How to marinate the perfect steak

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Marinating is perhaps the main step in steak cooking. The final flavor of the meat depends on what you use as the marinade and how long you keep the steak in it. Our colleagues from the American Lifehacker compared four methods of steak marinating and chose the best one.

Previously, it seemed to me that it was enough to put a piece of meat in a pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper and I would get a great steak. If I hold it a little less than usual, a medium-rare steak comes out, a little more - a strong one. Therefore, it was not clear to me why there is a whole culture of steak cooking, and in many restaurants properly fried meat is almost a highlight on the menu.

Of course I was wrong. Having started to explore the part of the Internet where "steak gurus" and cooks gather, I realized that these people can teach the same crazy people like themselves, but not a beginner.

This stuff is a different matter.

I want to divide the American Lifehacker experiment into three parts:

1. What they took - what ingredients were used for the marinade.
2. What they did - what actions were taken with the meat and marinade.
3. What happened - which steak was the best.

What took

Glory to the culinary gods - the chef did not pervert and took the usual products as ingredients for the marinade:

• half a cup of soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped onion
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 4 cloves of garlic, crumbled
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard (you can make it yourself, you can buy it at the store),
• 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar.

What have you done

Each of the four steaks was marinated in different ways:

1. The first steak is a quarter of the marinade 12 hours before frying.
2. The second steak is a quarter of the marinade three hours before frying.
3. The third steak is a quarter of the marinade 45 minutes before frying.
4. The fourth steak was fried with salt, sugar and pepper, then holes were punched in it, marinade was poured into them, wrapped in foil and left for five minutes.

What happened

The most extreme methods have won.

1. The first steak had the most pronounced marinade flavor with a hint of soy sauce. Despite the long marinating process, the steak remained moderately firm.
2. Second steak. The taste of the marinade was heard, but, compared to the first steak, it was not so pronounced - this is a minus. The meat turned out to be not so soft.
3. The third steak, due to the short marinating time, retained its firm structure, but practically did not absorb the taste of the marinade.
4. Fourth steak. Since the garlic and onion from the marinade were not absorbed into the steak, their taste stood out noticeably against the taste of the meat. And it didn't add any points. In addition, the aftertaste of well-fried meat, which had been marinated for a long time, was not felt. But salt and sugar were clearly audible.

In general, Suzanne Chen, the chef who conducted the testing, suggests choosing either the first option with long marinating, or the last one if you want to preserve the flavor of the meat and give it only a slight hint of the marinade flavor.