How To Cook The Perfect Steak

Nick: I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about steak. In this video, you'll learn how to cook the perfect steak as well as which steaks you should buy and more importantly, which steaks not to buy. I'll also demonstrate the most popular cooking methods, including grilled, seared, reverse seared sous vide and broiled.

I guarantee that if you watch this video, you'll be a steak expert for life First. What makes a good steak? It all comes down to just one word: balance.

And with steak, balance comes down to just two main things flavor and texture. You've probably heard the saying fat is flavor. Those little white fatty spots in meat are called marbling.

When steak cooks, that fat melts into the meat and keeps it tender and juicy while adding tons of great flavor. That's why it's so important to have that nice balance of fat. Those shots you just saw were Japanese a5 Wagyu, the nicest beef in the entire world.

Different countries have their own grading systems for marbling. The three main systems coming from the United States, Australia and Japan. These charts all rate based on the marbling, meaning that the better the marbling, the more you'll probably pay.

In front of me is every single type of steak that comes from a cow before we cook. It is very important that you understand which steaks come from, which portion of the cow, so that you'll be able to choose the right steak for you. You might already think you know which steaks you like best, but what you're about to learn may completely change your mind.

As I go through the steaks, I'm also going to add anywhere between 1 and $4 signs to show how expensive the steaks are here. I've broken down this cow into a few different sections. You can get steak from the chuck rib loin flank and plate sections.

Cuts that come from the round shank and brisket sections cannot be cooked as a steak and typically have to be cooked low and slow. So even though I do love a good brisket, I won't be discussing those today. Let's start with the Chuck section.

From here we get the Chuck steak, which I love because it comes from the first couple of cuts on the Chuck and is actually pretty similar to a ribeye steak but is much cheaper in price. The flatiron comes from the shoulder of the cow and is extremely tender with a good balance of marbling and an intense beefy flavor. Moving on to the rib section, we've got a ribeye steak, which is my personal favorite.

It has fantastic marbling and also contains the cap, which is probably the best tasting meat in the entire cow. I'll demonstrate later in the video how to cook it and how to cut it. The loin section is a very tender part of the cow, which makes for juicy but often very expensive steaks.

You'll probably recognize a lot of these. One of my favorites that comes from here is the sirloin cap, popularly known as the Picanha. This is one of the most prized steaks in all of Brazil, where it's often cooked over open flame.

It's tender and juicy with a rich, beefy flavor and has a beautiful fat cap. The sirloin steak and the New York strip are both less fatty than the ribeye with a great balance of tenderness and leanness. But I'd still choose a ribeye any day.

The Porterhouse and T-Bone are both very similar in the sense that both steaks contain two cuts in one, both the filet and the strip. The difference is the porterhouse has a larger fillet and more fat content, which makes my personal preference the porterhouse over the T-Bone. Just be careful when cooking either of these steaks because you're basically cooking two different steaks at the exact same time, which can make it hard to cook both perfectly.

The filet mignon and the tenderloin both also come from the same section, but are highly overrated. Given how expensive these two cuts are, I would suggest using your money to get something with more fat and therefore more flavor. Tri tip can also be tasty and typically has great marbling, but it's very tough and unforgiving if you overcook it.

So I don't recommend this cut either. From the flank section comes the flank steak, which is probably most recognizable as the beef that comes in your beef and broccoli. If you order Chinese takeout, if you marinate it properly and cook it through to medium, it's delicious.

Last but not least, we have the short plate section. My favorite steak from here being the skirt steak, specifically the outside skirt, which is more tender than the inside. Later in this video, we will cook and cut a skirt steak.

And I really want to focus on the cutting portion of that because despite this being one of my favorite steaks out there, I was cutting it incorrectly most of my life. The final steak. And one of my other personal favorites is the hanger steak.

Let me tell you, if you haven't tried a hanger steak, you need to. It's also known as the butcher steak, since butchers used to save this one for themselves. Trust me when I say you need to try this one, you should use all of that information to find the best combination between flavor, cost and texture that works best for you.

If you're still confused on what steaks to buy, ask your butcher or the person behind the meat counter at the supermarket. I know they might look intimidating at times, but trust me when I say that they're gentle giants and they want to help you. Now that you know what steaks to buy, there's just one last step before cooking.

Seasoning. And the best part is it's very simple. You'll just season with a high quality salt at least an hour before cooking your steak, if not overnight.

This process is called dry brining, and it's seasons. The whole steak, not just the very outside, which is what happens if you only salt right before cooking. Dr brining allows the salt to go into the meat so you get that flavor everywhere.

You can also get creative with your seasoning and use a marinade which works particularly well on steaks such as flank steak and strip steak. I've seen tons of comments in the past asking me where my seasoning is if I've only used salt and pepper on a steak. But remember, there is nothing wrong with letting the flavor of steak speak for itself.

Now that our steaks are seasoned, how do we know which method to cook them with? There are plenty to choose from, but we'll do the best and most popular grilling, searing, reverse, searing sous vide and broiling. And the best way to decide how to cook your steak comes down to one simple factor.

Thickness. The focus here is cooking it evenly, all the way through to the center while still getting that nice crust on the outside. We're going to start with the most popular way to cook a steak, grilling.

And as always, I'm looking for maximum flavor. So I'm going to start with the best charcoal you can get anywhere in the world. This is called Binchotan Charcoal.

I will warn you, it's probably going to be the most expensive wood you ever buy, but it'll also probably be the best flavor you ever get. Once you've added this charcoal to our chimney starter, I'm going to go ahead and use my little trick of using Doritos as a fire starter because, believe it or not, Doritos light extremely well. I'll start by letting our Doritos on fire.

And once they're going, I'll place my charcoal on top. We'll let this go until our charcoal is fully on fire, at which point we want to let that die down to get these nice red, white, hot coals. It's hot enough now that I'm ready to pour that charcoal into the grill and just look at that incredible glow that we've gotten since we've already dry brined each of these steaks with salt.

I'm going to go ahead and finish them off now with some pepper you can save fresh cracked pepper for last minute just before you grill because this is probably too long for our grill. I'm also going to go ahead and slice it in half. As you can see from the two steaks here, one is very thick and one is very thin.

And as we talked about earlier, we're going to cook these in slightly different ways. With the skirt steak. It's extremely thin, so we'll want to sear it as quickly as possible.

Once again, the goal here with cooking this thin steak is to cook it high and fast. We want to get that crust without overcooking it. The ribeye will be a different story because this charcoal is so hot, we're already ready to flip.

I don't want to ruffle any feathers, but to all the grill dads out there who are constantly touching and flipping your steaks, just leave it. The only way you're going to get the proper crust is if you let it sit there patiently on each side as long as you can. That right there is that perfect char that we're looking for.

I know you've probably heard a lot of people talk about letting your steak rest, but in all seriousness, it's extremely important. I know you're probably tempted to dive right in, but you want those juices to stay sealed in the steak before you eat it. It's time to cook our ribeye.

And as you can see, this is a much thicker steak. And it's going to take a slightly different cooking method to get it done right. To begin, I'll start by rendering off that fat cap, which means we're going to start by cooking it with this thicker fat side down so that all that fat can get nice and crispy.

The goal with this thicker steak here is going to be to get that nice crust and then move it off of the direct heat over here so that it can continue staying warm and heat up the rest of the way through the center. If we kept it right over the charcoals throughout the entire cooking process, we might actually burn the crust. And because it's a thicker steak, we need to give it a little bit more time to cook all the way through and get that heat into the center.

Now, once I've laid it down on the first side here, I'm going to leave it and let it sit until I feel that it's gotten the proper crust. The reason we have a lot more flames with this ribeye here is because there's so much more fat coming out of it. And all that fat, just like butter or oil is going to light on fire.

I think it's already time to flip. Now that we've gotten a crust on both sides, I'm going to slide it over here to cook the rest of the way through. We've gotten a beautiful char on this ribeye, which means tons and tons of flavor.

Now that it's over indirect heat or not, right over the coals anymore, I'm going to cover it up so that all of that heat can go ahead and cook it the rest of the way through, almost like a makeshift oven. While our ribeye finishes cooking. It's time to go ahead and cut one of our skirt steaks.

When looking at it, at first glance, it might seem like you should cut it down the width, but the reason that's incorrect is because that's cutting with the grain. And anytime we slice a steak, we want to cut against the grain. If you simply look at the direction that the fibers are going in, you can pretty easily tell that this grain goes along the width, which means we actually want to slice across the length of the steak.

I'm going to cut it in half. So we have an easy piece to work with and then begin slicing. This right here is perfectly cooked skirt steak.

And as you can see, because I've cut against the grain, it's extremely soft and pull apart tender now that we've sliced all our skirt steak, I have one last tip for you. Even though we let it rest for about ten minutes, we still have plenty of juices left on the board. And what I like to do is take all of my steak and drag it through all of those juices, and it's going to be delicious.

This here is a steak doneness chart that you can use based on your own preferences and how you like your steak cooked with this steak here, I'm using a thermometer that's measuring the internal temperature so I can know when to pull it off the heat. And if you want it medium rare, you want to take it off at about 130 Fahrenheit internal, which means we're a little behind. Always remember that there's going to be that residual heat that continues cooking your steak even after you've taken it off the grill.

For example, this steak here is completely off the heat right now. But it's still very hot and will continue to cook through to the center as we let it rest. The ribeye has a few different sections, the main two being the eye and the cap, The cap being one of the best tasting pieces of meat in the entire cow to carve it.

I'm first going to remove the cap, which is already somewhat separated but really is a separate piece from the eye. This piece here is typically mostly fat, so I can carve that off as well. With the skirt steak we talked about slicing against the grain, but the ribeye is already cut from the cow against the grain.

We know that because we can see all the little muscle fibers sticking straight up here. This is great because it means there's no wrong way to cut a ribeye. If you're cooking ribeyes at a barbecue, the fat cap is what you should save for yourself.

It is extremely juicy, extraordinarily tender, and the flavor just simply doesn't get better. And don't forget to always use all that juice. Oh, my God.

Manny, take a bite. Manny: Oh, my God. So good.

Nick: When it comes to searing, I actually sometimes prefer that method over grilling because I love the crust that you can get when searing a steak. But we can also add some incredible flavor here through butter basting, which I'll show you shortly. For this method, we'll be using a hanger steak.

My preferred pan for searing a steak is a cast iron because it can get extremely hot and holds that heat very evenly. You'll want to begin by starting with some oil that can get to a nice high smoke point. I like to add a little more oil in my pan than most people do because I like that crust to get a little bit higher up on the steak.

If you look carefully at any steak, there are quite a few crevices that will be in there and adding more oil is going to make sure that the oil goes up and inside those crevices and gets everything nice and crispy. Once your oil is smoking hot, make sure you go ahead and lay that steak away from you. Immediately, you're also going to want to press that steak down to make sure everything is touching the pan.

If it bulges up, that's when you get these big, ugly gray spots and you're not going to get a good even crust. Once my steak is in, I'll slightly turn down the heat so it doesn't burn. And once I've peeked on the underside of the steak and it appears to have a nice crust, we'll go ahead and flip.

That's a crust. Once that crust begins to form on the other side, this is when we can get some of that flavor I was talking about. Turn down your heat so the butter doesn't burn and add in a few cubes of butter.

Then a few aromatics. Most commonly, people like to use garlic, some rosemary and a little time. Once we've really made sure that all that butter soaks up the flavor of those herbs and that garlic, I'm going to tilt that pan down towards me to bring all the butter, but not the herbs over to this side.

Then in a nice smooth motion, I'll start to cover my steak with butter over and over to give it all that flavor and cook it the rest of the way through. This is called butter basting. To rest my steak.

I'm going to place it down on my cutting board and use a little trick I learned from Gordon Ramsay himself. I'm going to take all my herbs and rest those on top of the steak. And we also can't forget about that delicious garlic.

Then we can even pour over a little bit of that oil and butter just to get those last bits of flavor. And that's how our steak will rest. Once our steak has rested, we're going to slice into it.

And once again, we want to make sure we're slicing against the grain, not with the grain. First, listen to this crust that we just got. What you're looking at here is why we rest our stakes.

All that juice gets trapped inside. Whereas if we were to cut into it right away, that wouldn't happen. I got to feed my camera guy first.

Manny: Can you take a bite? Nick: Is it good? Manny: That's amazing.

Nick: If you haven't tried hanger steak, go taste it. We'll move on to the reverse sear method. I'll be demonstrating this method with a porterhouse.

And like I said, we have two different steaks here, so I want to make sure we're getting them to the proper temperatures. These temperature probes will help us simultaneously monitor both parts of the steak, given there are two different cuts. For a long time I'd heard of this term and had absolutely no idea what it was.

But it's actually very simple. Instead of trying to get the crust right away, we're going to put this on a cold pan into the oven and cook it until the internal temperature reads about 125 or 130 Fahrenheit. It's time to take out our steak and finish it with a sear because as you can see, we need a nice crust.

I want you to understand that this steak right here is already cooked perfectly, similar to sous vide, which we'll do shortly. It just doesn't yet have a crust and we want a bit of a higher internal temperature. We'll go into our pan with a bit of high heat oil.

And because this has a fat cap just like that ribeye that we grilled, we're going to go ahead and start fat side. Now, if you don't render off the fat like this, it's basically inedible. But if you cook it to a nice golden brown like this, it's delicious.

Once we've rendered off that fat cap, we can lay down our steak once again laying away from us so we don't get hit with oil. Once we've gotten a nice crust, it's time to flip. One reason lots of people like to reverse sear is they believe that by putting the steak in the oven, it really dries it out and gives you a nicer crust.

The same thing that happens when you dry brown your steak. Once you've gotten a crust on both sides, our steak is done. And after letting it take a nice nap, I'll place it back on my cutting board and it's time to slice.

I'll start by slicing the filet right off the bone and it should cleanly come right out. Then I'll cut down the other side of the bone to get the strip. And I can already tell we've cooked this steak perfectly.

And now we get a nice taste of filet mignon. I know I said it's overrated, but I didn't say it wasn't good. And a delicious New York strip.

Nailed it. Once you've cooked one of these steaks, you can certainly see why it's called a T-Bone. Moving on to one of my favorite methods to cook a steak.

We'll be doing this picanha sous vide. I'll lay it fat side down and then begin slicing this into nice, thick steaks. You might notice that right now we're slicing with the grain instead of against the grain.

And that's because once we cook this later as a steak, we'll be able to slice it against the grain before we eat it. With Picanha, we want to focus on the flavor, so we're only going to hit it with a touch of salt. Sous vide is when you vacuum, seal your food in a bag and then cook it in a precisely regulated water bath.

The steak is cooked in its own juices and should come out extremely tender. You'll probably want to get a nice vacuum sealer like this one because the goal is to make sure you get all the air out of that bag and get a nice tight seal. And it's a satisfying and extremely easy process.

This is a circulator that's going to keep our water at the same temperature the entire time our steak cooks. Some people could call it lazy, but the reality is it's going to cook the steak to the perfect, perfect temperature every single time. The only thing we don't get from sous vide is that nice crust on the outside of our steak.

So we're going to set the temperature a little bit below what we want it to end up at so that when our steak has reached that internal temperature that we want, we can sear it off, which will bring it up a few degrees, get us that nice crust and get us to the perfect temperature that we're looking for. As you'll notice, the steak is pretty floppy and mushy and doesn't really have much color to it. But remember, this steak is cooked to a perfect medium rare right now.

You could eat it and be totally fine. It just lacks any texture. And that's why we need to get that crust because there's so much fat on my picanha I'm going to start by just rendering off that fat on the top.

We might actually get enough oil out of this thing to sear the rest of the steak without even having to add anything. As I cook this, I'm going to move it around the pan, pressing on all corners and sides to really melt down all that fat. Once our fat cap looks like this, it's time to see our steak.

If your picanha doesn't look like this, you're doing it wrong. The Picanha had some time to rest and as you can see, the grain runs along the length, so we'll be cutting across the width. I am very excited to dive into this steak.

What's amazing about a bite like this is that it's got beautiful marbling in the center. That nice little piece of rendered off fat cap on the top and a beautiful crust on the outside. There's a reason this is one of my favorite steaks in the entire world.

The final method we'll test today is broiling. And for that, we're going to be using this Chuck steak. Buying a chuck steak is going to get you something very similar to a ribeye without that steep cost.

I've talked today about making a simple marinade for your steak and we're going to make one now. I'll add some lemon zest, lemon juice, a few cloves of garlic, a few Calabrian chilies, some rosemary and olive oil. Once we've blended it up, I'll finish it with just a touch of salt and a bit of black pepper.

Ideally, we would have marinated this steak overnight, but since we didn't get to do it ahead of time, I have another great trick for you. I'll place my steak into this food saver container, then pour over that marinade fully covering the steak with all this deliciousness. Then I'll add back on this lid, make sure it's nice and tightly sealed.

And using this machine we used earlier, I'm going to go ahead and marinate. And what we're doing here now is called rapid infusion. What we're doing is sucking out all of that air and speeding up the marination process by forcing that flavor into our steak.

I'll let this sit for about 15 minutes to let all that flavor do its thing, and then we're ready to broil. At this point, our flavors should be pretty infused, so I'm going to release the pressure and open it up. The smell of this marinade is unbelievable.

Now that all that flavor has soaked deep into our steak, we'll go ahead and transfer. For to a sheet tray where we're going to broil it before you broil position that oven rack to one of the upper levels. And once you've set your oven to about as high as it can go and goes your steak.

Once we can see that our steak has gotten a nice crust on the top and is beginning to sizzle, I'm going to go ahead and pull my tray out, give it a nice flip and back in we go after we've cooked about five minutes on either side, our steak should be done, so it's time to let it take a little nap. This one turns out extremely tender after cooking, but certainly looks a bit messier. So you can use your best judgment when it comes time to slice the steak.

Might be the most tender we've had today, and it's definitely nice and juicy. The fun thing also about using a marinade, it can make it taste however you like. I'm hoping that after watching this video, you'll be a true master when it comes to I love steak.