bc,

I def prefer ribeye and strip over filet. Ribeye is my favorite with a fattier, richer taste. Strip generally has a beefier flavor and a little bit firmer/meatier texture. They are both really great. I use a selection method similar to DC's. By default I get ribeye, but when strip is on sale I get that instead.

I like au poivre method done to a ribeye or tenderloin steak but it's easy to get carried away with the pepeprcorns and make it too peppery to be good (and I'm a guy who will eat jalapenos and firey curries like crazy otherwise). i put the peppercorns in between 2 dish towels on the counter and bash with a small sauce pan or use a rolling pin

we generally already have cognac in the pantry for various cooking needs, but if I was doing it without cognac my next choice would be brandy and after that canadian or irish whisky, and i bet bourbon would also be nice so long as not use too much

heavy cream, salt, maybe some shallots

helps to have a gas cooktop and good quality clad sautee pan in order to regulate heat well and build up plenty of nice fond without scorching it

speaking of cognac, I also adapted a recipe from Lobel's and serve the meat sliced and draped over toast points buttered with the herbed butter. friends and family literally beg me to make this dish at get togethers and talk about it for months afterwards, and its pretty goof proof

i have a vacuum bag sealer appliance and when i find a nice sale on beef tenderloin at teh store (sometimes they have it for under $10/lb) I will buy a lot and vacbag it and freeze in individual portios for tasty snacks in the coming months. my local grocer usually has USDA choice tenderloin under $10/lb on sale the day after Mother's Day and Valentine's Day

as to the whole debate on how much to cook steaks, i used to love rare and med rare, but after i turned 30 my taste changed and these days i prefer it a little below medium which used to make me a little ashamed but WGAF I eat what I like. unless it's kobe/wagyu in which case i want it seared outside and barely warmed inside and of course raw steak tartare can be amazing, especially from an ethopian restaurant

but then again i ate a mc rib last night so WTF do i know

sounds pretty amazing.

if you have the freezer space, it is probably worth it if you have a restaurant depot in your area to open up an LLC for 100$, and get a membership (you have to have an llc to be a member); they have BT from 5-8.50/lb

Interesting angle, thanks.

Already have a little deep freezer I got for $100 from Amazon years ago when they had a free shipping on anything deal including merchants.

Agreed. Is there anything special to know about it if I want to try it myself?

using pickled jalapenos instead of fresh.

use frozen spinach instead of fresh.

While I typically advocate using fresh ingredients, this is one application where the packaged alternatives actually works pretty well and is a hell of a lot easier/less time consuming.

Other feel differently of course, but to me this is a legitimate question... and the answer is no. Steak that's on the well-done side of medium is badly overcooked imo, and so is barbecue. I spent a few years living in barbecue country, having to pretend that the fact that the meat was tender made up for the fact that it had had the flavor and moisture cooked out of it.

So yes, some of us are consistent about preferring our meat red.

of your bbq is dry then you've been eating sucky bbq

had a hangar steak at a French restaurant last night. ordered medium rare got pretty much well done. barely pink. I was so pissed off but I was with new coworkers so I just sucked it up and ate it. first time i ever used the gorgonzola sauce they give on the side.

Everybody please stop comparing steak to BBQ. its 2 completely different preparations using completely different cuts. You wouldn't want to eat a rare brisket, neither would you want to eat a filet thats been sitting in a smoker for 12 hours.

Its like steamraise threw that terrible timebomb of an analogy out there then just left the thread.

I'm still here.
And you will notice I never tried to convince anyone here that rare steaks are cooked wrong.
It was someone else that said this,
One of the things I like about barbecue is it's kinda like a well done steak.

Didn't mean to stir things up, I'll go back to lurking and enjoying the pics of meat.

That's actually not true at all. A well done steak is actually difficult to eat. It's unbelieveably dry and much tougher to eat. You can actually choke on it. Personally, I think it's nasty.

Now, good BBQ is cooked through, yes, but it's unbelieably tender. The reason there is a difference is that BBQ is a process where you slow cook a different cut of meat - one that has more fat/marbling/connective tissue in it. This is why BBQ comes out tender. The cooking process breaks down the connective tissue in fattier cuts of meat and makes it tender.

It's almost like braising.

You don't BBQ a Filet Mignon and you don't eat a cut of chuck roast rare. You'd get a nasty piece of meat both ways.

Hope I said everything correctly there. I'm not exactly a pro, but I think this is right.

wil318466, you are basically correct.

parts used for bbq or other types of slow cooking such as braising has more fat and connective tissue and tendon. What the connective tissue and tendon has is a lot of collagen. When this collagen in the connective tissue thats between the meat fibers breaks down through long slow cooking, thats how you get the lip smacking tenderness of bbq.

A steak has very little collagen. If you took a steak and threw it in a pot of water and braised it for hours, the "stock" you get out won't be very flavorful, neither will it gel when temperature is lowered.

What makes a steak more tender than a brisket when they are both rare is that a steak comes from parts of the cow that does absolutely no work. The filet, arguably the most tender of cuts, comes from the tenderloin which does absolutely no work, thus not becoming sinewy. The hanger steak, or as the French would call it, the onglet, is from the diaphram, again a muscle that does absolutely no work.

That's actually not true at all.
A well done steak can be very tender and juicy.
The right cut of meat cooked properly, I wouldn't get a ribeye to cook well,
tenderloin is obviously the best and a New York or top sirloin can be good also.
That's your opinion. Like I said, to each his own.

pretty much this I think. Watch bbqpitboys on youtube. They rule at making medium-rare steaks.

They're fat, wear cowboy hats and cook with a machete. Can't get much more manly than that.

I'm just curious, what attributes about a steak cooked well done do you enjoy? What about those attributes are better than one cooked medium rare?

This is pretty much BS. This is like saying a 10 dollar gallon of Ernest and Julio Gallo is, in your opinion, better than a 1945 Château Pétrus.

You can say it, but...

lol

A former GF always wanted her steak well done because that way the meat looked less like it came from something that actually lived and was killed. We even got into an argument because I told her if the steak gets cooked well done, eating it isn't joy anymore and the cow really died for no reason.

i mean i know OOT is full of elitists but if someone wants to cook their steak more than you do its a personal preference. some people are just turned off by the redness. some people have always eaten a steak covered in A1 sauce and thats how they like it. who cares the fact is we all enjoy steak.



edit: theres been plenty of steaks in this thread that i found very rare and i like my steak to be medium rare. its just an opinion.

yeah, but those people probably shouldn't be posting in a thread titled "cooking a good steak", for several reasons

they can eat their steaks however they please

fwiw I don't remember much posting like that anyway

Taste.
A tender well done fillet is closer to barbecue than it is to a rare steak.
I've had tough chewy well done steaks and I've had medium rare steaks that I couldn't hardly chew also.

Some people like runny over easy eggs some like over hard crunchy eggs.
Some like voluptuous redheads some like skinny blonds some like Asians.
No that would be true if I said I preferred round steak to fillet mignon.

It's more like saying I like the high dollar wine over ice instead of however it's supposed to be served.

I like the high dollar steak I just like it at a different temperature than most.

Thank you sir.
Why on earth not? I love a good steak just like you.
And I can even cook them rare or whatever my guests want.

I'd encourage you to try black and blue then if you like char (which I certainly do on my filets).

Also I would encourage you to try a lot of other things done at lower temperatures because it will drastically improve your palate and help you enjoy lower temperature beef too. Do you like sushi? Beef carpaccio? Maybe even just seared ahi tuna.

I'm not going to begrudge a man on how he likes his steak but if you like a well done steak, a medium well ribeye will taste so much better than a medium well filet.

There is just not enough fat in a filet to have it be cooked anywhere past medium. Filet is arguably the worst cut you can have well done. You're really going to end up with a hockey puck.

A pretty simple rule is that the more fat a piece has, the more it can withstand a higher temperature. Whereas the less fat a piece has, its better to leave it closer to the rare side. It is for this reason that filet is used for completely raw applications like carpaccio and tartares.