Breaking beef, part 2

If at first you don't succeed, you fucked up, so change something and make it better. That's what Palmer should have said, but he was a babyback bitch. Yeah, I said it. 

So my first attempt was a glorified leather hockey puck. "This time is gonna be better," I swore to myself. Also, I swore a lot to myself throughout cooking this shit. I didn't score the beef this time, but I did still season with just salt and pepper. I'm trying to keep this shit simple and focus on the texture. The flavor will sort itself out.

I did a bit of a reverse...well...everything with this attempt. The beef was on a broiler pan, which I put on the bottom rack of my oven, then I stuck an inverted Pyrex casserole dish on top of it. The dish extended a little past the edges of the pan, so air could get up in there. I also put a layer of aluminum foil on top of the casserole dish for extra insulation. Once again, I was going for a low and slow-style cook: think smoking meat without actually using smoke. I turned the broiler on low and let the temp get up to about 200F, then cut off the heat. Whenever my thermometer showed it getting close to 180, I'd hit the broiler up again, then cut it off at 200. We went back and forth with this for close to an hour. Maybe 50 minutes. I don't fucking know.

While that was going, I caramelized some sliced garlic, mushroom, and red bell pepper and some diced red onion in butter with some red wine. 

As the veggies were finishing up, I added dumped in some red chili flakes and some vegan cream (because it's still fucking cheaper than normal cream, then let it reduce for about 10 minutes. The flavor wasn't quite right; it needed a little acidity, you know, the little zip on the tongue, so I added about a teaspoon and a half of white wine vinegar, then let it keep reducing for another 10 minutes or so.

Once the sauce was where I wanted it, I dumped in my cooked penne, mixed it all up, and kept it on minimum heat while the beef finished.

I pulled the beef out when the internal temperature was in the 135-140F range, which is just this side of medium. When I eat good cuts, I go rare. When I eat exceptional cuts, I go blue. When I eat roast, I'm not comfortable going much under medium. You may notice that the beef doesn't look like cooked beef; that's the beauty of cooking low and slow. When you touch it, it will feel like tender jerky. 

I slathered a little butter on the slices, and that shit melted fast since it was pretty hot. Threw them into a hot pan and seared them off real quick like before.

For plating, I started off by spooning some of my pasta into the middle of my plate. I tried to keep it grouped up as best I could.

I sliced the beef pretty thinly and laid it out along the side in a nice little curve because curves look good. Once again, I know it doesn't look like it's "cooked all the way." I can already hear some heathens closing their browsers because "I DON'T WANNA EAT BLOOD YURRHURR!" 

So it's science lesson time, motherfuckers:

First off, it's myoglobin, not blood. Myoglobin is a protein that carries oxygen throughout the muscle; it's not fucking blood. Okay? Anyway, when you cook beef, the myoglobin breaks down, which is why the more cooked a steak is, the less pink you have inside of it.

Second, it's not necessarily the temperature of the meat that breaks down the myoglobin; instead, it's the temperature of the cook. Cooking on a higher temperature cooks the meat more rapidly and causes the myoglobin to break down. You can cook it to the same temperature more slowly and keep that color in there. Folks that smoke meat know what I'm talking about, and the smoke ring is an absolutely wondrous natural phenomenon. 

Third, that shit isn't going to hurt you. In fact, it's gonna let you know that this shit is juicy. The grayer your meat is inside, the dryer it is, and the more miserable of a person you are. You well done eaters should be fucking ashamed. Yeah, I said it. I'm saying all the shit today.

So, science lesson over. I grated some parmesan over the whole thing because I fucking love cheese. Then I spooned a little extra sauce from the pasta over the steak because the sauce tasted like heaven.

So the real question is: how did it turn out? Well, it was no A5, but this shit was cash money. If I ordered a steak at a restaurant and got this, I'd be comfortable paying $25 for the plate. For now, I'm going to say that we've got a pretty damn decent cooking method to maximize the meat. Experiment #3 is when we're going to start working out some fun prep stuff.