Chef Paul’s "Cookin' with Passion" Tip of the Week
STEAK
Chef Paul O'Toole: Tip of the week to you! This is Chef Paul O'Toole, chief culinary officer for all of the Forewinds Hospitality Golf Clubs, with this week's tip.
Let's talk about the summer steak. What cuts work best? Well let's go through some cuts that we can do at our backyard barbecue. Let's see, New York Strip, flank steaks, skirt steaks, filet mignon, hanger steaks, all of the above work great on your outdoor grill. But what works best, that's the question?
Let's talk about the thickness of the steaks first. The thicker the steak, of course, the longer it's going to take to cook. And the thicker the steak, the hotter the grill - which means that many times the outside gets charred to this big black thing that's smoking on the grill and everybody says, "What is that?" - or "what was that?"
Let's take all the worrying out of it, let's just do flank steak. Flank steak is a rather thin steak and it can be at the thickest point when it's cleaned about two inches thick. And that's about perfect. The thing is with flank steak is that it can be a tough muscle if not marinated or brined and cooked to the right temperature. But done well, it's one of the most flavorful pieces of meat.
So what we're going to do is we're going to brine this piece of meat and our brining process is really quite simple, it's one half cup of sugar, one half cup of salt and nine cups of water. We're also going to put in one tablespoon of cracked black pepper and if you have it two ounces of red or white wine, either one will be fine. We're going to mix that together with a whip.
We're going to take our meat which has been cleaned, and what I mean by clean is the obvious fat that may be on the outside of the flank steak has been removed. You could either do that or ask your butcher to do that. We're going to take that meat and we're going to submerge that in our brine. That's going to kind of work on all those fibrous tissues, those connective tissues that are inside of this flank steak and we're going to soften this meat up a little bit and at the same time we're going to add flavor to the meat. We're going to induce this meat to grab as much flavor as it can and hold onto it, along with some moisture.
Put that in the container, put the meat in the refrigerator in the container and we're going to let that sit in the refrigerator for approximately three hours. If it's a little bit over or a little bit under don't worry.
We're going to take that meat out and we're going to pat it dry, then go fire up our grill. Now on our grill we're going to make sure that our grill has been hot and preheated and we're going to wipe the grates down so that they're nice and clean. We're going to shut the lid on your outdoor grill so that that grate gets nice and hot and rub a little oil on the grates - any oil will do.
I don't want to salt and pepper this meat because the salt that was inside of our brine mixture should be plenty of salt, for additional flavor. We put our steak on the grill, shut the top and our steak is cooking and what we want to do is try and get the grill marks on both sides.
Now, you can test this meat and if you're really good testing the meat with your hands you can pick the meat off at medium rare - it should be to an internal temperature of a 120 degrees F (or 49 C). And if you aren't real good with the manual method, then just use your meat thermometer. Take the meat off and let it rest. What happens there is that carryover cooking will probably bring that meat up to another five degrees so we're looking at a 125 degrees F (or 52 C) and that'll slice down to a nice medium rare. If you like your meat done a little more, leave it on to 130-135 F (55-57 C). Cook it to whatever doneness you want.
Now we're going to make a Southwest-style compound butter. And compound butter is going to be our flavoring agent for our steak, it's going to be our sauce. We're going to take two sticks of whole butter and we're going to let that get to almost room temperature. In a mixer or food processor we're going to add one tablespoon green chopped chiles. And then if we had it we're going to use smoked jalapenos or Chipotle peppers, we're going to use one-half teaspoon because they're pretty strong. It's going to give you a nice smoky flavor for the butter.
We're going to take one-half teaspoon of minced garlic, one tablespoon of chopped scallions, one-half teaspoon of cumin and coriander. We're going to take one-quarter teaspoon of cumin and one-quarter teaspoon coriander, one and one-half teaspoon of chili powder and then mix that up.
So what we're going to do is we're going to take our steak and we're going to put that - a little bit of that butter that we have mixed up, put that on top and let it melt onto our steak.
Slice that steak down and that's your brined flank steak. Now as far as sauces or toppings, by all means take your barbecue sauce and brush it on, when your steak is three quarters of the way done. Just remember that when you use barbecue sauce, you're just going to have to clean the grill because the sugar from the barbecue sauce will stick and burn a little once you get the meat off. But if you don't mind cleaning the grill then it does leave a nice glaze on your steak.
That's my tip of the week! I'm here to make certain your dining experience at any Forewinds Golf Club is a WOW! Come out and taste the difference for yourself. This is Chef Paul promising we'll deliver Hospitality PLUS! on every visit.
