March 28, 2024

To make a juicy, soft steak, it is enough to choose the right meat

The very name “steak” comes from Old Norse steik, which means a piece of meat suitable for frying. It is really a flat piece of meat about 2. 5-5 cm thick, most often beef, quickly fried at high temperature.

Although now in restaurants you can find a steak of pork, fish and even eggplant, but the classic steak is a piece of beef, sliced ​​across the fibers.

This is done so that the heat through the vertically arranged fibers passes evenly. Meat for a steak can be with a bone or without – who loves as much. The best option – marble beef, which because of the fat layers outwardly really resembles a stone. The bull, whose meat is called marble, moves little, eats according to a specially designed system for it, lives without stress. Life without stress allows farmers to get tender meat.

By the way, during the Middle Ages the young bull, who was supposed to end his life on the table with the rich, was also fed according to the corresponding system. For six months or even a year it was fed exclusively with milk, which, as it seemed to medieval experts, gave the meat a special taste and delicate texture.

A steak with blood is a dish for a real hunter. Nevertheless, raw meat still causes a shudder for many. Most often in restaurants serve steaks of five degrees of roasting: raw meat, with blood, medium, almost fried and fried. Raw meat is raw only inside, the outer part is fried until crisp, in the steak with blood, too, the crust is outside, and on the cut the meat is not heavy, but blood is excreted. The medium fries longer, so the blood disappears, there remains a middle of a gently pink color. In an almost roasted steak, pleasant pinkness turns to dullness, when pressed from the meat, a clear juice is released, which disappears in a completely roasted steak.

Speaking of raw meat, you can not fail to mention Captain Nemo’s favorite dish – steak tartar – a pair of raw, finely chopped meat with spices and additives. As the legend says, this dish was invented by nomads, whose way of life did not allow especially gourmet and long to conjure over food. Therefore they acted simply – thin long pieces of meat in the morning they put under the saddle, sat on the horse, and in the evening, taking out the “half-finished product”, thinly cut it and quenched the hunger.

However, given that the steak tartar is not subjected to heat treatment, it can be called a dish for extreme. Let this is not a poisonous fugu fish, but there is a risk. Unless, of course, you were personally acquainted with the cow from which the steak is made, or with the chef who cooked it.

In salads, the wrong taste of the product can be “hammered” with other ingredients, this number will not pass with the steak. There is one component here, and this is meat. About him and talk.

How to choose meat for steak?

Let’s start with the fact that frozen meat is not good, the steam is too. By the way, restaurant steaks are “ripening” at a special temperature for a month. For lack of special equipment, let the meat lie in a refrigerator for a couple of days. When purchasing meat, do not forget the old way of checking for freshness – lightly press on the surface of the meat, after pressing the steak should quickly restore the shape.

Not the fact that the seller will give you good advice about the pieces for the steak, but it’s worth a try. To orient, you can designate the parts of the carcass that you need. This is the subscapular part of the beef, the lumbar part of the back in the region of the thick edge or the head part of the tenderloin, the part of the carcass between the dorsal and lumbar parts (with the T-shaped bone), the thick edge of the central part of the tenderloin.

Nevertheless, amateur meat eaters say that the steak can be cooked from any part of the carcass, it is enough to cut off her head, legs and tail, and chop the rest into portions.

Carefully study the meat, look for small fatty veins – let them not be quite similar to marble, but the fat during cooking will melt and thus give the meat juiciness and softness. It is desirable that the fat layers are the same size, otherwise the meat will be fried unevenly. Look at the color – it should be light red, not deep dark. Different makeweights and rests will not be useful to you – buy a large piece of meat, roughly figuring out what steaks from it will turn out. When buying meat in a supermarket, pay attention to meat, and not to the label – sometimes behind the inscription “steak” is hidden meat, absolutely for this dish is not intended.

Cooking Steak

So, the meat is already at your house. For an hour and a half before cooking, pull it out of the refrigerator so it warms up a little and dries. The preparation of the steak should take a total of not more than 12 minutes. That is why meat is so carefully chosen – it must have time to roast and impress you with its natural taste. Dried meat cut across the fibers into pieces with a thickness of 2 to 5 cm. If you crave blood – cut thicker if well-roasted meat – thinner.

Meat for steak does not hammer with a hammer, but if you doubt that it will have time to be fried, you can pre-marinate it in lemon juice or dry red wine.

To give the meat a special taste, roll it in spices, for example, in crushed pepper (you can take a mixture of fragrant, white and black). Put the steaks on top of each other and press down a little with your hand.

Classic steak fry without oil, but in the absence of a pan with a special coating, oil is necessary. Do not pour oil on the pan – lightly oil them with meat. Remember that in a cold frying pan the steak is killed! On the scorching surface in the first 20 seconds as a result of the crystallization of sugar formed crust. Fry the meat on high heat for 2. 5 minutes – the steak fibers will close and the juice will remain inside.

Then reduce the heat to medium, turn over to the other side, slightly add and continue to fry. The steak with blood is roasted in total for 6 minutes, the medium-seasoned steak is ready after 8, and the well-fried steak is 10-12 minutes later. Although it is better, of course, to use a meat thermometer – it sinks into the center of the steak and shows the exact temperature.

For a Pepper steak you will need:

  • 4 beef steaks of 150 g each
  • 1 tbsp. roughly crushed pepper
  • 1 tbsp. vegetable oil
  • ½ tsp. salt

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