.
- A cheaper olive oil.
- Cheaper olive oil.
- This whole like narrative
about how olive oil
has a lower smoke point and like burns,
like meh, has that ever
really bothered me?
No.
[laughing]
- And wait.
- And you.
- And you makes two.
- Asks, "Should I."
- [Both] "Bash it with a hammer?"
[laughing]
- Uh, no.
- No.
- Wait, what?
Bash what?
- Why?
- The steak?
- Do you have anger issues?
[laughing]
- "Should I bash it with a hammer?"
- I think the generally,
like the idea of tenderizing
meat is kind of like
misplaced, like sometimes
you wanna pound a steak
to kind of like even out
its thickness or to kind
of like loosen it up
a little bit like we
were just talking about,
but generally I don't
feel like pounding meat
tenderizers it, you know?
- Right, right, right.
- Highgravity211 asks.
- "How best to reheat steak?"
[thoughtful groaning]
- I mean.
- I am a firm believer in
not reheating something
that's already been cooked
to a certain temperature.
- Don't, eat it cold.
- Don't, yeah.
- What's wrong with cold steak?
- Okay so this one is just
room temp, not reheated.
Pan, microwave, oven.
- See this is the thing
about reheating steak
is like however you heat
it, you're you know,
if you were trying to get
it to a certain temperature,
it's already sliced.
- You're losing the temp.
No matter what.
- You're losing the temp.
So it's not gonna
be medium rare anymore.
- But there's degrees
of losing the temp.
- But we added browning
which is kinda cool.
- That's true, I know,
which is kind of appealing.
[loud chewing]
- This microwave steak, I
don't even want to eat this.
- Yeah, it's so gray.
- Don't microwave your steak.
- Don't microwave your steak.
But this is the--
- It has a little bit of pink.
- Of these methods,
this is the most still--
- Pink.
- Still pink.
- And yeah cause a gentler heat.
- See that's so good to me.
- Yeah.
- I don't understand why
you need to heat it up.
- "Should I buy grass-fed?
"It seems all good and
nice, but I was told
"it tends to have less fat.
"Is that real or a rumor?"
[laughing]
"Some Amish adjacent
guy at a party told me
corn-fed is the way to go."
- Well, we don't need to bring
people's Amish-ness into it.
- Cows eat grass, right?
It's what they're designed to eat.
Don't get me wrong, I like fatty meat too
but basically you're giving it,
when you get it
grain-finished or something
that has been feeding
on grain it's unhealthy
for the animal, it's basically
like feeding it candy
or soda to getting it fattened up.
You're getting all that, you're making it,
his whole body fat and
basically unhealthy.
- And really the thing about grain-fed
is that the flavor of the steak
is totally one dimensional, right?
There is a lot of fat,
but fat is the dominating flavor.
With a grass-fed there's
layers to the flavor,
there's more going on,
it's more interesting.
- And you taste the meat you know?
I don't mind leanness.
- You taste the meat.
- Another way to answer this question
is saying get to know your butcher
and get to know really where
your meat is coming from.
It's not like grass-fed
is always the more ethical
or healthier or you know,
fill in the blank choice.
- What's the best way to
cook steak for a crowd?
- Cook a lot of them.
- Yeah.
- Mm, I mean this is like
where the grill comes in handy
cause if you have a large
grill you can like just
line the steaks up.
- Yeah, especially if you
stick with like something
that cooks fast like skirt or flank.
Those are good party steaks.
- You have like 15 people
over for dinner all the time,
I do not.
- I think reverse searing
a big thick cut of meat is the way to go
because then you reverse sear it,
it comes up to temperature,
it can sit on the counter
for like an hour and a half, two hours,
and then whenever you're
gonna sit down to dinner,
you just flash it in the pan,
get the crust you're after, slice it,
and you're good to go.
You don't even need to rest it.
- Hmm, I think party steak.
- Yeah, which we have a recipe for.
- Yeah, we do.
- Anna Stockwell developed--
- [Carla] Party steak!
- A recipe for party steak
which is a skirt steak.
- Party steak!
- [Carla] Was it skirt, right Anna?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, so the good
thing about a skirt steak
is that they're pretty big.
They come in these like kind of long flaps
and they cook really, really quickly
and so in both of those ways
you can feed a lot of people
without having to turn a
ton of individual steaks
which is like definitely something
you would want to avoid.
- "Is there a shortcut
for bringing the steak
"to room temp before cooking?"
No.
- No.
- I don't know, a warm apartment?
- Not really.
- No, I mean it's fine if you don't.
- Yeah.
- It's not a make or break thing.
- I mean and actually,
sometimes like you know
if it's on the thinner
side it's actually better
to pull it directly out of the fridge
because the center will
stay cooler longer.
- Yeah, you're less likely to overcook.
- "Does searing a steak
actually seal in the juices?
"I hear people, even professional chefs,
"say that all the time and
I think they're full of S."
H-I-T.
- Yes they are!
They totally are.
[laughing]
It's a complete lie.
It's an old chef's tale that needs to die.
- I kinda of agree, it's like--
- You're not like, I don't
know the science of it,
but you're not literally
sealing in the juices.
You haven't created a...
- Right.
- Yeah.
- But the thing that does seal in juices
is after you take your
steak out of the pan,
after it's cooked, let it hang out.
Let it sit--
- Yeah, yeah, rest, rest.
- Don't go slicing into it right away.
Then all the juice is gonna
lean out of the steak.
- Yeah, let it rest
for 10 minutes.
- You want the muscles
to come tighten up a little bit.
- Yeah and let them
juices kinda reconstitute
back into it.
- Yes, exactly.
- "What's something you can
do to save overcooked steak?"
No.
- You can't really.
Oh, eh, no, not really.
- Ooh.
- Sauce, saucy, go saucy.
- And thinly slice it.
- Very thinly slice and season and again,
like you've got some salsa verde,
you got some spicy mayo,
you've got some really
good olive oil, you know,
your compound butter.
- Lean into the condiments.
- Just, you know, kill
it with sauce [laughs].
- I would like doing a little if I've--
- Braise it out!
- I mean I never have overcooked steak.
- No.
- But say were to have overcooked steak,
in tomato sauce with pasta,
little shreddy steak.
- Boom, there you go.
- In pasta, done.
- Put it in a, braise it out.
- Yeah, braise it out in tomato sauce.
- Anyway, braise it out.
- Ooh, thinly slice and
Philly cheese steak it.
- Yeah.
- It's still gonna be.
- Turn it into quesadillas,
chop it up for nachos.
[laughing]
- "Why do people get judgy
when I order it cooked?"
As opposed to raw?
- Not cooked.
- Cooked, all caps.
- [Director] I think they meant.
- I think.
- [Director And Brad] Well done.
- Well done.
- Ah, well.
- Cause it's gross.
- Yeah, just don't eat a steak.
Maybe you don't like steak.
- Gnaw on your shoe.
[laughing]
- That's why they're judging you,
because you have bad taste
and you're not good at eating food,
and maybe you should grow up.
- I don't, well, not about that part,
but I don't disagree about
the first part [laughs].
- Maybe you should grow up.
- It's just maybe not like the--
- Cause people are judgy.
People are awful.
- And maybe it's just not like the optimal
way to eat a steak, but if it's the way
you like eating a steak then,
stand by that.
- It's fine, you should your steak
however you want.
- Right.
- I don't care.
- That's not what you just said.
- Great questions, guys.
Hope we helped you out.
- Happy steak-ing.
- Steak crazy!
- Thanks for playing,
that's my favorite fun game.
[laughing]
- [Alex] It's fun, it's his favorite.
- [Brad] It is fun, I can't even talk.
