butter at the end is correct. Butter burns quickly, so only add it early on if you want your crust to be browned with burnt butter. The brown you want is from the maillard reaction in the meat, not the butter turning brown.

Pro tips on marinated steaks, like 1lb sirloins, etc? I tend not to pat them dry too much which leaves me with a slightly less charred product. Do you guys still butter these? Only ovens? Saute first?

Should I be marinading steaks lightly with the top of the container off to let it dry out a bit? Should I be covering the steaks tightly?

I am not a big fan of marinated steaks. If the steak is good quality, I think a marinade is detrimental. Having said that, if you marinated it long enough, I would think ensuring it is dry prior to cooking should get good sear. There is no reason to avoid patting them dry, as the marinade should be well into the meat, any surface liquid does nothing for you really, other than impair your crust.

Blah ribeye

this thread is torture when im grinding mtts and can't even make a sandwich on my 5m break, but it's the good kind of torture. keep up the good work.

very nice rubbish.

I think marinated steaks are better on the grill, personally.

Ducasse method with a thick steak has gotten me the best crusts by far.

assuming that's the one with constant basting of butter or some other fat

when u say at the end, when do you mean? like the last two minutes?

tonight i trimmed fat from the ribeye and rendered that to cook it in, 3 minutes/ side in cast iron. when i flipped it i cut about half a table spoon of butter off a stick and just put it on top of the steak. as it melted i moved it around the steak with tongs so the butter would be evenly applied, but just to one side. steak was a little thin, so i overcooked it some, but i was really pretty happy with the exterior.





might try again tomorrow, local store has prime bone out rib eye on sale for 8.99/lb

def nice crust there, looks like a really really thin cut though

ya, little less than an inch thick, bout 4/5 lb. i thought it had the best marbling of the ones i saw though

tonights offering

yep that sounds just about perfect. I'd say butter in the last 3-5 minutes. You can also get some in the pan and get it under the meat so it coats both sides

Crust looks great. Also with such a good edge of fat on that steak you can just start it out on the edge for a bit instead of trimming anything off. I usually cook filets so I don't have that luxury


Also, I'm hoping to try a beer cooler sous vide filet sometime this week/end. I'll post pics if it turns out ok.
*edit* current plan is water ~127F for 45+ minutes then sear it in a cast iron for a good crust. I think I could sear it directly in beef fat & butter because it will be in the pan for such a short period of time. Thoughts? Anyone do any sous vide cooking before? It's all new to me.

I have a post about it earlier ITT. I think I concluded that you should sous vide it at a lot lower temp than 127 unless you want it med-well after searing it.

I tried it once. See post #2059.

Great thread. I had a juicy one this weekend.

I put cast iron pan on element without any oil and slowly brought the temperature up. Turned off the fire alarm inside my apartment. I waited till pan was smoking, the element was red, and I was fearing that the general fire alarm outside my apartment door might go off. They say you're not supposed to use cast iron on maximum heat if it's direct contact (ie. electric range), but warnings be damned!

Pat dried NY strip loin, seasoned with coarse sea salt, and a bit of safflower oil on both sides. A quick paper towel wipe of the cast iron to get rid of any burnt oil from the seasoned pan and bam, 1 minute per side, and finished in oven for 6 minutes, with 10 min rest under tented but not fully sealed foil.

Tasty! I think I'll stick to 90 seconds per side though to get more of a crust next time. I went with 60 seconds since the cut looked thin.



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great looking steak!

i think your high may be a little too hot. only a minute per side and you still had a slightly too thick gray band. a little lower and longer and you can probably get a firmer crust that isn't as deep. also, i'm a big fan of searing the edges of the steak

I was going to do the beer cooler method but I may go for 123-124F instead of 127F. 135F is definitely too high. I don't understand how everyone measuring temps of cooking steak gets this so wrong. Like every guide and thermometer I see had temps 10-15 degrees too hot and would absolutely ruin a steak if you follow it.

I'm planning on putting the following in a freezer ziplock (either gallon or quart) with all the air sucked out

~1/2# Tenderloin, trimmed
herbed salt and freshly ground black pepper (going to salt at least 45 minutes early while steak warms to room temp)
3 sprigs thyme
1 garlic clove, probably sent through one of those mashers
1 shallot, thinly sliced

Cooking this at something around 125F for 45+ minutes, then searing for about 1 minute on each side in beef fat and butter on fairly high heat.

Since this is a beer cooler and not a burner, the water temp will drop a few degrees when I add the cool food, so I'll either start a little higher than planned or add a little more water to bring up temp.

I may or may not use an aquarium pump to circulate water during cooking

If this works well then I'll try some chicken, and maybe veggies later. Then I may go for the sous vide supreme demi and a vacuum sealer

recent steaks itt look good. i havent had a nice ribeye in awhile, maybe ill buy one this weeekend

look forward to some pics freakin, cuz i have no idea what ur talking about

yes kosher salt is the nuts

Dont know about the beer cooler sous vide method but I would recommend searing for a minute pre being put in the water bath. The (I assume) maillard 'stuff' created by the sear pre-water bath is drawn into the steak increasing those flavour compounds in the steak. There is no visible 'sear' when it comes out of the water bath.

Sear, then put the seasoned steak inside a ziploc bag using melted butter (and poss garlic clove) to create the seal using the 'close bag in a bowl of water' (my name!) look at Bladwin or cookingissues blog for the method if you don't know it. Then sear again post sous vide-ing. This method is is the one recommended by Dave Arnold (tech guy at FCI New York) and is great - I do it at home with excellent results.
Not pre-searing will still be fine I suppose. The melted butter is excellent for getting the vacuum, but again up to you!

beer cooler sous vide is a complicated method in which you put hot water in a beer cooler, add your food in ziploc bags and think you're high class. The closed beer cooler does a great job of trapping in the heat and you usually only lose 1 degree/hour

I'll definitely consider quick sear pre-cooking. How much melted better do you use? Do you like baste it on while it's cooking or just add melted butter to the bag?

Do you put anything in the skillet for the post-cook sear or is the butter enough?

As an aside, doesn't sous vide cooking go against the "spirit" of steak? We're talking about a visceral, unhealthy pleasure that is the epitome of simple, perfect cooking. All this fuss over what is effectively a 1 ingredient dish seems like we're fighting the ingredient, no?

The only issue I see with the sous-vide method for steaks is the fact that a major factor in steak cooking is a nice well-developed crust. To get this crust you need to sear the steak in an extremely hot pan. I feel like this will ruin the benefits of sous-vide because the inside will be inevitably be cooked more in the time it takes to develop a good crust. If there was a way to sear the steak without raising the inside temperature i think it would work well but that sounds very difficult to me.