Marinating is, perhaps, the main step in meat cooking. Its final taste depends on which ingredients you will use for your marinate and how long you will keep the meat in this marinate. Our colleagues from the American blog had compared 4 methods of marinating a steak and chosen the best one.
To this very moment I thought that for cooking meat putting it on the pan, salting and peppering is enough. If roasting it for less time, we will get a medium meat, for longer – a well done one. That is why I was confused about the whole steak-cooking culture and in many restaurants the correctly roasted meat is almost a “zest” in the menu.
Of course, I was mistaken. Starting researching the part of the Internet where the “steak gurus” and cooks gather, I understand that these people can teach such crazy men as they are but not the beginners.
This material is completely the other matter.
Let’s base on the American experiment and divide it into three parts:
- What ingredients were taken for marinate.
- What did we do with meat and marinate.
- What was the result – which of the three steaks turned out to be the best one.
What was taken
- ½ glass of soya sauce;
- 2 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce;
- 3 tablespoon of fine cut onion;
- 2 tablespoon of sugar;
- 4 cut cloves of garlic;
- 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard (can be cooked or bought in the shop);
- 2 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar.
Steaks in marinate
What was done
Each of the four steaks was marinated in different way:
- the first one – ¼ of marinate 12 hours before roasting;
- the second one – ¼ of marinate 3 hours before roasting;
- the third one – ¼ of marinate 45 minutes before roasting;
- the fourth one was roasted with salt, sugar and pepper, then some holes were made, marinate was poured inside these holes, the steak was wrapped up in the foil and left for 5 minutes.
What was got
Ready steaks
The most extreme methods got a victory.
The first steak had the most expressed flavour with a note of soya sauce. In spite of the long marinating process the steak remained firm enough.
The second steak. The marinate taste was noticeable, but not so expressed as in the first steak – this is the disadvantage. Meat was not soft.
The third steak kept a firm structure and did not soak in the taste of marinate because of the short marinating period.
The fourth steak. Since garlic and onion did not soak in the steak, their taste was noticeably expressed in our meat – this is the disadvantage. Besides, we did not feel the taste of a well done steak. Instead, salt and sugar tasted much.
All in all, Susanna Chen, a cook holding the test, offers choosing either the first variant with a long marinating time or the last one if you want to save the taste of meat and add a slight shadow of marinate flavour.
Enjoy your perfect steak!
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