Prime Cuts

For this post I want to address a question received by one of our readers regarding the proper seasoning and care of cast iron cooking equipment. But before I provide my answer I must take the time to reference the cookbook that really got me into cast iron cooking in the first place, Seven Fires, Grilling the Argentine Way, written by Argentina’s most famous chef Francis Mallmann.  Throughout this book full of wonderful recipes there are many side notes, quotes, and chef tips related to all things having to do with wood-fire cooking.  One of these particular side notes is Chef Mallmann’s perspective on proper care and seasoning of cast iron pans and it is so perfect that I want to share it for this post.

While reading this quotation keep in mind that Chef Mallmann has multiple restaurants and cooks more in cast iron than anyone you know or ever will know.  However, the general idea and romance of cast iron cooking is absolutely there, so check it out, and then read my more practical approach.  In the end do whatever you feel is best for your personal style of cooking.

“I depend on cast iron, and I respect it, but I don’t go through the elaborate steps that some aficionados do when cleaning it. I know that many people never wash their cast-iron pans with soap and water, scouring them instead with coarse salt, then oiling the pans to develop a nonstick patina that’s equal to Teflon. I’m not one of them. I find that a pan that is oil-seasoned often smokes while it’s heating up; I prefer to oil my ingredients just before putting them on to cook. As far as cleaning off the sticky bits, pouring boiling water into a pan or dousing a very hot pan or skillet with a ladleful of warm water shocks them so you can easily scrape them off with a big spoon, spatula, or-my favorite chapa tool- a wide putty knife (the kind used by housepainters and plasterers).

I confess that my pans often show rust and some even crack from time to time but I just chalk that up to paying my dues.”

My personal philosophy regarding proper care and seasoning of cast iron boils down to one basic philosophy: don’t wash it, instead wipe it down thoroughly with a clean dry towel while the pan is still hot after each use.  The resulting temperature of cooking with a cast iron pan on medium/high heat will sanitize it thoroughly and the same heat will loosen any of those aforementioned “sticky bits” so that they can be easily removed with your spatula prior to wipe down.

When you purchase a new cast iron skillet or pan what I recommend you do is apply a teaspoon or two of vegetable oil (not olive oil as it can not stand up to the same level of heat that vegetable oil can) to your pan and with a clean paper towel rub it into the entire surface area of the pan (both sides). Really take your time and massage the oil into the cast iron until the whole thing is evenly saturated.  Now what you need to do is add some heat.  This is a great time to see how your pan heats up.  Start at medium heat for about 10 minutes, notice if your pan smokes, how hot it feels, how a drop of water sizzles on it, etc.  Next increase the heat to medium/high and let sit for another 10 minutes.  What you have now essentially done is fired on your new pan’s nonstickiness!  Let the pan cool somewhat, but while still warm, carefully wipe the entire pan thoroughly with a clean kitchen towel.  You have now successfully seasoned your cast iron and will not need to do it again.

While I do oil season my pans unlike Chef Mallmann, I do agree that the initial best way to keep food from sticking (even in a seasoned pan) is to oil your ingredients prior to adding them to a hot pan, and it is something that I do every time I cook.

To summarize what you must do to keep your cast iron pan performing to its utmost potential thoroughly scrape down and then while still warm, wipe your pan clean after each use.  Personally, I do not feel that water is needed to clean these pans at all, but it can be helpful if you have an extreme case of “sticky bits”.  Regular practicing of these few steps will help your cast iron maintain its wonderful non-stick properties for as long as you own it!

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Photo Credit: cinnachick

Ok, so, I know I have been on a serious hiatus from my writing on Prime Cuts but I am coming out of hibernation and am gearing up to hit you guys with a slew of fresh info pertaining to the meat-centric way that I cook food. I had been racking my brain and trying to come up with the perfect topic for my first post back and then it hit me, I should share the rustic cooking method that I have been working on perfecting over the last year.

This cooking medium/method has really changed the way I think about food: and is best explained in two short words: cast iron. I purchased a flat surfaced cast iron griddle last Fall and since doing so, I have tried cooking just about every food imaginable on it. With this post I hope to spark some cast iron interest in you and help you key in on points that will help you when experimenting with your griddle techniques.

I think most of us have stashed away somewhere in our house, a dusty old heavy cast iron skillet which we may not have used in ages (or ever). But this should truly not be the case. Cast iron should be a regularly utilized part of all our cooking routines. Cast iron heats up evenly, retains its temperature for a really long time, and when seasoned properly is nearly stick proof. This last characteristic is what has been so crucial to me lately. When you can get food to cook evenly at high heat without sticking to the cooking medium, you allow yourself an amazing range of browning/searing/charring that would simply not be possible with other conventional cooking surfaces.

In Argentine cuisine next to the wood burning grill (Parrillia) the cast iron griddle (Chapa) is perhaps the most important cooking surface in the kitchen. This is what prompted me to really start getting comfortable with my cast iron griddle and after much practice I can honestly say that I am able to sear just about any food on my chapa and create the perfect amount of char. The advice I would offer to any new cast iron cookers is to practice cooking at medium/high heat and really get comfortable working at this temperature. Get to know the speed at which different foods cook and note the resulting amount of char produced. You will need to keep a mental record of how everything chars but as a general rule of thumb, remember that the higher the sugar content/the quicker and darker the resulting char will be.

My personal recommendation for a cast iron griddle is something flat with a good amount of surface area such as one from Lodge Cast Iron which has two surface styles and fits securely on most modern stovetops. But by all means if you already have a cast iron pan hiding in your house, use it before you buy anything new. Practice getting your sear down in small batches and then if you still need to upgrade, you will have a good idea of exactly the griddle size and style you are looking for.

In my restaurant I use my griddle the gaucho way: directly on top of my wood fire. However you can replicate this traditional method using your gas or electric stovetop and often with more consistent results as stovetops heat more evenly than a wood fire. Cast iron will take a while to heat up, so at med/high give it a good 5 minutes pre-heating time if using a gas stove and 10 minutes if using electric. Before adding any food to your griddle, place a drop of water on the griddle. The water should spatter and evaporate almost instantly and your griddle should be just about smoking. When this ideal temp is reached carefully apply a thin layer of vegetable oil to the griddle (watch out for flare ups) and begin searing away, while always being careful not to over crowd the cooking surface.

As for getting the food off of the griddle, my personal suggestion is to invest in a new metal putty knife or paint scraper with a flat flexible scraping surface. You want a tool that will make even contact with the cast iron surface and then cleanly get under the food and enable you to best flip and remove items from your griddle without disrupting the charred surface you have worked so diligently to create. Practice and experimentation will be your biggest allies when cooking with cast iron. But remember that any food that can be pan seared, fried, or grilled can just as easily be griddle/seared, and what a difference in both appearance and flavor it makes!

Coming up in my next post, my two favorite griddled foods: Provoleta a.k.a. charred-aged provolone with oregano and tomatoes and smashed griddled red potatoes with olive oil and sea salt!

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Photo Credit: buchman

So, sometimes cooking leads you down dark, scary paths that seem hard to come back from.  A perfect example of this is when you realize how simple it is to make your own tomato sauce. Next you decide to make your own sausage, then make your own ricotta, then you start thinking about making your own butter and then suddenly you have a farm in your back yard and you realize you’ve gone too far. However, while going down this path, making your own pasta is one that is worth the simple effort especially when paired with light, delicate sauces.

My brother and I decided to give it a shot. How hard could it be right? Well, with the wrong recipe and a new pasta rolling machine, it can be quite the hilarious task. We first started with differing recipes, my brother wanted to try a KitchenAid recipe while I wanted to attempt a Martha Stewart recipe.  I know that the recipe for pasta dough is stupid simple but as I looked across all of my cookbooks, they all differed and varied in the amounts of the flour and egg and the amount they yielded.

At first I made a nice flour mound shaping it into a bowl, then I cracked the eggs into the middle, I started bringing in the flour and then like a fool I broke the wall and egg went everywhere. I started throwing flour down like it was a chemical spill. I managed to save the dough or so I thought. We kneaded it and the dough just never came together so we sat it aside. My brother then turned his attention to his KitchenAid recipe using his mixer to do the handy work, the recipe and the mixer didn’t offer much help. The dough was almost dried before we finished rolling it out.  Almost completely defeated for failing to complete a stupid simple recipe I decided to open up the Ratio app on my iPhone by Michael Ruhlman. This book and app by the same name has intrigued me for a while, thinking how could this guy get something right that so many people have missed. In fact, I was thinking that Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio was the book for me, very formulaic in it’s ratios, giving you a base to start from.

I found the pasta dough recipe in Ratio and weighed the ingredients out and began mixing, then kneading, and finally resting. After resting, my brother and I rolled out the dough and started to use our pasta roller and cutter, it worked perfectly. We dried some for later and the rest threw into a pot of boiling water to go alongside a rough version of Scott Conant‘s tomato sauce I remember seeing on No Reservations. I remember the sauce being basic and simple to make but Scott always insisting it was fresh and light which is exactly what I was looking for to pair with my fresh pasta. Once the pasta was about 90% there I pulled it into a pan and finished it in the pan with the sauce to help the noodles soak up and bind well with the sauce. The end result was fantastic, light, airy and filling.

After this journey of making my own fresh pasta I wondered why anyone would buy fresh pasta instead of making it themselves.  I understand if you don’t know how to make all the fancy noodles but for the basic strand or ribbon pasta like fettuccine, linguine, lasagne, or spaghetti; it’s incredibly simple to do it yourself.

To be honest, I wasn’t a believer in the ratio thing until I started seeing so many differing recipes for the same dish for the same serving size. This was when I started looking for something more standardize and when I found Ratio. If you haven’t read it yet you should, whether you’re new or experienced it is good to have these ratios by your side rather than ten recipe cards or books. Michael Ruhlman walks you through how to add almost any variation you can imagine which is the real power behind Ratio, enabling you to make recipes rather than super-powerful, celebrity chefs telling you what to make this month. I love this and think it is kind of cool to enable yourself to make your own recipes for basic stuff because now you know how not to mess up what you’re making. You can now add your own personal or cultural touch to anything without worrying about botching the whole thing.

Fresh Pasta Ratio Recipe

3 Parts Flour
2 Parts Eggs (Figure about 1 egg per serving)

Example: Roughly 2 Servings

6 Ounces Flour (weighed)
4 Ounces Egg (weighed)

Combine flour and egg and knead until smooth like any other pasta dough, nothing new or different but the ratio is dead on. After the ratio you treat the dough like any other pasta dough, rolling it out and cutting.

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Everyone has their personal concept of how a steak should look, feel, and taste when cooked to the doneness of their liking.  These concepts can and do vary from consumer to consumer and from chef to chef. It is one of those inherently simple yet complicated subjects.  This particular post is intended to get people thinking about what exactly goes into cooking a steak to temperature and how you should think about ordering/cooking yours to best enjoy it.

There are several variables to the final doneness of cooked steaks including: thickness of the cut, type of cut, temperature of the cooking medium, resting period, and for restaurants-their base temperature guidelines.

Thickness
The thickness of the cut of steak can influence the level of doneness greatly.  Think of the way rare would look and feel for a very thin steak vs a very thick steak (i.e. thinly cut top sirloin vs. a thick center cut filet mignon).  The thin rare will have much less red center simply because it has much less center and vice verse.

Type of Cut
The type of cut of steak can also affect how the finished product will look and feel.  Some types of steak are naturally very tender or tough, and densities of the different types of steaks vary greatly too.  For this reason, if you are unsure how to order steak of any given type, ask how your chef or butcher to suggest a recommended temperature for the most tender possible preparation, and you will definitely see great variation for one cut to another.

Temperature
The temperature of the cooking medium, lets say the grill, will change how the finished steak will look and taste at any given doneness.  Think of a medium rare steak that has been cooked quickly at a very high heat-it will be very well cooked on the seared outer edges and will fade with little transition from gray to red as you cut into the center.  A steak cooked on a lower temperature will have the same doneness on the contact edges but will fade from well to medium-well to medium to medium-rare in the center with a much more gradual fade.

Resting Period
The resting period for both uncooked and cooked steaks will also allow for well transitioned temperatures vs. little transition.  A cold steak will maintain a red center longer than a room temperature one.  So if you like a black and blue seared on the outside, rare in the middle steak, cook with a cold steak and don’t let it sit long once off the grill.  If you prefer a more gradually transitioned doneness, let your steak sit at room temp for 20 min before grilling it, and then let it rest for 5 minutes before consuming.

Restaurant Guidelines
Finally are the specific restaurant guidelines to doneness.  Some restaurant’s rare is a lot more or a lot less rare than the competitions.  For the most part these guidelines will be displayed on the menu.  The best thing to do however is tell your server how you like your steak cooked and what it looks like when done your way.  That way they can tell you to which temperature that will relate to at their particular restaurant.

Finally, we just want to note that steaks are cooked to temperature and doneness which does not always translate directly to color.  If you think about it, the difference in color of the meat from cow to cow can vary greatly based on their diet.   If you look at the meat of a sirloin from a traditional corn fed American steer and then look at the color of a sirloin from a pasture grazed, grass-fed Argentine steer you will see that the grass fed sirloin is a much darker almost burgundy red color, while the corn-fed sirloin is a much paler light brick red color.  These reds will react to temperature change differently and if you cook both to the exact same temperature for meduim rare (or any temp) you will be looking at two different colors but the same level of doneness.   This is why we chefs use temperature as a difinitive guideline, and serious steak eaters should know what to expect based on the type of beef they are ordering because temperature cooked steaks are not always the same exact color.

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Contributing Writer: Joseph M. Gionfriddo
Photo by: Another Pint Please

Over recent weeks we have covered some of the fundamentals to help you become a professional chef in your home kitchen.  We went over tips on how to choose a knife (our preference is Shun) and now today we bring you a video from our friends at Food Gear on how to choose the proper cutting board.

You may be asking yourself what this has to do with Meat the Press Mondays.  It’s simple: having the proper cutting board along with the proper knife are critically important.  While you can get by with a lesser quality knife, please do not skimp on your cutting board.  Not following basic care guidelines and/or not buying a quality cutting board can put you and your family in danger because of stored bacteria, cross-contamination, and more.

If you can’t see this video in your RSS reader, you can view it here: Food Gear – Simple Tips to Choosing the Right Cutting Board.

[blip.tv ?posts_id=1350902&dest=-1]

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