(Grilled Porterhouse with Garlic-Herb Butter, Shoestring Fries and Spinach with Garlic Chips. Thank you Kelly for cooking my spinach while I tended to my rugrat children who thought it would be funny to watch Mom trip over the marbles that they dumped down the stairs. Ha. Ha. That was funny boys.)
This recipe is published in from Jaden Hair's Blog.
If you are a meat-lover, I hope that the title of this post + luscious photo is enticing enough for you to read though the entire article. Because I promise you that it’s worth it. Even if you don’t eat meat, this is worth reading…as you can impress the hell outta your carnivorean friends. (and sometimes, when you’re a vegetarian in a herd of carnivores…it would just be nice to have that extra, "dude….you didn’t know that about steak???!" in your pocket.)
My entire family (including the 2 yr old kid) just adores steak…you could probably classify us as professional carnivores. In fact, it is my husband’s life-long quest to hone his grilling technique so that our steaks at home turn out charred crusty on the outside and perfectly medium-rare on the inside. With grill marks for show, of course. Seriously, we are too cheap to eat out at nice steak restaurants. For the past 4 months, we have been experimenting with how to get full, juicy, beefy flavor of a ribeye with butter-knife tenderness of a filet mignon without paying up-the-butt for Prime cuts.
And by golly, after 4 months of eating steak 2x a week, I think we’ve figured it out.
So, my friends, I am offering you a very juicy secret, one that will turn an ordinary "Choice" cut of steak into a gucci "Prime" cut. Do you know the joy of buying Choice and eating Prime? It’s like buying a Hyundai and getting a free mail-in rebate for a BMW upgrade!!!
Here’s the secret:
Massively salt your steaks 1 hour before grilling.
Notice that I didn’t say, "sprinkle liberally" or even "season generously." I’m talking about taking a small handful of kosher salt and literally coating your meat until you can’t see red.
It should resemble a salt lick.
Let that meat be totally overwhelmed with the salt for 1 hour. Rinse, pat dry dry dry and then you’re ready to grill.
Before y’all throw a hissy fit, just hear me out. I first learned of this technique from Judy Rodgers’ Zuni Café Cookbook. Judi massively salts her chicken before roasting, and I’ve adapted the practice to steaks. Thanks to a couple of other books (McGee’s On Food and Cooking and Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here For the Food), and a few fellow bloggers, I have somewhat of an explanation of how it works.
But just so you know…I slept through high school biology and chemistry, especially during the chapter on osmosis. I’m asking for any researchers, doctors, scientists, butchers, plumbers, professional chefs, mechanics….basically anyone who didn’t sleep through school to add to this conversation. Mainly because maybe, there might be as many holes in my slideshow as there are in my pea-head.
Oh, and if the drawings look like a 3rd grader did it, too bad….I’m not a artist, dammit!!! YOU try drawing with a laptop touch-pad and a glass of bourbon on the rocks.
Slide #1:
All of you who season JUST before grilling - this is what you are really doing to the meat. Did you know that? All the water comes to the surface and if you don’t pat super-dry, you’re basically STEAMING the meat.
But if you let it sit for a while…this is what happens: cue Slide #2:
Slide #3:
Bourbon does that to me too.
Ok, Slide #4: After you let it rest, then
I can hear it now.."BUT….BUT…BUT….what of all the water that stayed on the surface of the meat? Not all the water gets reabsorbed! (*%!*%!@#!#!!! I DON’T UNDERSTAND!!!"
Git yer act together…and let’s move on to Slide #5:
I meant "prune" not "prude" - but whatever. too lazy to modify the jpg.
Why not brine?
Well, yeah…you could. But that involves measuring, finding a big enough container, dissolving, finding enough space in the refrigerator for the big container, chilling, waiting, waiting, waiting, draining, washing big fat container, unchilling the meat to bring to room temp. Waaaayyyy too much work for a simple gal. Plus, brined steak tastes like shit. I don’t know why, but it just does. (btw, how come brined turkey tastes good, but brined steak doesn’t?)
Other Notes
- Use kosher salt, not iodized table salt…or else your meat will taste like…well…iodine. EDIT: Sea Salt works just as well too!!
- Use 1-2 teaspoons of kosher salt per side. Just salt until you can’t see red. See the photo above. That huge Porterhouse took about 2 tsps of kosher salt. Some of the salt already dissolved by the time I got out my camera….it was really, really covered in salt.
- I generally salt between 1-3 hours (the last hour on the counter top at room temperature) depending on the thickness of the steak (an hour-ish for every inch). Personally, my favorite is a steak 1-1/2" thick that I let salt for 1.5 hour-ish on the counter.
- Don’t worry about exact measurements or timing. (did you notice the abundance of "-ish"???) You don’t even need a measuring spoon - just take a small handful of salt. Just make sure that you let it sit at least an hour-ish. This method is extremely flexible-ish and works damn well every single time. I promise you won’t be disappointed-ish.
- I haven’t tried salting Filet Mignon by itself (without the Porterhouse bone). Someone want to try and report back? My opinion, the best cuts to use are Rib Eye, Porterhouse, T-Bone and NY Strip.
- If you are Howard McGee, a member of Alton Brown’s research team or Mr. Burke my high school bio teacher…..and think I’m full of B.S…. please let me know. But guys, none of this was in your books. I had to formulate, extrapolate, hypotholate and guesstulate based on your stuff. Highly mental activity that required more bourbon.
- If you are not one of the above but have a better explanation than I my little brain could muster, please let me know.
- With respect, Ms.Judy Rogers, I’d like to suggest that your explanation of why salting works in your book may be incorrect. Reverse osmosis doesn’t happen by itself…it requires an abundance of external force…kinda like me trying to get my kids to pick up their toys.
- Should I call this Salt-Curing, Dry-Brining, Salting, Dry Rubbing or just plain Idiotic?
