What do you need to cook a delicious steak?
Properly marinating is the main stage of cooking steak. From what you are using as a marinade, and how long keep steak in it, determines the final taste of the meat. We compared four methods for marinating steak and chose the best.
I used to think that it was enough to put a piece of meat into the pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper and I get a great steak. If you hold it just under the usual amount of time, the steak will come out medium rare. That’s why, I could not understand why there was a whole culture of cooking steaks, and in a great many restaurants well-cooked meat is just about the highlight of the menu.
Of course, I was wrong. Beginning to explore that part of the Internet, which band together “steak experts” and the chefs, I realized that these people can teach the same crazy persons, like themselves, but not the beginner.
This is not the case with this article.
The experiment
I’m going to try an experiment that will be divided into three parts:what are the ingredients used for the marinade.
What ingredients were used for the marinade?
What actions were made with the meat and the marinade?
What method and marinade succeeded.
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Ingredients
Thank the cooking gods — the ingredients for the marinade took the familiar products:
½ cup soy sauce,
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce,
3 tablespoons finely chopped onion,
2 tablespoons sugar,
4 chopped cloves of garlic,
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard (you can prepare yourself or you can buy in the store),
2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar.
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Actions
Each of the four steaks pickled in various ways:
The first steak – a quarter of the marinade for 12 hours before frying.
The second steak – a quarter of the marinade for 3 hours before frying.
The third steak – a quarter of the marinade for 45 minutes before frying.
The fourth steak was fried with salt, sugar and pepper, then holes were poked in the steak and the marinade was poured into the holes, then the steak was placed in foil and left for five minutes.
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What succeeded
The first steak had the most pronounced flavor of the marinade with a hint of soy sauce. In spite of the long process of marinating, the steak remained moderately hard.
The second steak the flavor of the marinade was noticeable, but, compared to the steak, the flavor was not so pronounced — it’s a minus. The meat turned also remained tough.
The third steak because of the small time marinating kept a solid structure, but scarcely absorbed the flavor of the marinade.
The fourth steak, with garlic and onions from the marinade, didn’t soak into the steak, the flavor of the marinade stood out in the background of the taste of meat. It also didn’t taste like well-done meat that has marinated for a long time.
In general, Suzanne Chan, the chef, who conducted the testing, offers you to choose either the first option with a long marinating, or the last, if you want to keep the taste of the meat and give it only a small hint of taste of the marinade.
