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SubscribeTuesday, August 28, 2007
Steak Recipe: Turning Cheap “Choice” Steak into Gucci “Prime” Steak
How to Make the Most Tender, Flavorful Steak Recipe
If you are a steak-lover, I hope that the title of this post + luscious photo is enticing enough for you to read though the entire article. Because I promise you that it’s worth it. Even if you don’t eat steak, this is a must-read…as you can impress the hell outta your carnivorean friends (and sometimes, when you’re a vegetarian in a herd of carnivores…it would just be nice to have that extra, “dude….you didn’t know that about steak???!” in your pocket.)
My entire family (including the 2 yr old kid) just adores any type of steak recipe…you could probably classify us as professional steak-eaters. In fact, it is my husband’s life-long quest to hone his grilling technique so that our steaks at home turn out charred crusty on the outside and perfectly medium-rare on the inside. With grill marks for show, of course. Seriously, we are too cheap to eat out and would rather cook a nice steak recipe at home. For the past 4 months, we have been experimenting with how to get full, juicy, beefy flavor of a ribeye with butter-knife tenderness of a filet mignon without feel like getting ripped off buying Prime cuts. And after 4 months of eating steak 2x a week, I think we’ve figured it out. So, my friends, I am offering you a very juicy secret, one that will turn an ordinary “Choice” cut of steak into a gucci “Prime” cut (And yes, I know what “Choice” and “Prime” means – it’s the marbling. The salting doesn’t affect fat content – I’m using those terms as a figure of speech and something people can relate to)
Do you know the joy of buying Choice and eating Prime? It’s like buying a Hyundai and getting a free mail-in rebate for a BMW upgrade!!!
The Steak Secret: massively salt your steaks 1 hour before cooking for every inch of thickness.
Notice that I didn’t say, “sprinkle liberally” or even “season generously.” I’m talking about literally coating your meat. It should resemble a salt lick.
Here’s two nice pieces of regular ‘ol supermarket steak. They’re about 1.25 inches thick, so I’ll let them salt for about 1.25 hours.
Season liberally with kosher salt on both sides:
And then just let it sit on your counter.
After 15 minutes, it will look like this — you can see how the meat’s water is starting to come up to the surface — and that some of the salt is still on the surface of the steak.
After 30 minutes, you’ll see more water:
After almost an hour:
And now 1.25 hours – see all that water? You can also see that there’s still salt on the surface of the steak.
The next step is to discard the water, rinse the steak really well to rid of all the salt. Pat very dry. Very very dry with clean paper towels so that absolutely no moisture is left on the steak.
Then it’s time to cook.
Before y’all throw a hissy fit, just hear me out. I first learned of this technique from Judy Rodgers’ The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco’s Beloved Restaurant
Oh, and if the drawings look like a 3rd grader did it, too bad….YOU try drawing with a laptop touch-pad and a glass of bourbon on the rocks.
How Salting Works
All of you who season JUST before grilling – this is what you are really doing to the meat. Did you know that? All the water comes to the surface and if you don’t pat super-dry, you’re basically STEAMING the meat. Plus, your salt just sits on the surface of the steak, leaving the interior tasteless.
Now – note that only a little of the salt gets to go back into the meat. Don’t worry – you aren’t going to be eating all that salt!
Bourbon does that to me too.
I can hear it now..BUT!!! What of all the water that stayed on the surface of the meat? Aren’t you drawing all the moisture out of the meat? Will it taste like a salt lick? (*%!*%!@#!#!!! I DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS STEAK RECIPE!!!
Pull your pants back on and keep reading…
Verification on Technique
Cook’s Illustrated January 08 issue (and you can also find it on their paid portion of their website. Just search for “Improving Cheap Roast Beef”) They salt a 4lb roast beef (big, fat, thick meat) and they are using 4 tsp kosher salt – therefore their steak recipe recommends salting for 18-24 hrs. It’s all related: thickness of meat : amount of salt : time.
Salting Steak Recipe Key Points
- Use kosher or sea salt, not table salt <– that is important. It will not work well with tiny tiny grains of table salt. Plus, table salt tastes like shit.
- Use steaks 1″ or thicker.
- Follow my timetable (below)
- If you are Harold McGee, a member of Alton Brown’s research team or Mr. Burke my high school chem teacher…..and think I’m full of B.S…. please let me know. But guys, none of this was in your books. I had to formulate, extrapolate, hypotholate and guesstulate based on your stuff. Highly mental activity.
- I know this sounds awfully like salt-curing, which dries out meat (like beef jerky). But with salt curing, you use A LOT more salt and leave it salting for A LOOOOOONG time. We’re talking about a little tiny nap here – not weeks – just enough to break down the proteins and flavor the steak throughout.
- Again, don’t worry about all that salt. Just enough of it gets absorbed into the meat. Most of it gets washed down the drain when you rinse off. Really.
- I know you’re going to ask…so I’ll answer it for you. Why not brine? You could if you really want water-logged diluted-tasting crappy steak.
I understand that this method will cause chaos, confusion and controversy in your household. But I encourage you to experiment: try adding spices, crushed garlic and rosemary sprigs to the salt, which will then act like Christina Aguilera dragging its entourage of flavors with it into the meat. If confusion in the household becomes unbearable, just whack’em with the hunk of salted steak..
Grilled Steak Recipe with Garlic-Herb Butter
Revised 9/13/10 to make salt ratio and timing easier to remember
1. Buy a good sized Choice steak. I like mine 1.25 to 1.5 inches thick. Any cut of steak: Filet, Sirloin, Rib Eye, Porterhouse, T-Bone and NY Strip – they all work. Though, please remember to get steak that you’d normally buy to grill. Don’t go buying some weird cut like the cow armpit and expect it to taste just like a NY Strip. You can do this with steaks less than 1″, just really watch your timing. If your steak is already superbly marbled – cut back on your timing and your salt! The fattier (more marbled) the meat is, the faster the salt works its way through the meat.
2. Sprinkle 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of kosher/sea salt PER SIDE. Use the photos at beginning of the post as guide on how much salt. For every inch thickness of steak, let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.
- Less than 1-inch steak: 30-45 minutes
- 1 inch thick steak: 1 hour
- 1.25 inch steak: 1 hour and 15 minutes
If you don’t have that much time — well then, add more salt, cut back the time it sits. It’s all related:
Thickness of meat : Amount of Salt : Time
And vice-versa, if you need to stretch your time, use less salt. Example: the above steaks that are 1.25″ thick – I should salt for 1 hour 25 minutes. But if my timing works out that I’m not grilling for 2 hours – then I’ll cut back on the salt and let it sit for 2 hours.
If you want to salt for more than 2 hours or overnight – sprinkle the steak with 1/2 the amount of salt that I’ve instructed (look at photos for reference), cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.
3. Rinse all salt off on both sides, pat very dry with paper towels on both sides <- that part is important. Season with fresh ground pepper (no more salt is needed). Grill to your liking. Top with Garlic-Herb Butter immediately to let it oooooze and aaaahhze all over the steak.
Garlic-Herb Butter Recipe
1 stick of unsalted butter, softened (not melted, just softened)
handful of fresh herbs (any combination is fine. My fav is basil and parsley)
1-3 cloves of garlic, smushed in garlic press
To make the Garlic-Herb Butter, combine all ingredients. Lay out a sheet of plastic wrap. Spoon butter mixture on wrap. Roll and shape butter into a log. Refrigerate to firm up for 30 minutes. Slice into 1/4” disks to top the grilled steaks. You can make butter up to 3 days in advance. Make sure you use unsalted butter – the steak is seasoned perfectly already.
Another use for herb butter? 
Notice the consistency in ingredients (first photo and the one below): perfect steak always go so well with homemade shoestring fries or homemade potato chips. The green stuff is just to give color to the plate. Unless it has garlic-herb butter slathered all over it too.
Other steak recipes you might enjoy:
How to dry age steaks at home with Drybag method
Watch me talk about Kobe Beef Burgers on CBS
Artisan Steak Tasting – taste test of 6 steaks from small artisan ranchers
Skirt Steak Tacos Recipe & Parking Adventures of La Tacqueria
No Knead Bread – so easy a caveman 4-yr old can do it
Negative Calorie Chocolate Cake
Garlic Truffle Shoestring Fries
Tropical Island Salmon: cooking fish low ‘n slow creates the most dreamy, silky fish
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First time I’ve found a cooking tecnique so amusing (Maybe it’s the Sailor Jerry Rum and Coke). And I have a question. I don’t have sea or kosher so could I use californua garlic salt? Don’t want to risk a dui. Also does this method affect the cooking time?
Method does not affect cooking time. You can use garlic salt if the salt in it is large crystals like kosher. Most garlic salts use table salt – which is very very fine and you’ll end up with steak too salty. ~jaden
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Wow, I just found your article. Its funny and informative at the same time. I have been working on perfecting steak flavor. Taking a lesser cut and turning it into a masterpiece is where the satisfaction is for sure. Have you tried taking an entire striploin or ribeye and dry aging? I found this new way to dry age recently on http://www.drybagsteak.com Have you tried it? I think if you dry age some select cuts you can get the tenderness and flavor of prime, especially following your cooking method.
I have been cutting meat for 30 years. I appreciate the way you cut trough the nonsense. I like Alton Brown. I work at a grocery store as a meat cutter and they call me “the counselor” . If you can’t find the answer find CURT, that’s me. I would like to sell steaks on line and I’m not sure how to get started. If you could help me I could help you. Thank you for your time. curt.marwitz@gmail.com
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I am going to try this tonight, will let you know how it turned out. I so hope it works as I love soft juicy steak and can not always get to my regular butcher (they hang the meat for +3 weeks).
It WORKS!! I’ve tried this method on three diffrent steaks, two filets and a porterhouse. They all were well marbled SELECT, almost choice. I salted as directed and when it was time to rinse there was no juice left behind because the meat re-absorbed it! Even while cooking ( indoor grill ) the juices did not seep out! And this method definetly bumped the meat a grade up, and was more tender / juicy. I just rinsed off enough to get the salt off, no more. There is a saltyer than normal taste, but I guess you could rinse it off more throughly.
I have to thank you for sharing this salting technique with us. I’ve been using it the last couple of times I’ve cooked steak, and every single time the flavor comes out amaaaaaaaazing. I’m generally terrible at cooking steak and getting it to taste delicious, but with this salting technique and a cooking tip I picked up from another site, I’ve been turning out fabulous steaks like nobody’s business. And my family really appreciates it
Thanks again!
Tried this tonight – FABULOUS!!!!
Thanks for the post. It is great information about steaks
This is wonderful. Thank you. I salt my meat as well before rinsing and cooking.
Thanks for the info. I can’t wait to try and see if I can make my USDA Choice steaks taste more like USDA prime steaks
We took four cheap steaks and tried this with one. Wow, you could see the difference as soon as they came off the grill! This is how we will cook our steaks from now on.
Thanks!
Nice article!
I would say that if you need to add any other spicy to the steak besides salt we really need to select better the steak and review the temperature and your salt strategy.
Cheers
I love this article! I think it’s amazing how you fuse Science and cooking
.
The salt is a GREAT idea; I just got done eating a fairly tough steak – I am going to have to cook my next steak by this article
this is upsetting with you misleading people about salt. the majority of people won’t tell a difference in taste between table salt and sea salt. It is understandable that you recommend such salt instead of table salt with the reasoning being size or something of the likeness, but don’t just degrade salt like that. ponder to yourself where table salt comes from.
hmm….pondering…pondering…
nope.
i still stand behind that table salt tastes like shit.
thanks though. ~jaden
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I’m a student and I can only afford cheap steaks. I tried this today and OMG.. best steak I ever cooked in my LIFE!!! thank you so much. you made a poor student very very happy..
Have been trying to replicate the deep beefy flavor of steak house dry aged for awhile. Tried this salt method but it tasted like, well, salted beef. So I gave the Drybagsteak.com thing a try (saw it mentioned here in April). Last week I cracked open the four pounds of boneless ribey I’d aged in the Drybags and steaked it out. OMG! Beautifully clean aged steaks with exactly the flavor I was looking for. Will have to time the aging, but I am thrilled to have a way to age Choice, Select or Grassfed beef to just that perfect rich beefy flavor I was looking for–without the salt lick! Not the cheapest way to deepen the flavor, but a superior solution all around.
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Hey guys – I just contacted http://www.drybagsteak.com and will be testing their product in the next couple of weeks! I promise to report back.
jaden
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Whoa — you got picked up by Lifehacker!
http://lifehacker.com/5264724/top-10-skills-to-master-your-grill
A local restaurant marinates steaks overnight in canned, diced jalapenos. They similarly wash off all the stuff and pat dry. Their steaks are remarkably tender, while still being nicely beefy. I’m not that much of a steak guy, so I haven’t tried to replicate but you may want to experiment with that as well.
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I tried this last night and it sucked. Perhaps I did something wrong, but the steak was purple looking when I put it on the grill. I did it to medium-rare and it was pretty pink. However, the firmness was like well-done.
I had a steak thaw out for 6 hours (Wanted to eat it that day).
I seasoned it with loads of sea salt and let it sit for 45 min. It was a Tbone, a little over an inch.
When I came back it was all floppy and wet like people say. I washed off the salt (I didnt pat it dry though, perhaps that’s why)
I put some oil and heated the pan (I got it extra hot)
I put some steak seasoning on it and then put it on the grill, I seared both sides to trap heat.
I put a lid on it and let it cook. It had a lot of juice in the pan (obviously because all the juice came out of the steak).
What did I do wrong?!?
Are you f@^%!g kidding me? It didn’t work because you didn’t follow the freakin’ instructions! So yeah, your steak sucked because you didn’t pat the steak dry. Basically, you steamed your steak instead of grilling it. ~j
LoL dammit. saw the quick post/pic on lifehacker, clicked on thru to your site, got my salt out and proceeded thru the steps. now i’m at the last picture, waiting for my steak to finish it’s salting and i read that i’m not supposed to use table salt?? dammit. maybe a warning at the beginning? *fingers crossed it still turns out edible* thanks!
Hey Jeff- how could you miss the multiple times I mentioned kosher/sea salt!??????
jaden
…that was a legit/serious “thanks” and not snarky like it probably sounded a minute ago…
This might be a dumb question but how are you rinsing the steaks – literally running it under a tap to clear off the salt? I cooked sirloin last night for a steak sandwich and while it was nicely cooked it was very fibrous and didn’t really suit being eaten by hand – the meat didn’t tear very easily so it was back to a knife and fork for me – looking forward to giving this a go!
Yes, rinse under tap water.
If you want to use sirloin for a sandwich, you do have to use knife to cut into very thin ribbons. The only way you can break down the fibers so much that you can pull by hand is if you cook low and slow…for a long time. Salting won’t be a shortcut for low and slow. But it will make it more tender and delicious.
~j
As David above attests to salting cheaper cuts of steak (rump in particular) can produce some stunning results. Given you recommend only 1 hour with the salt penetrating the meat proteins this should not imbed the meat with too much salt. Great practical idea.
So, could this technique be used with the “pan sear” method, or should this be done only the way you describe it?
You can cook the steak any way you want! ~jaden
Your Gucci Steak recipe made the most delicious steak that my husband and I have grilled at home. In fact, it was better than some of the so-called great steak houses! We used kosher salt and steakhouse seasoning on a one inch sirloin. Tonight we are going to try this same method on a top round london broil. We’ll let you know how that turns out.
Tried it today with strip steaks I’d had in the freezer since November. It worked FABULOUSLY! Really a great result. I can’t wait to try it on rib eye!
Jaden – thank you for that, I’ll give it a go this evening!
wow! this is awesome… why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?
i had purchased cheap frozen steaks for use in the slow cooker. i usually cook for only my husband and myself so buying a whole roast just isn’t practical for us. generally, this is the best way that i have found to make cheap meat tender for stews, tacos, etc. i tried slow cooking two of these four steaks a few weeks ago & they were so tough that we ended up throwing them away and getting fast food. not wanting to waste the remaining two steaks, i did some research on tenderizing tough meat & found your website. so glad i did!
though the steaks were still a little on the fatty side, the “good meat” was super tender and had great flavor. we are a bit picky when it comes to fat on steaks and i suppose to someone who enjoys good marbling, these steaks would have been superb. thanks for saving these steaks for us; we just finished a great dinner! i’m looking forward to experimenting with this method on better steaks!
also, i made the herb butter using garlic & cilantro. this was delicious on top of the steaks as well as on our mashed potatoes!
I linked to this post from the timesonline (UK newspaper). Thanks for the tip about salt. Now I can’t wait to try this “salty” steak recipe out with some fleur de sel from Brittany. Your story is an inspiration.
What a way to ruin a a lovely bit of steak. Ive tucked into my salted steak, as recommended, and its as salty as a mouthful of sea water. Never using this recipe again!!
Tried this last night on a sirloin and it was delicious. I generally don’t like sirloin, more of a ribeye man. But this was every bit as tender as a ribeye. It was a big one, about two pounds. Salted each side with about 1 1/2 tablespoons of sea salt for 45 minutes, rinsed thoroughly and patted completely dry, rubbed a little rosemary olive oil and crushed garlic into the steak, pan seared, then broiled in the oven. tender, juicy, wonderful flavor. I’ll try it with a ribeye this weekend.
Hi,
Thank you very much for the post. I am just wondering if soy sauce would have the same effect on the steak as salt. I like to use a soy sauce based marinate for meat. Can I do the samething with a steak? Thank you.
a marinade with salt + acid always works with meat. try it, and let me know how it goes. jaden
Great recipe!! I tried this the other night with a $4.00 steak and it came out great! I think it was a top sirloin or something like that–do not know much about cuts. All I know is that it was big and cheap and usually comes out dry and tough. Using this recipe, it didn’t taste like a cheap steak at all, it was very tender, juicy, and actually had flavor throughout.
I was wondering if this would work for other meats as well…like pork chops or chicken? Have you ever tried it? If so, please let me know. When I cook porkchops, they tend to come out dry and tough. Would salting them have the same effect?
yes, you can do this with poultry, pork! jaden
Will this work with Buffalo Steak?
Your written words discuss “Masively salting a steak”. Then your recipe calls for 1/2 tsp. of salt!!!!!!! Whoa there. ONE-HALF teaspoon of salt????? The picture of salted steak has more like a HALF CUP of salt!!! Puhleeze – correct your recipe!!!!