8/5oz Bacon Wrapped Filet Mignon
12/7oz Private Reserve Filet Mignon
8/6oz Filet Mignon
8/10oz Boneless Strips
8/8oz Private Reserve Top Sirloin
16/5oz Gourmet Burgers
60 glorious pieces of meat now frozen in a 2.1 cubic foot compact chest freezer in my...let's just call it a kitchen for the purposes of this.
The grand experiment here is, after 60 trials, will I be able to properly cook a steak considering that until 2 months ago I hadn't had a running stove top or oven for about four years. Oh, but wait, there's more. I'm going to try to do everything from scratch, including sides, soups, salads and so on.
Certainly feel free to comment, criticize, suggest, reminisce about the cheese covered steak you had in Belgium, etc, etc. Come on now, we all know I could use the help. Oh, a couple quick notes...
A Note About Blogging: I hate blogging and bloggers. The word itself tastes like week old kimchi and formaldehyde. But when Leslie Ruch said, "you should do a blog of it," I had to. My mother told me once to do what Leslie tells me. And I always do what my mother says. However, I am me and there's a likelihood I'll fall behind, get bored or just decide, eh, screw it. and the reporting on the experiment comes to an abrupt halt without warning or emergency row exits. This may occur after this post, or one meal, or thirty or fifty nine. That's just the way it goes. I'm tough to love.
A Note About the Food: Don't ever take a reaction of mine to be a judge of the recipe itself, but rather my ability to cook it. As I've been trying to eat healthier and all that good stuff, it has been suggested to me to take this opportunity to do a low carb diet.
no.
But cost prohibitively, living in Portland now, pretty much everything will be made with organic ingredients. So, you know, that's good.
A Note About "60 Days": Yes, I'm aware this is called "60 Days of Steak" when the truth is by my count there are only 44 steaks and 16 burgers. You better believe I'll be cooking up those burgers as well, but calling it "44 days of steak and 16 days of burgers" was too long, and "60 days of meat" lacks the word steak, which is a beautiful work and should be inscribed onto historical documents and put in national anthems. And no, sorry, as much fun as it would be to do this as 60 days in a row, I would need more preparation to figure out really what I need on a day to day basis, what to defrost ahead of time, maintained motivation and so on. Oh, and my heart would explode.
So, tonight will be the first. It'll be an easy control group steak to see if I can even do that with minimal error. Check back for the full report.
Oh, and feel free to email me directly at adamantonym@comcast.net
fancy, right?
5 comments:
Woohooo! So glad you are doing this. Fun times.
(Julia voice) Adam! It's your birthday!
Okay.. rules of steak cookery.
One -- you can always recover from under cooking a steak, but you can never recover from over cooking one.
Two -- resist your instinctive fear of non-refrigeration and let the steaks sit out all day while you work, covered, in a cool place from the moment you take them out of the freezer to the moment you come home from work. In other words, allow 6-8 hours to thaw at room temp if you can before attempting to cook a piece of beef.
The "pros" like to "fry" steaks for quick preparation. This is how steakhouse steaks get those wonderful crusts: they are either literally dunked into the fryer or they are pan friend in one of: lard, clarified butter, bacon fat, olive oil or a mix. This is especially handy for filets mignon, which do not have much fat on their own and so need as much flavor help as they can get; also, being so low in fat, they over cook quickly. A fry or dry fry method ensures quick caramelization of the outside of the steak and a rare inside.
Rare: believe it. Its how god meant for steaks to be eaten, and if you don't believe in god, its how I intend steaks to be eaten.
Learn to gauge done-ness by reading your palm. This should be demonstrated in person.
Oh.. and I'll be in LA this weekend. Call me.. four 1 five, six zero 8, FUCK.
Dr. Neil, fantastic and personal opinion and research thus far couldn't disagree with you on any point. That's awesome you'll be in LA to come have your way with a steak or two, but oh, I live in Portland now. But if you make your way northernly, I'd gladly let you fondle my meat and demonstrate the proper use of the palm.
wait....
adam! i'm dying to know how the cooking went last night!
Curses! All this migrating around my wanderlusting nomadic ex-Shakerite friends are up to!
Nice use of vaguely homoerotic imagery in order to entice a visit from yours truly. Talk of meat handling, and flattery, will get you everywhere.
Suffice it to say now I have yet another reason to go to Portland/Eugene. Soon...
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