Craving for steak? Then, you’ll love what we have in store for you!
Once in a while, we crave steak but going out to eat in a restaurant is too much work- that’s why most of us just choose to stock up on good cut steaks that we can cook at home.
However, the process of thawing your steak before cooking takes a while – and most of the time, this discourages you from preparing steak, no matter how much you love it.
But did you know that the process of thawing your steak before cooking it is not even required?
Don’t worry; we’re not talking about a shortcut method of cooking that will eventually sacrifice the quality of the meat.
This is actually a proven fact- thawing your steak is just optional.
Dan Souza, the editor-in-chief of Cook’s Illustrated, and the host of America’s Test Kitchen uploaded a YouTube video explaining why thawing your steak is optional.
His YouTube video has already been viewed over 5.7M times, and in just more than three minutes, you’ll learn important facts about your favorite steak.
When it comes to cooking steak, there’s much more than meets the eye.
In fact, it’s not that easy, and for some, it is even considered as an art or a skill to be able to cook the perfect steak.
The short video is packed with tips and tricks on how you can create the perfect steak at home without having to wait for a long time thawing. How do you like your steak?
Do you prefer your steak rare? How about medium-rare or even well done?
No matter which one you choose, we need to properly know how to cook it. We don’t want to waste money and a good cut of steak, right?
Now, most of us “know” that we still need to thaw our steak before we cook it. But now, Dan Souza will let you in a secret – you really don’t need to thaw your steak!
Dan creates an experiment that shows us why this works.
The first part shows Dan cutting a strip loin into eight steaks, and then he proceeds to cut each steak in half crosswise. The next step is to put the pieces of steak in a ziplock bag and freeze them.
The next step is to start thawing the first half of the steak while the other half stays frozen.
Then, once ready, Dan seared both sets of cut steaks in a hot skillet. He mentioned doing this for about 90 seconds per side.
Then, he transferred it to a 275-degree oven and waited until both sets of steaks were cooked to medium-rare. This already gave two very different results!
The frozen steaks took a longer cooking time.
It was around 18 – 22 minutes before it reached the desired outcome. While the thawed steak only took around 10 – 15 minutes max.
Upon comparison, Dan noticed that both the frozen steak and the thawed steak actually browned in the skillet beautifully.
But what’s nice is that the frozen steak had thinner bands of gray!
This means that the frozen steak didn’t lose too much moisture compared to the thawed steak. So, if you prefer a juicier steak – then go for the one that was cooked frozen.
Now, tasting the two, the cooked-from-frozen steak won!
In conclusion, a frozen steak is extremely cold – obviously! This prevents the steak from overcooking, thus retaining those juices that we love.
Now, we want to make things clear first, of course, we still think that fresh-cut steaks are still the best, but if you’re looking for the next best thing, then go with the frozen steaks!
Additional information from Dan that we have to remember is to properly store our frozen steaks.
We certainly don’t want our steaks to accumulate ice inside the zip bag, right? Making sure that this doesn’t happen is quite simple! Just store your steaks as flat as possible.
So, how can we do this? Well, just put your steaks in a parchment-lined baking tray, and then store it uncovered. This will ensure that the surface of the steak is all dried up!
Once frozen, you can then take them and put them in their individual zip bags. It’s so simple, right?
Now, who wants to try Dan’s experiment? Don’t forget to tell us how it went, and enjoy your steak!
To learn more of Chef Souza’s yummy steak tips, watch the video below!
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