you can see tenderness with your eyes.

look for generally darker meats. bright red would indicate there is no aging or breakdown. also you can see if the fibers of the steak are loose or tight with the naked eye. just look for it. Touching the surface of the meat will also verify this.

now you cant do full proper aging with a steak, because there will be nothing left after you trim the mold growth. However, you can do some dry aging in a fridge or wet aging sous-vide, for about a week or so before you'd get any real mold growth and in my experience you can improve flavor like this.

Oh god just made a beautiful NY strip... took some pics because it was reading this thread at work that inspired me. Need to go to bed now, but will post pics/TR when I get up in around 7-8 hrs.

So are you saying that a bright red steak is not the best steak to get, and that it should have that older looking, brownish color to it? This is diametrically opposed to the way I normally choose my meats. Have I been wrong this whole time?

this is pretty much true. i made that same mistake, as do many others. There are still great cuts that come out bright red, but if you're targeting meatier flavor, and more tender meat its best to find those lone dark pieces. fwiw, i first heard about this from marco pierre white, but have heard it corroborated at many points in my life from others experience and my experience concurs.

Tried my hand at a beef tenderloin with homemade fries last night:

I don't get one that's brown or anything, but if you look at the freshly cut ones, they appear wet....I stay away from those and look for the ones that have dried just a bit. You can tell by looking at them, they don't have that wet look and are definitely a little darker than the fresh cut ones. The meat flavor is more concentrated in those and in my experience, are tastier.

I almost always grill my steaks, but it was really hot/humid today and I wanted to try making a pan sauce. Also, I have a really nice All-Clad sautee pan I wanted to use

Decided to go with the boneless NY Strip and attempt a mushroom red wine pan sauce.

First step (I always do this with my steaks): Dry all the excess water off it! Then salt and pepper:


Huge garlic clove I used to rub the salt and pepper into the steak:



I just used olive oil.. it was a pretty thick steak so I planned on cooking at a med/high heat or so rather than screaming hot. I didn't feel like using the oven because in most cases unless it's a REALLY thick steak, it's just completely unnecessary.


Actually couldn't find shallots at the grocery store (wtf?!) so I got these little pearl onions, and they actually ended up working well.



Steak out to rest (side 1 a bit over-charred imo but nothing too bad):


Shrooms/Onion in with a bit of salt/pepper:



Finish it with cold butter off the heat:


Cut steak (kind of looks medium or more in the pic, but trust me it was between rare and med rare):


Serve with dinkiest asparagus ever which was blanched, ice bathed, re-heated, seasoned with salt/pepper and drizzled with olive oil and fresh lemon juice. Sauce is on the side here because I wasn't sure if my wife would like it or not:



Actually this was one of the better steaks I've made in a while.. I was worried about the pan sauce because I had never made one and I forgot to buy chicken broth which I was gonna use to cut the wine a bit. I used a 4$ cabernet and let me tell you, this sauce was amazing!!

Not sure if it was the right consistency.. it looked a bit thick, but maybe that was just because of the big chunks of mushroom in it.

That looks really good.

What kind of chopping board is that?

ty!

Not sure.. it's basically just plastic like all other ones I've had but it's black.

i have that chopping board and think it comes from target

I love it!
Please don't, though.

Just used the salting method that was discussed/linked early in the thread with a mediocre cut of steak that had been in my freezer for a couple months. Turned out great.

Covered both sides with kosher salt and let it sit for maybe 45 minutes. Rinsed, patted dry, grilled on high heat (my grill gets up to 700+ degrees in a couple minutes - I had it at around 600) for 6 minutes each side, rotating once halfway through each side. I didn't have any fresh herbs, so I just threw some dried minced garlic and black pepper on it before grilling. Topped it with a pat of butter when I put it on the plate (after letting it sit).

Ended up with a very tender, very juicy steak cooked to about medium/medium-rare.

My Son bought me a 12 inch Cast Iron Skillet for my birthday. I am going to do an Alton Brown rib eye - Hot pan, 30 seconds per side, and into the oven, flipping after 2 minutes.

Should be good!

I like to use a little heavy cream and/or sour cream. It will cut the acidity of the wine, and make a richer sauce.

It's important to make sure you cook off the alcohol in the wine (it tastes bad), but you still want it to be a gravy, and not a ragout, right?

So you need to make sure the heat is not too high, or it will reduce down further than you want.

IMO.

I concur with Rushmore that a bit of heavy cream will help.

SneakyFerret, I think what you made resembles more of a mushroom duxelle.

Also if the wine is too acidic, consider using cognac or brandy instead.

I posted this already but no one seemed to catch on.

F medium-rare/rare. GO BLUE RARE. once you eat blue you won't go back.

Yeah one thing that dawned on me is that it seems like most red wine pan sauces are strained out. I probably should have done that and it would have been better, or at the very least looked cleaner. I'll have to try using sour cream/heavy cream although it was just fine with butter and definitely not too acidic.

If anyone can't tell the difference between a good sear and a bad sear, this is a good sear, and the steak that Diablo posted is a bad sear.

Source for Marco Pierre White info?

ive heard it from him multiple times, but im pretty sure i first read it in "The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef". dont have a copy, read it borrowed from a friend, otherwise id try give you something more specific.

Saw a steak recipe of Marco's where instead of salting the steak he brushed on a mix of oil and a stock cube! He said not to be sobby about it and try it, I did and it was very good. Not what you expect from a starred chef tho.

looks very very nice

I often like a tiny bit of cumin on my steak

was at costco over the weekend and they somehow had prime filet's in the meat section. I had always heard that there's not much of a difference in prime filets and regular filets so it's usually not worth the difference in money spent............HOWEVER.......

I cooked 2 of these up last night, perfect med rare and they were buttery smooth. For 12.99 a pound it was one of the best pieces of filet I have had anywhere. Definitely restaraunt quality!