Let's start with a raw steak ready for cooking.

This paper does not discuss the variety, grade, source, grass feeding or grain feeding of beef.

This article does not discuss the choice of steak parts.

Whether it is mature or not is not discussed in this article.

Slow cooking at low temperature is not discussed in this paper.

Materials?

Steak 1 piece

A little salt

A little black pepper (whole grain)

Butter 1

A little vegetable oil

A whole head of garlic

Rosemary and thyme are optional.

Everything you need to know to fry a steak?

Take this grass-fed sirloin steak as an example. Half a month ago, I bought a whole piece of beef brisket from the seller, which was cut from it. After I cut it, I sealed it directly in vacuum and kept it in the refrigerator for more than half a month. I'm still used to frying the steak at room temperature for about 20 minutes to bring it close to room temperature. Although some people have done experiments, it is said that whether the steak taken out of the refrigerator is reheated has nothing to do with the final frying effect, but in my experience, the temperature of the reheated steak during frying is relatively easy to control, and the latter is the core element of frying steak and an important part of this paper. So, if you are not in a hurry, try to reheat your steak.

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This is the whole beef brisket at that time. It was frozen when I brought it. I cut a few 3cm thick steaks (I made most of the rest, which will not be discussed in this article), put them in vacuum bags, and put them in the refrigerator for refrigeration, which will never be frozen again. Therefore, I can think that this steak has only been frozen once from slaughter to entrance today. It is still ideal.

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Now let's cut the bag and take out the steak. As you can see, after half a month, these red liquids appeared in the bag. It is necessary to talk about this problem. Some people think it's blood, it's blood flowing from beef veins. Some people even say that foreign slaughtered livestock do not bleed, so blood flows out of the blood vessels after thawing. This is completely wrong. First of all, the blood of any animal will coagulate without anticoagulant, and there is no natural outflow. This red liquid is tissue fluid and myoglobin. When all the frozen meat is frozen, the water in the tissue will form ice crystals, which will expand when frozen, thus piercing the muscle cell membrane. Muscle cells contain a lot of myoglobin, which is red because it contains iron. After thawing, these ice crystals re-melt into water, and at the same time, the cellular fluid and myoglobin in the punctured muscle cells flow out, which is the red liquid we see. Note that steak is "juicy", and juicy is actually these tissue fluids. Therefore, we request to minimize the loss of these liquids. Try not to freeze the meat, so that the cells can retain more water. The more frozen the meat, the less tender and juicy it is. Moreover, the more freezing times, the more obvious this drawback is. So avoid freezing steak repeatedly. Of course, the best is cold meat, that is, it has not been frozen from slaughter to cooking. Imported steaks eaten in China, except for a few dealers with large and stable sales volume who can import cold meat from abroad and sell it as soon as possible, most of the imported meat dealers are imported frozen meat. Then this piece of meat was frozen at least once before it reached our personal hands. If the dealer has thawed or repeatedly frozen before selling, the water loss in the meat will be more serious. So after we buy steak, we should try to reduce the number of freezing. Generally speaking, it is no problem for thawed beef to be vacuum packed and stored in the freezer for 2-3 weeks. This process is actually a "wet ripening" process. In fact, whether it is wet cooked or dry cooked (dry cooked is beyond the scope of today's discussion, please see my other article), it is the same, and the fewer times of freezing, the better.

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When the steak is taken out of the bag, it is very important to dry its surface. The attractive color and fragrance of steak are formed by the famous Maillard reaction between protein and reducing sugar on the surface of steak under the action of high temperature. The most basic reaction condition is high temperature. This temperature needs to reach 100 to 180 degrees. Moreover, the temperature should be raised quickly, and the time from room temperature to 100 degree should be skipped as soon as possible (the changes in taste and meat quality in this temperature range are not what we need), and the Maillard reaction we want is above 100 degree. If there is a lot of water on the surface of steak, even a little water will absorb a lot of heat (the instantaneous boiling of water is only 100 degrees), which will reduce the oil temperature on the surface of beef when frying steak, delay the heating process of "room temperature ~ 100 degrees" and affect the generation of Maillard reaction. So, be sure, be sure to dry the water on the surface of the steak. Willing to use a lot of kitchen paper.

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Say the thickness of the steak again. In my opinion, steak smaller than 2.5cm can only be called beef slices. As mentioned above, the aroma and color pursued by fried steak come from Maillard reaction. The sufficiency of Maillard reaction depends on temperature and action time, that is, there must be a certain temperature and action time. Therefore, if the steak is too thin, it is easy to be fully cooked (unless what you want to eat is well done) or fried for a short time to ensure that it is medium-cooked. At this time, the Maillard reaction on the steak surface is not sufficient, and the steak surface is gray (the color of fried pork) instead of burnt yellow when cooked. We don't want to meet these two situations, so we need a steak with a certain thickness not only for beauty (Zhuang). To get a perfect steak, you must have a steak thick enough. I usually divide the steak according to 3 ~ 4 cm. If it's filet mignon, it needs to be thicker according to the appetite of ordinary people because of its small width. However, please note that it is more difficult to control the temperature when cooking steak with a thickness of about 10%, as described below.

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Let's talk about the seasoning of steak. Good beef needs to keep its original beef flavor, so don't try to marinate it. Salt and black pepper are enough. Other seasoning measures, including butter, garlic and herbs (rosemary and thyme), are personal preferences and are not prepared before frying. Just sprinkle some salt and black pepper before frying! To what extent is the salt sprinkled? I can't say for sure. It depends on the particle size of your salt. The larger the particles, the lower the salinity of the same volume of salt. I use Jewish salt in the above picture, which can be sprinkled to this extent, a bit like a newly snowed road. Generally, the edible salt in domestic supermarkets is thinner than mine, that is, it is a little salty and can be sprinkled less than mine. Of course, if you use bigger particles of salt, you have to use more than me.

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Then black pepper. Don't use finished black pepper, it's not fragrant enough at all. Please grind the whole black pepper directly with a grinding bottle. Note that the salt and black pepper mentioned above are sprinkled on both sides, not just one side.

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Five kinds of steaks are rare, medium, medium, medium and well-done. Some people rely on experience to control the frying time, while others rely on hand feeling (comparing the hardness of thenar muscle of thumb under different gestures, it looks cool), which can't be wrong, but the reliability is not good. The only reliable standard is the "core temperature", which is the temperature at the center of the steak. In order to achieve the same core temperature, different steak thickness, different oil temperature, different initial temperature of steak, different meat quality and different frying time, the only reliable monitoring means is to directly measure the core temperature. This needs a thermometer! Thermometer is a necessary equipment for a good steak cook. The picture shows three kinds of thermometers. Let's talk about the wired real-time thermometer in the middle, which is the cheapest and suitable for barbecue in the oven. Insert the probe into the meat in the oven, connect the wire to the outside, and monitor the temperature of the meat core with the panel. The disadvantage is that the temperature detection is slow, which is only applicable to the situation that the probe is always in the meat. The connection mode will also affect the flipping when frying steak. The red one on the right is an instantaneous thermometer, which is characterized by rapid temperature measurement and accurate instantaneous temperature measurement when meat is inserted. Therefore, it is suitable for measuring the fried meat in the pot, inserting the thermometer, measuring and pulling it out, and the whole process can be completed in a few seconds without burning hands, but this can't be put in the oven. On the far left, the wireless thermometer is completely inserted into the meat. Bluetooth is connected to the mobile phone. It can be used to check the temperature of the oven or frying pan. Because there is no wire, it does not affect the steak turning, and it is very convenient to use.

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This is the core temperature comparison table of various maturity for your reference.

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Let's talk about oil. Some people say that butter is used to fry steak, some people say olive oil, and some people say that frying steak does not use oil. Not very accurate. First of all, frying steak involves butter, because butter is very fragrant and can increase the flavor of steak. Again, butter makes everything better. But butter has a problem, that is, the smoke point (reaching the burning temperature) is very low. When the temperature is high, it is easy to emit black smoke or even burn, which is not only ugly, but also affects the flavor and is unhealthy. Olive oil has a lower smoke point and will not bring extra flavor to steak, so it is not suitable for frying steak at all. As for the statement that no oil is needed, I actually hope to fry it with the oil oozing from the steak. This method is more suitable for beef with high fat content, such as beef. If it is grass-fed beef, it is very thin and has little oil. If you do this operation, it will explode because there is not enough oil. So we can use butter! The smoke point of butter is not much higher than that of butter, and it is not easy to zoom at high temperature. In a word, I still recommend the general western-style thick-cut steak with a little oil, and I recommend ordinary cooking oil or pure butter.

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Mine is pure butter, extracted from 100% grass-fed butter, which is specially used for frying steak and keeps the unique beef flavor of grass-fed beef. I use it very well. But this is not necessary. If you can't buy it, you don't have to.

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Take the pan, put the oil, heat until the oil smokes, and add the steak. The purpose of this operation is because we require the steak surface to be heated to above 100 degree quickly to obtain better Maillard reaction. Therefore, before the steak is put into the pot, use high heat to let the oil reach the smoking point. At this time, adding steak, the surface of steak can reach more than 100 degrees in a few seconds, and Maillard reaction is completed. But it is common that Maillard reaction is in place, but the core temperature has not yet reached, especially in some thick-cut steaks. If you keep frying with high fire, when the temperature of the steak core reaches, the surface will turn black. Therefore, when the perfect Maillard reaction is observed on the surface, you can change the fire and fry slowly, while observing the thermometer and slowly waiting for the core temperature to reach the standard. Or steak with a thickness of more than 4cm, I would suggest that the steak and the pot be directly put into the oven 180 ~ 200 degrees (so choose an all-metal steak frying pan without wooden or plastic handles) to avoid high temperature and continue to directly heat the steak surface. The temperature in the oven is even, so you can heat the steak slowly until the temperature of the inner core reaches the standard.

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Do you need to put the steak in the pot? This is not mysterious at all. You can turn steak in the pot at will, but some people say you can only turn it once. However, it should be noted that the fried side should achieve full Maillard reaction at one time before the first turning. Similarly, the second side is the same. When the two sides reach the perfect Maillard reaction, according to what we said above, turn down the fire and turn freely. Moreover, frequent flipping can make the steak heated evenly in the following time, and it is easier to fry evenly. This is even more necessary for thick steaks. Note that the surrounding facades also need to be fried, so the steak should be fried with a clip instead of a spatula. Clamp the steak, stand up and fry the surrounding facade, especially the fat part around it.

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At this time, it is almost the perfect surface Maillard reaction before cooking. In fact, this is a critical moment, and the timing of cooking is very important. For example, if we need to fry a medium-rare steak, we should control the temperature of the inner core at 52 ~ 55 degrees. After the steak leaves the heat source, the surface temperature will continue to conduct to the inside, causing the core temperature to rise by 5 ~ 8 degrees. So, if you want a steak with a core temperature of 55 degrees, it will be cooked when the core temperature reaches about 48 degrees. If you really wait until 55 degrees, you will probably do well when the core temperature is higher than 60 degrees. Therefore, with the use of thermometer, we can make the fried steak very standardized and repeatable, but we still need some experience in grasping the cooking opportunity. This is related to the surface temperature (that is, the oil temperature) and the volume of the steak at that time. It is difficult to accurately predict how high the inner core will eventually rise after the steak is cooked. Without him, only my hands are familiar! Of course, if you want to control the temperature more accurately, it is sous vide, which is slow cooking in a low-temperature water bath. To put it simply, sous vide is to soak the steak in the water at the target temperature, that is, to fix the whole steak at this temperature for a certain period of time, so as to accurately control the ripeness of the beef, and finally take out the steak and treat the surface at high temperature to complete the Maillard reaction. Of course, sous vide itself has other effects on meat quality changes, so I won't go into details here.

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This picture was recorded by my wireless thermometer when I was frying this steak. You can see that the temperature of the kernel is gradually rising. The external surface temperature (basically the oil temperature) rose to above 100 degrees in a short time, and the highest temperature was around 130 degrees, so that the Maillard reaction was well completed, and then the heat was turned down for a while. The whole process takes about 10 minutes.

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Cooking doesn't mean the end of cooking. There is another very important step here: rest. This process has at least three purposes. First of all, in the process of frying beef, a large amount of juice flows out from muscle fibers. If you just cut it, it will leak a lot of gravy and the steak will not be juicy. Second, the temperature of the cow heart will continue to rise at this time. It is best to insert a thermometer in it so that you can see the change of the temperature of the cow heart. Of course, the steak is out of the heat source by this time. If you really cook late, then you can only watch the temperature of the steak soar all the way, exceeding your expectations, and finally overcooked. Third, this process is a good opportunity for seasoning. Remember the butter and garlic mentioned earlier? Butter is not suitable for frying steak, because butter is easy to paste, and garlic will denature at high temperature, not only without garlic flavor, but also very bitter. Therefore, the best time to season these two things is during the rest. The classic method is to take two small pieces of butter and put it on the steak. Divide garlic in half and put it on butter. When the butter melts slowly, spread the butter on the whole steak with garlic. Let garlic and butter permeate the steak.

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This is garlic for everything.

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Rub garlic on the butter to finish the seasoning process. It needs to be added here: as for herbs such as rosemary or thyme, I personally don't think it is necessary. If you really like the taste of vanilla, then the time to add vanilla for seasoning should be about 1 minute before the steak is cooked. If you add vanilla too early, you should put it on the steak instead of frying it in oil. Pour the hot oil in the pot on the vanilla on the steak with a spoon.

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That's it. Put garlic and herbs on the steak and pour hot oil 2 minutes before cooking. But I basically don't use this method now, because I feel that there is no special improvement, but it is easy to lose sight of one thing and miss the best time to cook.

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This steak will stand for about 5 minutes. Then we cut it open. I control it according to the core temperature of 57 degrees. Finally, the thermometer showed that the highest temperature was 58 degrees. It should be medium-rare to medium-rare, which is basically called medium-rare in China. You can see the Maillard reaction with brown surface and even pink inside, and there is no juice flowing out, indicating a good rest.

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Finally, enjoy! I wish you a perfect steak.

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