KoBeWriMo Blast!
18,440/21,667
FIVE THOUSAND WORDS. SINCE DINNER. BOO-YA.
So, I discovered last week that a local farm is raising Kobe beef, massages, beer-diet, and all. Since I have always wondered, given that I make VERY good steak with cheap beef, what I good do with the best damn beef on the planet, I went for it. Four-and-a-half pounds of Prime Virginia Kobe ribeye, a cast-iron skillet, and me. The result?
Let me put it this way: I love steak. I love beef, the texture, the flavor, the smell. I estimate I've eaten roughly 600-700 steaks in my lifetime, and some of those were very, very good. Once, when my college was picking up the tab (I love conventions), I had a $55 steak. That was pretty spectacular.
None of those compare with what I had tonight. Five of us tackled said 4.5 pounds. We had piles of mashed potatoes (
truebluejay's contribution) and a salad of my devising I will describe below, and we still ate every scrap of meat. I was in beef Nirvana. I can say, with some confidence, that the entire history of the universe up until this point was entirely justified by the existence of the steaks I cooked tonight.
Here's how I make steak and salad. I put brackets around the things I omitted tonight, on the grounds I wanted a subtler flavor to go with the sublimely tender, melts-like-butter-in-your-mouth meat.
First, slice the steak into the pieces you're going to use. This is important, as you're going to be cooking on high heat, so piece thickness pretty much determines doneness. For this, I sliced two of the three pieces of meat (each of which was about two inches thick and around 1.5 pounds) into 1.5-inch-thick strips, and butterflied the other piece (two of the people present wanted well-done, the heathens).
Put the steak into a plastic baggie, two if necessary, and add the ingredients for the marinade. This is where I like to play, but typically I use varying quantities of: balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing, [Worcestershire sauce], garlic, [onion], black pepper, celery salt, and mustard (best I've found is, surprisingly, Safeway store-brand Stoneground Mustard With Horseradish). In this case, I used quite small quantities of the marinade ingredients, and cut several out entirely.
[Let sit for 15-30 minutes.]
Place a well-seasoned cast iron pan on the stove, and set to high. Once pan is hot (water droplets flicked onto it burst into steam immediately), grab your tongs (make certain they do NOT have teeth or similar, as you do not want to pierce the meat once the crust has formed) and start putting on the meat. It will sizzle, steam, and spew massive quantities of smoke. I recommend opening every window in the house and turning on the kitchen fan, or doing this outside if you have a grill able to maintain a steady temperature (i.e., a gas grill, which will, of course, be useless for actually grilling things on, unless you like the taste of propane). Flip every few seconds. Doneness is primarily a matter of guesswork and seeing how the meat feels if you squeeze it lightly with the tongues. The meat will form a crust, which will be very heavily cooked, even slightly burnt, within seconds. Don't mind if it burns, it's delicious either way, but do NOT use it as an indicator of the doneness of the meat. Inside, the meat is still completely raw.
When finished, put the meat between two plates and allow it to rest. This lets it stay juicy -- when the meat is still very hot, the juice is under pressure, and make a run for it the instant you pierce the crust. The ideal temperature to serve steak is at or slightly above body temperature.
While the meat rests, take the pan off the heat, and fill it with a shallow layer of rice vinegar (also called rice wine vinegar). Scrape at the pan with a wooden spoon or spatula (metal is too hard -- it will scrape up metal as well as steak scrapings -- and plastic risks melting), and stir the scrapings into the vinegar. Add 1-2 tablespoons of mustard to taste (ideally it will be the same mustard as in the marinade) and stir well. Add mixed greens [and tomatoes -- I prefer roma or campari tomatoes, ripped into quarters by hand] and stir in, letting the salad wilt.
Enjoy! This goes well with potatoes, either baked or mashed (especially mashed, if you can get
truebluejay to make them).
Given what I accomplished after eating this, I think I should eat Kobe beef more often. Or maybe not: tonight set me back $75.
FIVE THOUSAND WORDS. SINCE DINNER. BOO-YA.
So, I discovered last week that a local farm is raising Kobe beef, massages, beer-diet, and all. Since I have always wondered, given that I make VERY good steak with cheap beef, what I good do with the best damn beef on the planet, I went for it. Four-and-a-half pounds of Prime Virginia Kobe ribeye, a cast-iron skillet, and me. The result?
Let me put it this way: I love steak. I love beef, the texture, the flavor, the smell. I estimate I've eaten roughly 600-700 steaks in my lifetime, and some of those were very, very good. Once, when my college was picking up the tab (I love conventions), I had a $55 steak. That was pretty spectacular.
None of those compare with what I had tonight. Five of us tackled said 4.5 pounds. We had piles of mashed potatoes (
Here's how I make steak and salad. I put brackets around the things I omitted tonight, on the grounds I wanted a subtler flavor to go with the sublimely tender, melts-like-butter-in-your-mouth meat.
First, slice the steak into the pieces you're going to use. This is important, as you're going to be cooking on high heat, so piece thickness pretty much determines doneness. For this, I sliced two of the three pieces of meat (each of which was about two inches thick and around 1.5 pounds) into 1.5-inch-thick strips, and butterflied the other piece (two of the people present wanted well-done, the heathens).
Put the steak into a plastic baggie, two if necessary, and add the ingredients for the marinade. This is where I like to play, but typically I use varying quantities of: balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing, [Worcestershire sauce], garlic, [onion], black pepper, celery salt, and mustard (best I've found is, surprisingly, Safeway store-brand Stoneground Mustard With Horseradish). In this case, I used quite small quantities of the marinade ingredients, and cut several out entirely.
[Let sit for 15-30 minutes.]
Place a well-seasoned cast iron pan on the stove, and set to high. Once pan is hot (water droplets flicked onto it burst into steam immediately), grab your tongs (make certain they do NOT have teeth or similar, as you do not want to pierce the meat once the crust has formed) and start putting on the meat. It will sizzle, steam, and spew massive quantities of smoke. I recommend opening every window in the house and turning on the kitchen fan, or doing this outside if you have a grill able to maintain a steady temperature (i.e., a gas grill, which will, of course, be useless for actually grilling things on, unless you like the taste of propane). Flip every few seconds. Doneness is primarily a matter of guesswork and seeing how the meat feels if you squeeze it lightly with the tongues. The meat will form a crust, which will be very heavily cooked, even slightly burnt, within seconds. Don't mind if it burns, it's delicious either way, but do NOT use it as an indicator of the doneness of the meat. Inside, the meat is still completely raw.
When finished, put the meat between two plates and allow it to rest. This lets it stay juicy -- when the meat is still very hot, the juice is under pressure, and make a run for it the instant you pierce the crust. The ideal temperature to serve steak is at or slightly above body temperature.
While the meat rests, take the pan off the heat, and fill it with a shallow layer of rice vinegar (also called rice wine vinegar). Scrape at the pan with a wooden spoon or spatula (metal is too hard -- it will scrape up metal as well as steak scrapings -- and plastic risks melting), and stir the scrapings into the vinegar. Add 1-2 tablespoons of mustard to taste (ideally it will be the same mustard as in the marinade) and stir well. Add mixed greens [and tomatoes -- I prefer roma or campari tomatoes, ripped into quarters by hand] and stir in, letting the salad wilt.
Enjoy! This goes well with potatoes, either baked or mashed (especially mashed, if you can get
Given what I accomplished after eating this, I think I should eat Kobe beef more often. Or maybe not: tonight set me back $75.