Theory/reasoning behind this part? Ive never heard of someone doing that but the steak looks amazing.

diablo, did you wash off or pat dry(but leaving the salt+pepper for the crust) after the 1 hour of salt+pepper?

the discussion about it is quite far back, but i believe it started as brainstorming a way to still rest your steak but get it to the plate hotter than it would be after the standard 7-8 minutes rest after cooking. worrying about resting the steak in its juices or having to rest it in a warm oven has always been pretty annoying to me, so i'm definitely going to give this a try.

max: no wash off or pat dry or any such nonsense

af: If you search for reverse sear, you'll find some discussion earlier in the thread. But basically, using the concepts from http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/12/t...prime-rib.html to cook the steak at a low and even temperature, then rest it, then sear it at the end. The goal is to get an evenly cooked steak throughout without a big overcooked ring around the outside. And also to not have a lukewarm steak due to resting at the end.

oh. i didn't even realize there were other benefits. the part about getting rid of excess moisture before searing makes a lot of sense.

El D wins at life again. thanks for the article link.

that article is too long for regular steaks. Just copy El d's post to a .doc and win at life. Everytime i have cooked steaks i have always thought that it would make more sense to 'warm the steak' then let it cool a little then burn the outside into a delicious fatty tasting crust. Can't wait now that its confirmed awesome. Getting new cast iron skillet tomorow, time to get a nice prime steak

Got going on a 1.33 lb choice flatiron steak this week. Check out the marbling on this beast


Hit it with a heavy dose of kosher salt for 20 minutes, rinsed it, dried it, and applied lots of pepper.

Well, got my grill nice and hot, got the steak on there, and ran out of gas. Finished in the oven, it came out pretty well but no good sear.

looks nice on the inside... sucks about the grill though haha

also, i was telling my mom about the el diablo method and she was trying to tell me that that method isnt safe. she was saying that even though the inside may reach a proper internal temperature that it isnt the same because it isnt a high heat. everything i said to her she would deny so please someone give me some science or something so i can show why men deal with steaks k thx.


and yes el d that means youre now famous in my house haha

Science?

If she is worried about the meat not being safe to eat, she is worried about bacteria, specifically E. Coli. Bacteria does not naturally hang around the muscles of cows, and can only really be transferred to the outside of a cut of meat if it comes into direct contact (worker does not properly wash his hands, contamination in the meat packing plant, etc. etc.). If that were to happen, the bacteria would remain on the outside, and get killed when you cook the meat. Nothing wrong with the inside.

If you were to have bacteria contact the outside of a steak, and then grind it up into hamburger, keep it at too high a temperature (higher than 40 degrees) and then cook it medium rare, then yes, it might not be safe.

yeah i mean by science i already tried explaining to her as best as i could how dumb her argument sounded so i needed another line of reasoning or something

Onion rings made me think electric deep fryer I got recently which I use all the time. So convenient and delicious.

Ok so i finaly received my too expensive cast iron.

Im gonna season it, but now reading online there's so many contradicting opinions by a bunch of know it all on ****ty sites (seriouseats is down)

Some say you should oil it after every usage then boil the oil then let it cool off etc etc

I know alton brown says to just put sea salt or kosher and wash it with the fat already inside, is that enough? I use butter for everything, some site says it leaves a stench.

For caring for cast iron, I basically went with what I saw on the Lodge website.

Clean with a stiff nylon brush, maybe some salt, and hot water. Heat it up to dry it, and every once in a while re-season by rubbing a thin layer of some vegetable oil all over it, and tossing it into a heated oven for an hour or so. Seems to work great.

yeah got a preseasoned lodge skillet and I just clean it with hot water & brush then usually lightly rub it dry w/ paper towel & spray with a thin coat of PAM OO

ask her why you can simmer chicken until it is done and not get sick. Internal temp is really all that matters here.

i just seasoned it with corn and its all yellow even after i try to remove the excess oil which there isnt much.. gonna try an other time see if it goes black instead
freakin: you spray it with the oil then just leave it like that untill next usage? that seems to easy

Tell her if she goes to church and prays she's fine just like all of relatives. Then punch her in the nose.

so i said i was going to try out the reverse sear, and i didn't really plan on doing it tonight, but i also chanced upon a steak i just had to buy. some bone-in rib eyes were "manager's special" for $3.99/lb. i looked through most of them, disappointed but not surprised, as they were mostly mangled thin cuts. but i found a pretty good looking one at the very back of the shelf. 1.25lb for just under 5 bucks!



from here it's a mostly blatant ripoff of everything el diablo did. let steak sit out, rendered fat around edges a bit, and then cooked for 3 minutes a side on medium heat (level 4 on my electric stove where there is an 8 and HI setting which is basically a white hot element). at this point i was kinda skeptical because, well, it just didn't look great while it rested...



...but there has to be something to this method because after searing on high (7 on my stove fwiw) for about a minute and a half, it looked much, much better.




what's weird is when i served it, it felt firmer than other steaks i've cooked medium rare. so i had another moment of fear that i would cut into a medium or worse steak. so, so wrong!

of course, the extreme meat closeups and epic last bite! i also made mashed potatoes which you can see in the background of the second shot.





and yes, that big pocket of fat was delicious. i actually portioned it out to eat with all the other bites.

not bad, what about seasoning?

Im personally going crazy, i just wasted an other steak.. Sea salt is ***** terrible when you salt your stack, think ima go for pepper only or montreal steak spices only

awesome thread.

i did the 2 hours of salting, then cook on its side first. i'm not good at all at cooking or stuff like this and it was super easy.

Recently bought one of these and it works great:

expert

what a success this thread has been