SRF Secrets: Insider Tips for Cooking and Serving Steak
At Snake River Farms, beef is our bread and butter. It’s no secret that we’re epicureans and beef experts. We love raising a whole new breed of cattle, and we love sharing our expertise on the details that amp up your experience with our American Wagyu beef.
Go behind the curtain with us for six insider tips on selecting, cooking and serving an amazing steak that you and your friends will remember for a long time.
1. Meet new cuts. Include different cuts of steak in a single meal. If you’re having a dinner party, show off your meatology chops with a variety of steaks everyone can share. Your guests will love experiencing different steaks at the same time, which will spark conversations to savor. We’ll come back to this idea in a moment with pro tips for serving up a unified dining experience with multiple steaks.
2. Mix your methodology, not your metaphors. Cooking the perfect American Wagyu steak is not rocket science — but it does require a pinch of alchemy. When you employ more than one cooking method, your end results tend to be more complex and satisfying. We recommend two such combination methods: The Steakhouse Method and the Reverse Sear. Each involves a quick pan fry and a longer, slower dry heat, but they differ in order of operations.
3. Get all science-y. Use an accurate fast-read thermometer to check your meat’s temp. Even the most experienced chefs recommend a thermometer to determine if a steak is ready to pull from the heat at the exact degree of doneness you prefer. Remember that the meat will continue to cook a little while it rests.
4. Flake out. Finish your steak with a flakey flourish of finishing salt for a professional presentation. Never use table salt or even the larger-grained kosher salts. The big flakes in finishing salt are our secret weapon to add a bit of crunch and a nice burst of salinity to our American Wagyu steaks. We love Jacobsen Salt Co. Pure Flake Finishing Salt, and Maldon Sea Salt Flakes are popular in a lot of restaurants.
5. Take a break. Let your cooked meat rest for at least 10 minutes before serving. The larger the cut, the longer the rest time, so go for 15 minutes or more if you’re serving a beef roast or cowboy steak. When a steak cooks, its juices constrict away from the heat source, making them concentrate at the center of the meat. Resting allows all that moisture to redistribute throughout the cut for even juiciness in every bite.
6. Serve family style. Instead of serving each guest an entire steak, slice and serve all the steaks on a single platter. This makes for a mouthwatering presentation and allows everyone to select steak that is closest to their personal preference as far as doneness. And if you’ve followed our initial advice and chosen a variety of cuts to offer, your guests can try a few bites of every cut for an adventure of exquisite flavors.
