Tips for Perfect Steak:
- Allow the meat to come to room temperature before grilling.
- Do not season more than an hour before cooking.
- Avoid marinating. The vinegars and other acids will break down muscle tissue over time leaving a poor quality texture to the steak.
- Buy the best quality protein you can. There is no technique to turn a bad steak into a good steak.
- Use a good quality meat thermometer to check the internal temperature.
- When using the sous vide or reverse searing techniques, stop cooking the protein 5-7 degrees shy of your intended target. Searing the meat will bring it up to your target temperature.
- A needle tenderizer (Jaccard) will help to tenderize tougher cuts of meat, and can introduce seasoning inside the protein.
- Allow cooked meats to rest for 5-7 minutes before cutting.
- The more intramuscular fat (marbling) the more tender the steak will be and have more flavor.
- Nothing beats the flavor of an all-natural hardwood fire.
- Of the three most popular techniques for cooking steak (traditional grilling, reverse searing, and sous vide), sous vide produced the best finished steak and had almost no chance of over cooking.
Stay hungry.