Years ago they did a london broil and actually found that heating the steak produced the best way to cook it. They let it warm at room temp for a half hour or so, and then put it in a bag and placed it in warm/hot water for 10-15 minutes. Enough to bring up the steak’s temp to around 100F. The reasoning being that you needed a shorter cooking time which gives less time for off flavors to develop on the surface. It was pointed out that this technique applied more to things like london broil than say a ribeye, but technically it yielded similar results with less gray banding and a larger “raw” interior.
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That’s basically souse vide cooking right there. In the magazine they mentioned preferring steaks cooked their usual way so presumable they did test vs never frozen steaks cooked the regular way. Just didn’t make it into the video.
Charring a partly frozen steak is a variation on “Pittsburgh rare” - charred on the outside, rare on the inside.
http://www.squidoo.com/lazy-mans-pittsburgh-rare-thick-juicy-steak
I suppose you have the benefit of making them season themselves… Just don’t threaten to use the hose if they don’t put the rub in the basket (it will defeat the purpose).
I suppose that it also depends on how they are frozen – I imagine that carbonite would require some long cooking times.
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I just take the meat out of the refrigerator, freezer or animal carcase and cook it until it tastes good, throwing in whatever spices or vegetables are handy and suit my fancy along the way.
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I cannot recommend enough anything that comes out of ATK. Cook’s Country and Cook’s Illustrated are basically our go-to cooking techniques and they are significantly better than any other cooking resource we’ve used.
Not really. You aren’t cooking it at a high, but relatively low temp for an extended period of time to help the enzymes and other functions to yield a tender steak. I believe the main reason they approached the london broil from this direction was the tasting panel’s main objection to the “metallic” or iron taste in the steak. Which was linked to a longer cooking time, thus overcooking the exterior of the meat. Their approach should work for most steaks but something like a ribeye wouldn’t develop off flavor even if cooked past medium. (I mean it might not taste good or be juicy at that point, but it’ll be for a different reason.)
Peter Greenaway did a nice glazed roast with veggies.
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I find they run hot and cold. Some of the stuff they suggest is absolutely the blandest I’ve ever tasted. I also object to their chiseling behavior on their web sites, where even after you pay for a membership, there’s still some stuff hidden behind an interior paywall. The crowning example of this was one recipe for a meat with a sauce. You got the meat recipe with standard membership, but had to join the President’s Superfriends Club to get the sauce recipe.
Unless they did a double blind taste test, I refuse to believe they could detect that thin grey band.
I prefer my steak medium rare anyway, not fully rare.
This is what Omaha Steaks and Schwan’s have been preaching for years!!
By heating the steak to 100 degrees in a sealed bag dipped in water your cooking it, albeit to a temp lower than the desired finish, in nearly the same way you do for sous vide. So it’s basically sous vide. Extended cooking times are only used to tenderize tougher cuts with plenty of fat and connective tissue in sous vide. Like chuck. For any of your more traditional steak cuts all your doing is bringing it to (or just below) the finish temperature then sear afterwards to finish cooking. The vast majority of sous vide technique operates that way, eggs, fish whatever. The major difference with what your describing boils down to a lack of precision. They aren’t controlling temp in the water bath, and they’re doing the final 20+ degrees of cooking during the sear phase.
And the “metallic” taste in the meat isn’t necessarily down to cooking time, high temp cooking, or over cooking. Its down to the cut of meat. Certain cuts of beef have metallic, mineral or even livery elements to the flavor. Like hanger, skirt, and the cuts used for London Broil. Traditionally flank I think, but often sirloin these days. The flavors in question just become more pronounced, and more unpleasant the more over cooked the meat becomes. Their pseudo sous vide approach is going to reduce the band of grey over cooked meat around the edges where the meat is seared and presumably reduce the amount of meat where those flavors get over bearing. But if you just temp the water to how you want the steak cooked and let it go all the way you can eliminate it completely. It takes a minimal amount of extra effort to take the concept all the way.
The traditional approach is to cook these cuts very hot and very fast, and serve them no higher than mid rare. Works pretty well, but in a home kitchen it tends to limit you to searing in a pan.
I’m with you on that. Many of their recipes are A LOT more difficult and time consuming than they let on. Some of them don’t work at all. The seeming obsession “easy week night meals” is kind of bizarre too. I think that phrase pops up at least twice at the beginning of every article in the mags, and it just seems to signal “we’ve discarded the traditional process and results out of hand before we even started” instead of an approach that looks for the best method to produce a given dish.
But when the recipes work they work quite well. And their suggestions on ingredients, substitutions and useful additions are actually really, really useful. As are some of the features of base technique.
For what it’s worth, their pay system is pretty arcane, and I would absolutely believe some people would find one recipe or another not up to snuff, since a lot of that is up to taste.
But at least for my wife and I, it’s been basically 100% awesome, even from their cookbooks. I really can’t recommend them enough at least based on my personal experience, but your mileage may definitely vary. If nothing else, I really appreciate that they go in depth on how they cook things, and why, and their dissections of classic foods are really enlightening - hell, I’d read a book of stuff like that even if it didn’t come with recipes, because I find it so interesting.
I’ve found that Cook’s Country tends to be a lot better about having sane weeknight meal planning options rather than Cook’s Illustrated, which is more technical and aimed to exact replacements of dishes.
I personally don’t have uch of an issue with leaving a steak to marinate in its rub on the counter at room temp. Actually, if you look through ATK/Cooks Illustrated’s shows and books, THEY will advise against doing this.
That’s actually my biggest complaint with Illustrated. They aren’t typically looking for an exact replication or improvement of a dish and they often seem to discard that idea as their starting position. They’re more trying to find “easier” overly technical ways to get close enough, or often something vaguely similar. If I’m gonna make something complex I don’t need it to be an “easy weeknight meal” There’s a thousand things I can make that already fit that category. The value really seems to be in the ancillary testing of techniques, ingredients, tools, and substitutions for hard to find ingredients. I can ignore their recipe if I find it lacking or strange but I still use a lot of those suggestions with a lot of my cooking.
Then you should really read Harold McGee and Shirley Corriher.
A well-fed chicken doesn’t need seasoning to get flavor. It has plenty of its own, unless you are accustomed to smother everything with secret sauces and marinades.
I don’t think you understand what I mean when I say seasoning. Seasoning in cooking is salt. Chicken, especially boneless white meat (which is the predominant variation of chicken people consume in the US) needs seasoning. It is an incredibly bland piece of protein when cooked directly; regardless of the source. And speaking of the source…most people do not have access to well fed free range chicken, at least not readily or affordable.
I would concur that a whole chicken (meaning bones, dark meat included) oven roasted with nothing at all can be very flavorful. But it would still require seasoning. Also to be clear, food needs salt. Salt makes it better. Its not a factor of MORE SALT MEANS MORE BETTER, nor is it a case of SALT IS EVIL HISSSS. Salt is good. Salt is good for you. In moderation and in correct and proper quantities and application.
Salt when used in prep can help season protein to bring moisture out of the strands and carry flavor profiles in. Salt can help loosen tight protein structures and make an otherwise tough cut of meat much more tender. Salt is a miracle tool when it comes to cooking.
Salt just shaken onto your food post cooking however does nothing but make the item saltier. I personally use way too much salt on an ear of corn with way too much butter. I admit it. And every thanksgiving, I enjoy one piece of cold turkey dipped in the salt cellar and popped straight into my gaping maw. so tasty. But I only do these things on a rare special occasion a couple times per year.
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