You may have the right cooking technique for your steak, but what about flavour?
There are times when we just don’t seem to get that flavour right for the steak! Although we may cook it to perfection, it could still lack flavour.
Here are 4 techniques you can use to achieve flavour perfect!
1. Not straight from the fridge!
Make sure that your meat is not straight out of the fridge because that will lead to uneven cooking. It means the outside will brown so nicely but you may not be able to balance it well with the interior cooking times. What I mean is that it may take time for the interior to cook because it is cold and while you are waiting, the exterior will over cook which means it will lose its nice brownness – its visual appeal which leads to poor flavour as well. This is one way you could ruin what could otherwise be a good quality steak.
2. How you use your herbs and spices
I advocate that herbs and spices must be coated on your meat. Where spices are really effective are when they are swimming in a sauce that is about to coat your beautifully cooked roast or steak. Create your own flavour combinations and even go so far as to use whole spices and bruise them with a mortar and pestle.
In my last blog I wrote about deglazing. This is making use of what is left in the pan after you have removed your steak or roast. Reduce that down to enhance the flavours of what is left in the pan. Adding spices to that mix and reducing it down gives it even more flavour that will do wonders to your roast or steak!
3. Salt
You can salt your meat and cook it straight away or, better, salt your meat the day before.
To achieve more from your seasoning, salt the steak at least 3 hours or even the day before cooking it. What happens in that time is that the salt will draw out the moisture in the steak but then the salt eventually permeates into the interior of the steak taking the moisture with it. This adds flavour to the steak’s interior and also improves on the steak’s juiciness. This is because the moisture and the salt contribute to the tenderness as they help to breakdown the muscle fibres in the proteins.
I have done the experiment:
* Salting the steak the day before
*Salting the steak just before cooking
This is what I came up with:
Salted the steak just before cooking:
This steak tasted saltier and that was the salt on the steak’s exterior, so it was a good eating experience. However, compared to the steak that was salted the day before, the interior was slightly tougher and drier.
Salted the steak the day before:
I found the steak to be not so salty (compared to the one salted before cooking). You could tell that the salt was more evenly distributed throughout the steak (both interior and exterior). It was more juicy and more tender. The juiciness and tenderness worked well with the slight saltiness throughout the steak to make for a pleasant eating experience.
Therefore, this is a fantastic technique that you can use from now on to flavour your steak (or roast) before cooking it!
4. Butter
Professional chefs use butter on your steaks and here’s why:
Butter is a great flavour transmitter and will flavour your steak with whatever you flavour your butter. It is important to add the butter on a low heat (or even no heat) and quickly so that it neither burns, separates nor over cooks your steak. The right time to add butter is towards the end of the cooking time – while the heat is low and to reduce as much time in the pan as possible whilst still doing its job or when the steak has been removed from the pan (again the pan is on a low heat or off the heat but hot enough to gently melt the butter). Other exciting ingredients to add to the butter are garlic, mustard, ground spices and/or fresh herbs before coating over the steak.
The use of butter is an exciting way to flavour your steak – quickly and effectively!
Knowing how to flavour your meat is just as important as the actual cooking technique. Go ahead and try these when you next pan fry steak!
Want to know more about cooking red meat?