This just in; local man finds excuse to eat like 15 steaks. Kidding! This is AWESOME! I love this type of A/B testing, something I think we would really only get so accessibly on the internet. You're doing good work and I love this!!!
Having lost my patience at all the bs in conventional cooking wisdom, seeing people actually test them is so nice. I always want to know WHY should I do X and how much it actually makes a difference and then I can understand when to break that rule.
but it still looks like bs. All these graphs were shown without experiments or sources. His experiment showed a significant difference only for 4 hours of tempering, which no one would do. I also bet that if the steak was flipped not once but many times, the grey border would be a lot narrower.
@@EvilPyromaniac yes, on a skillet use medium-to-mediumhigh heat, high smoke point oil, flip every 90 seconds or so, and if you want to use butter, add in the last 3-5 minutes.
@@EvilPyromaniac I take the steak out an hour before and have noticed much better results. And there is obviously a whole spectrum between flipping once and flipping every thirty seconds. Up to a certain point, the more flipping the better.
think of heating an ice cube to 100f compared to a cup of water exactly the same (pretend the water doesnt flow and move). u will melt much of the outside and heat a lot of it to 100f and still have a frozen core whilst the “cup” of water will warm up a bit more evenly having most of the layers towards the core not needing much energy to reach 100f. the ice cube has each “layer” needing substantial energy and the total needed energy for the whole cube needed to get to 100f is much more and the outer most layers will have been 100f or more for awhile while the core is just warming up. i hope that makes sense
There's a similar phenomenon in music composition. in a music degree you take multiple theory classes to learn the "rules" but every great composer knows that these rules only exist to know what rules to break and what effects breaking those rules will have. in essence, the rules exist to be broken. There are also a lot of people in the composition community that treat the rules as set in stone, but we've seen in music history what happens when the rules are set higher than they are supposed to be. you get the baroque period which lasted much longer than it really should have from the point of view of music evolution. We DID get back on track, but only because the evolutions of the classical period happened really quickly before transitioning to the romantic period.
As someone who has cooked professionally for 20 years I'm going to dispel the idea that this is done in professional kitchens. I'm not saying it never is, but 95% of kitchens other than super high end, Michelin star/ James beard level slow dining restaurants have time to let their steaks sit out to come up to room temperature, it just isn't done. For health and safety reasons steaks are kept in refrigeration until an order comes in and immediately fired. The only extra time that may be taken apart from cooking is to let the steak rest at the end of the cooking process. We would love to have the time to temper steaks but in the commercial setting customers are generally far too impatient to get their food for us to have time to do so.
@@slain4ever Technically you waited all the years and time since you were born to get the steak you are about to eat. What's a couple of extra hours to have a really good steak?
Fantastic video. I asked myself those question many times. Unfortunately tempering meat for 15 minutes in a professional kitchen is very impractical (no customare nowdays want to wait 30 minutes for a steak). So there is a better trick that gives you perfectly cooked steaks and no tempering needed. Instead of flipping the steak only once during cooking, flip it every 30-60 seconds. It seems counter intuitive but it allows each side to cook more gently as it keep cooking and resting consecutively instead of being exposed to a high temperature constantly for few minutes . You'll still get a beautiful browing on your steak and it will have a very even cooking through it.
I just watched a video Chris posted 9 months ago where he details this. I'm really curious if an experiment like the one above could be run that compares the tempered steak done properly to one flipped consistently un-tempered, and if flipping rapidly has any effect on a separate tempered steak at all.
As a matter of habit I always just left mine in the refrigerator until I was ready to throw it right on the fire. Really this was a survival technique as I’m easily distracted and I’m usually drinking copious amounts of wine when I decide to put flame to meat. This way I know at least some portion of the burnt morsel will still be pink. Good job nice video!
Hey Chris, I recently discovered your channel and I must say, I'm absolutely blown away by the quality of your videos. I ended up watching all of them at once! Your expertise in cooking a perfect steak and understanding the whole idea of temperature has taught me so much. I was surprised that you are the founder of Jouel, which happens to be one of my all-time favorite kitchen gadgets. I just wanted to express my gratitude for creating such exceptional content and kitchen tools that cater to home cooks and foodies like myself. Keep up the fantastic work!!!!
@@ChrisYoungCooks Hi Chris! I was hoping to get your clarification on something. Around 6:05 you mention to place the steak in lukewarm water. I noticced that the thermometer seems to be reading the water to be 71 Fahrenheit. Is that lukewarm water for you? Or is it meant to be warmer?
This really helps settle a difference of opinion my husband and I had. We’ve been married 13 years, and he’s cooked approximately 5 times for me, (he’s NOT lazy, but requires forearm crutches to stand and walk) but recently purchased a NICE grill. He went all out and when he wanted to let the steak “rest” BEFORE cooking and I was unsure about it. Now he can temper his steaks for a short while in confidence. I’m sending him your video now so he can say “ha haaaaa I was RIGHT!” Which up to this point has been about the same number of times he’s cooked 😂😋
Freeze frame at 5:32 ... He stuck the thermometer much closer to a pan-edge in the 15 minute and 4 hour tempered steaks. Inconsistent test conditions is not good science.
@@LS-fc7nx I dont think you are reading the situation correctly. Shes sending the video to him so he can have the satisfaction of being right. And in all likelihood, he has also read the comment himself. Good look btw.
Tip for speeding up tempering: Sit the meat in a room-temperature skillet for 15-20 minutes. Remember the "Miracle Thaw"? It was basically a slab of aluminum, and that is basically the same as an aluminum skillet. The skillet is just good at absorbing heat from its surroundings (air, counter top, whatever) and also good at conducting it to the meat.
@@EdwoodCA - think of it this way: take two objects, one of which is warmer than the other. The atoms in the warmer object are bouncing around more than the molecules in the cooler object. Just like bouncing balls can transfer their energy to balls at rest, heat transfers from more energetically moving molecules to those that are moving less. The “warmer” atoms lose as much energy as the “cooler” atoms gain. This is how heat transfer works. I hope that visualization helps you with a mental model of the “direction” of higher to lower temperatures. Cheers!
I think that's one of the reasons why cold steak doesn't work so well. When Chris says "While the pan was at the same temperature - a constant 375F for both of these steaks", I'm not sure it is true. The pan gets colder when we put a cold steak on it and we need to heat it up back as well. Probably on a grill the difference will not be as dramatic
It's pointless because steak is for Americans, Europeans can't even afford to heat their homes in the winter let alone eat meat. Fahrenheit all the way.
My takeaway from the video was to use a dish to hold the steak when it's resting so the juices don't bleed all over my cutting board and soak in. And I get to use the meat juice for a pan sauce afterwards.
I use a grill / grid. I hate when I see so-called chefs put steaks on a cutting board to "rest", pure amateur idiocy. If you pre-season do the same and salt both sides.
Banquet cook. We presear our meats and temper them for firing. Whatever the party size is, we cook to medium rare in Combi ovens. We normally pull our proteins out an hour prior so they come up to a reasonable temp. Tempering makes a huge difference in quality of finished product. You are spot on why tempering makes a difference.
I'm one of those that I like to pull my meat out to get room temperature before I cook it only because that's what my grandmother taught me. She was the best cook to date so I listened even though when she was teaching me I didn't fully understand because I was still very young like 7 years old. It's good to see videos like that that show you why certain techniques are better.
What a great explanatory video, thank you. As a classically trained cook I used this technique as a professional. I was ignorant until today that the term "tempering" is used. I was used to seeing it used in chocolate making - which of course makes total sense!
I was always taught "temper for about 20 minutes for a more even cook", but this is the first time I've seen it not just explained, but demonstrated. I probably won't risk the full 4 hours, but after seeing the 15-minute temper I can see why I was taught 20 minutes. It's a reasonable compromise.
I did my own experiment in a similar manner to prove 20 minutes isn’t long enough to be significantly different. A 1 1/2 inch sirloin starting 4.5C took 3 hours to reach a room temperature of 18C (England in winter folks!) For safety reasons I’d certainly recommend seasoning your meat with salt for the tempering period and also brushing with some cooking oil.
@@KatzenjammerKid61 that is not at all true. Dry brining pulls moisture out and the meat pulls it back in. Don't use more salt than you need and you won't have an over seasoned steak.
@@KatzenjammerKid61 Learn the science. While salt can be used to cure meet and dry it out, that is a process that takes weeks and months, not minutes or hours. Salting up to 24 hours of time does NOT dry out the interior of the steak at all; it only dries out the exterior -- which is precisely want you want to brown the steak and create a more robust Maillard reaction. Just make sure to salt steaks at least 45 minutes before cooking, because that's how long it takes for the salt to draw out some surface moisture, then be re-absorbed.
I've never heard it called tempering. I've always heard it called "blooming". The best restaurants I've worked at always bloom for 2-4 hours (at 4 hours bacteria starts to build). And I was taught the reason for it is not even cooking, but to allow the fat to "bloom" and expand through the meat more. I love this channel. I've been a chef for 30 years and it's nice to learn the science behind all the things I've been doing my entire life.
I feel like I pretty much always did this already, not on purpose but because I'm busy seasoning and cutting up vegetables and I leave the meat lying on the counter while I do that. But it's still good to know that this actually improves the cook of a steak and that I should be doing it on purpose!
Another excellent vid, Chris! I've always wondered if I was doing the right thing by tempering (because I DO temper all the proteins I cook) and now you've reinforced why! As a side note, cooked a ribeye the other night using the rapid flip method.....HOOOWEEE! Stunningly spectacular results so THANKS AGAIN!!
Chris, 3:53 ,heat doesn’t “flow slowly”… nor does it “surge.” You end up having to cook the colder steak longer for the core to get to the same temperature… which means by the time the center gets to your temperature, the outside is gonna be over cooked… it’s time, not some “surge.”
Lan Lam has an instructional video for a cold sear steak, which has worked reasonably well for me. It involves salting the day before, drying the steak, and then flipping every two minutes for the heat to come into the meat at a slower pace so as to avoid the uneven cooking and the grey band of overcooked stead. Any thoughts on this technique?
That is logically better over time because you don't need to clean up or use water or other materials to temper the steak when you can use a cold pan and a low temp to slow cook the steak slowly but steadily from the get go. It's not just about the end results, it's about the time and cleanup you create from prepping and cooking the steak. The less cleanup, the better.
I've used that tech a couple times and if you want an easy steak without a pan sauce it's a very solid method. I personally still prefer the crust from a hard sear but can't beat the lack of clean up
@@cisrael468 Another useful tool is a flamethrower or a handheld torch that can sear it. Other than making making a bit of smoke you don't need any plates or anything, you can sear it with flames in the pan.
Thank you Chris! Your instructions have VASTLY improved my in house Steak cook for any steak. My Wife loves the 2 inch thick ribeye steaks with the reversed seared method. Three Cheers for you and your videos!
5:30 regardless of the evenness of the cook, you can definitely see that the untempered steak had by far the best crust on it, with the 4-hour tempered steak having barely any crust at all.
My process is to season the meat a couple of hours before cooking, and putting it into the refrigerator. That leaves the salt to pull the moisture to the surface and let the surface dry. It takes about an hour to get the moisture to the surface and another hour to get it dry. The dry surface is vastly more important for the crust than any other consideration. Depending on the weather, tempering the meat for an hour or four may leave the surface wet. Cooking very hot will give an excellent crust and will not overcook anything more than the outside of the steak. The remaining heat will penetrate and cook the interior relatively evenly. Tempering is fine, if the humidity is low and you have several extra hours; but chefs, are in professional kitchens and they are not waiting for 15 or 20 minutes, let alone 4 hours, for meat to "temper" before they cook it and serve it.
Really interesting, well thought out and executed video. I can tell you that my girlfriend does this and we battle all the time over it. My thinking (like the rest of the planet) was keeping the center cold would allow for more of a buffer zone. I'm going to say this out loud, but don't let her hear it- I WAS WRONG.
The term you are looking for is Delta T. That’s the difference temp of the steak and pan. Thanks for the video. Never gave it much thought. Will be tempering from now on.
I tempered a roast recently and it blew mind how well it turned out. I wish my mom knew about this when I young her roasts were well let’s just say they were rough
Great experiment Chris! I recall Kenji with SeriousEats had done this experiment and reached the opposite conclusion. As such, I'm curious if there are other factors at play in your setup. For example, another commenter mentioning the salt. Also, the water trick is very good for bringing frozen meat or cold eggs up to temp as well!
Didn’t know Kenji ran the experiment, so can’t comment on why he reached a different conclusion. As I pointed out, it wasn’t until about 15 minutes that I started to get a meaningful difference as you can see in the video.
Quoting Serious Eats: "After 1 hour and 50 minutes, the steak was up to 49.6°F in the center." "After two hours, I decided I'd reached the limit of what is practical"
Yeah, then I got a different result. You’ll have to judge from the video yourself whether the 15-minute temper is visibly better than no-temper. To my eye, it was more evenly cooked. 🤷♂️
I’ve been playing with variations on this method with pork chops. I found i really liked putting a pork chop into sous vide at 115f for about 10-15 minutes then turning the bath down to 100f then frying in a press-pan-with butter, salt and pepper, to 115f which Carries over to 140 or so…setting it to 100f and waiting 30 minutes also has been great. I’ve read all of mc and it has been very helpful for me for years, so it’s great to Glen more nuggets of knowledge from you, Chris. Thanks for everything!
Informative video. I've always noticed it's easier to cook a steak evenly when it's closer to room temperature but hadn't really though about it this much. I usually just take it out of the fridge around 30 minutes before I cook it - any longer than that and I get too hungry thinking about eating it.
I’m genuinely curious to see what it would look like when you normalize the two results on cooking time to achieve the same internal temperature? What was the variable difference to reach True Core temp between the two steaks? And did that have a variable difference on the crust, in these visuals it did indeed look like the crust of the cold steak was more browned than that of the tempered. Furthermore, was steaming taken into account in this experiment, I imagine a vast amount more moisture would be held in the cold steak versus the tempered steak, would you not agree? And if so, as a cooking expert, you know that a considerable amount of steaming in a pan leads to the greying of meat, rather than allowing for Maillard browning, but doesn’t necessarily correlate with a more well-done toughness of meat but less visually presentable product.
Tempering in tepid water seems like a nice solution for the time and inefficiency it takes to warm them sitting on the counter (not to mention the food safety concerns). I'll have to try it out.
food safety lol! millions upon millions of people eat meats butchered on cross contaminated chopping blocks, are hung on hooks washed with sewer water and are displayed in the open air at 20-40c temperatures for hours and hours for centuries without any issues what so ever
Last year I took a cooking MasterClass and the Chef kept repeating to temper meat, even chicken (though for a shorter period of time). I have been following this advice since. Thank you for confirming through your experiment.
I like the idea of tempering in water but if you are going to do that you might as well just cook it in the water sous vide and then just sear it at the end for the best results.
I bodged a sous vide bath by placing a small cake rack at the bottom of a large sauce pan, keeping the water a medium-high heat (checking the temperature with a food probe and adjusting with water either from the kettle or the tap). The result was exactly the same as a sous vide bath but massively more labour intensive. Just buy a circulator.
Someone has to say it so I'll say it. My mom, rest her soul, would always take out the red meat from the fridge one half hour before putting it in the pan and a bit less time for chicken. For frozen meat she would immediately wrap it in aluminum foil and put it in the fridge in the morning the take it out one half hour before cooking. Why ? I never asked so I will never know. ... yes I did too, years ago but since the kids are gone we don't do that anymore. Being a much older couple we don't eat as much now. We rarely temper our oatmeal ! ! ! Always a great video !
Tempering just seems like an extremely inefficient way to let a steak come to room temp. I'm wondering why you weren't using the constant flipping technique that you demonstrated to be superior in this video? Since using that technique I have had no issues with cooking steaks straight out of the fridge.
Exactly. This wasn't the only issue I had with his experiment, too. It's pretty obvious looking at the sears that both steaks had that the colder steak had had more cook time total vs the tempered steak. Typically, you see cooks finish a pan seared steak (especially as thick as the ones he had) with a basting of butter, which allows the steak to be heated quicker because the whole steak is being heated at that point. The butter also heats it at a lower temperature than the direct contact with the pan surface, which is much much higher temperature. It's the high temperature of the pan for such a long cook time that causes the large gray bands. This experiment is bad because it doesn't even consider other cooking methods, like how nice steakhouses would normally do which is sear in the pan then finish in an oven. Honestly, there's so many variables which he didn't account for, that I'm honestly pretty disappointed.
I can imagine him not using these techniques this video, exactly because they diminish the effect of tempering when using them. After seeing this video, I could easily grasp how tempering works and could see clear differences between steaks that have been tempered or haven't been tempered without making it too complicated for the experiments sake. I can imagine the techniques working, but you would probably still have more grey band on an untempered steak using the constant flipping technique, or basting it. What I do agree on is that he could have at least mentioned those techniques like he did with sous vide and reverse searing
@@timrushing81 u just artificially make a normal steak “thicker” and must compensate…while u could use such superior methods on a tempered steak achieve better results, right?
@@leafster1337 Yeah, this is useless. I'm all for being consistent for a controlled experiment to make a point, but what good is that point is if you don't even use the method that you would actually use when cooking? Flipping is like accelerated tempering while you cook. Gives time for heat to work it's way in and come down a bit before hitting it again. He's explained why it works himself, and those same arguments apply to this scenario.
My trainer (mum) showed me cooking 20-30 seconds per side until cooked as desired. I recently tried allowing the steak to warm a little (maybe 20 minutes) to not fridge temp! I think turned on the heat, allowed butter to start melting and wiped it around the pan. Then put the steak in as per my mother’s instruction…. Worked beautifully. The pan and constantly flipping meant the tempering continued and the heat was constant on both sides resulting in a well browned, evenly cooked to just under medium and tender to eat sirloin steak
One way to get a more evenly cooked steak is to flip it three times while you're cooking. When the meat cooks it tenses up where the heat is being applied to. Flipping it (and letting each side rest a little while not under active high heat) allows the center to become more defined.
That's an awful suggestion. Everyone who's works in a kitchen you don't touch the steak until it's ready to turn or flip. Moving it or flipping it any extra time produces a shit sear.
@@Chris-cv1yh you're more than welcome to look in The Food Lab and/or try it for yourself. J. Kenji López explains it much better. There are plenty of ways to get that great sear regardless of how much you flip it. At least my 15 years of restaurant experience has taught me as much. It just takes a little knowledge and skill is all.
Great video. Two things come to mind: Cooking causes phase changes and chemical reaction, and those require input of heat, not just changing the temperature. It's the difference between bringing water up to 210 and actually boiling it. That's one reason why tempering helps, you're getting rid of one phase change in some of the fat, and making the rest easier to accomplish. The other is that tempered meats are going to be more pliable and have more surface area in contact with the cooking surface. More even heat application. Think of how hard it would be to cook a tortilla chip vs. a soft tortilla. Tempering makes the meat flexible and puts more in contact with the pan. Also helps prevent bigger temperature gradients which will 'curl' the meat down towards the edges, where there's less to dissipate it. I'm sure we've all cooked a cold steak or burger that ends up with a ring of char along the edges and none in the middle.
One thing that's important to consider is that professional chefs use much thicker steaks normally. A lot of these tips from professionals on how to cook steak(temper, constant flipping) only work on steaks an inch thick or more. I've been able to cook a steak from the supermarket medium rare with a beautiful crust only by completely disregarding the advice from chefs and cooking it on the absolute highest heat I can straight from the fridge and only flipping it once, I don't even have time to baste. As soon as the crust is good enough it's done inside
100%! Even if it's an inch and a half, this is absolutely fine. They make such a big deal about that little grey band. I guarantee that if I took 2 1 1/2 inch cuts of ribeye from the same roast, and put one in the pan right from the fridge, and the other sat in a bag in luke warm water for 15 min before it went into the pan, then blindfolded you and asked you to pick which was which, you CANNOT tell.
@@fr201 Why? people should eat how they want to eat. My family hates souvide and medium rare. Most people don't like medium rare, they just say it because of steak purists who tout it as better, along with the 1 inch minimum bullshit to. Surprise, surprised, did you know that most beef is ate with seasoning beyond just salt, pepper, and garlic? No? Then don't tell people what to buy or not buy, if you don't know jack shit.
Short video, very well explained (in a simple way so everyone can understand too), straight to the point and some actual examples for evidence. This was a great video, no long ass explanations no one cares about
Absolutely loved the graphics at 3:40 to show viewers what it looks like inside the steak due to Newton's Law of Cooling in regards to thermal conductivity. Well done.
I discovered this by accident, when i had a small fridge and had to leave some stuff out. I now have plenty of fridge space, but like to bring meat up to cool room temps before cooking. Nice to see a structured experiment and the science behind it. Also, i bought your thermometer.
That was definitely an eye opener and I was surprised that even a 15-20 min hangout on the counter would make that big a difference. I'm not sure I'd be wicked into leaving chicken out that long but most of the time I'm reverse searing chicken anyway so likely not a huge deal. Great test!
For sure isn't worth it to temper chicken. You don't want it reaching 40° for any amount of time, and it needs to be cooked 155°-165° anyway so there is a 10° buffer between safe and overcooked
I have seen chicken sit in display cases out in the front of the store in the morning sun in Tijuana, Mexico. But I do not think our immune systems is as good as theirs... apparently. Nasty. Every time I ever ate when I was down there I got sick.
It is a well known fact that gradually heating a piece of meat will give you better uniformity. That's why people use reverse sear or sous vide. But you do not need to leave the steak outside of the fridge for several hours to get this result. Many cooks and chefs have proved that it does not improve the quality of the cook. Doneness uniformity is totally dependent on the way you cook it. I've cooked reverse sear and sous vide steaks with LESS uniformity than charcoal grilled steaks that use scorching hot heat. Even cooking, in my opinion, is far more important than simply letting the steaks sit in 70F air for hours.
Fascinating! I think I and others have dismissed tempering due to the large temperature gradient between the pan and the steak (only about a 10% change going from 40F - > 375F vs. 70F->375F). But from the perspective of internal temp to finish temp, it's much more dramatic. Thanks as always!
Chris, I sometimes pre-sear meat cold out of the fridge before sous vide cooking it (if I'm cooking it in a sauce, or it is easy to over cook during searing like a pork chop), sometimes combined with a post-sear to refresh the crust. The rational being that the meat being colder will minimize the grey band that forms during the brief pre-searing step. Am I wrong? Should I be doing the pre-sear on tempered meat?
@@bostonbesteats364 Rhetorical question, Boston. Don’t bother with a pre-sear if you’re going to sous it. Sear after, because at that point it’s already well-tempered.
Great video. I never temper my steaks because I like them as rare as possible as long as they are warm inside. I use a super hot pan to sear it as quick as possible. The resting time is usually enough to make it just warm inside but without really cooking it. But just to make sure I'm not eating cold meat, I also pre-heat the plate in the oven so that it warms up the steak slices.
could you do a video on if butter basting a steak while cooking actually makes it taste more buttery? and perhaps explore different methods of applying the butter, like cooking the butter alone with herbs while the steak rests and pouring it on after. i would love to see an objective approach from you on the subject
@@Un1234l oh im a massive guga fan! i've seen all his videos and hes one of my favorite food channels (well, two channels i guess haha). but guga isnt exactly scientific about his methods, which i honestly love about him. it would just be cool to see a different approach thats a bit more of a controlled and considered approach to the question using food science :)
@@bullethelldemon Surprised you say that about Guga. His experiments have been very controlled using thermometers and precise temperature control and same cut on the same cow.
Dude your channel is absolutely amazing!! The information I'm learning from your vids is awesome and makes cooking so much more fun and enjoyable with great results. Amazing work!
Hi Chris! Great video! However, are you sure that your results aren't due to the excess water pulled from the cold steak since the salt was just applied and would draw out moisture? I'm not fully sure if this affects your experimental setup, but evaporation of water requires magnitudes more energy compared to heat conduction. To me it seems like the 4 hour steak would have more time to dry-out and this would affect the amount of energy that gets transfered into the meat, which in turn might explain the difference in results.
Meat is around 75% or so water, when you dry brine, you would see a relatively small amount of water inside the container that holds the steak. I doubt that it would play a significant factor.
@@CoolJay77 Just to clarify, im not saying that the steak itself will be significantly dryer. Just that the salt will pull out moisture on the steaks surface which may affect the cooking process due to excess steam production. However, I'm not sure if the excess steam will contribute to more or less heat transfer. My guess is more, and this might explain why the edges get overcooked quicker.
@@putumban96 The water on the surface of the steak would dissipate within seconds as it comes in contact with the hot pan. By your reasoning, you could spray water to the surface of the steak.
@@CoolJay77 Yeah i might be incorrect here, you and @prex both raise good points. It's just that salting/seasoning the steak adds another confounding factor to the experiment, and I'm curious if this affects the results somehow.
Wonderful video, thank you. I've been using the microwave to introduce some energy into the steak to bring up the internal temperature faster, using the "power level" feature that pulses the magnetron. I give it 8 minutes or so at 10% which works out to 48 seconds of heating spread out over the 8 minutes. Avoids hot spots and gently warms up the steak to room temperature.
So leave your steak out for 4 hours.. you I don't know, just suis vide them? These type of things all feel like "Here are a bunch of tricks to try to get close to suis vide even doneness" Think I'd just fire up my Joule. ;-) I would think that, aside from the warm bath, a heat defuse/defrosting plate would be a better way to go than just leaving it on a standard plate or cutting block to temper.
Hi Chris thanks for the experiment. Just to add little, but maybe 4 hours to temper is a bit long. The FDA recommends, "Never allow raw meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, or produce that requires refrigeration to sit at room temperature for more than two hours; the limit is one hour if the air temperature is above 90 °F. (If you're not sure whether certain produce requires refrigeration, ask your grocer.)"😊
The grey is caused by steam. So the more important thing to do is dry brine your steaks (assuming they are not already aged) for at least 40 minutes prior to cooking. Ensure the surfaces are dry before searing.
Hey Chris. If i stick in the thermometer half way how does it still find the correct core temp? I assume it looks for the lowest temperature across the sensor array. Is there a threshold to filter out possible ambient temps?
if you already have a sous vide but want to grill it. simply put it on the sous vide at 75 degrees for 20minutes and you're good. No need to wait 60-180 minutes to temper
Interesting, Guga just did a video a few weeks ago saying he doesn’t temper since it only raised the temp a couple degrees over 30 mins or so. Curious if you find that difference more noticeable. May have to experiment myself…good reason to have a few steak nights. Thanks for the video!
Guga very often does a reverse sear though (even regarding his grill method) so it would still line up. Not much of a reason to do it with that method or sous vide.
It may also make a difference that Chris here is only flipping the steak once, whereas Guga always does the constant flipping method. That may by itself already help overcome at least some of the need for tempering the meat by preventing the sides from developing as sharp a gradient during heat transfer.
So, I haven’t watched Guga’s video yet. But as you can see in the second half of my video, there is a noticeable difference at 15 minutes. I also say I don’t recommend more than 4 hrs, and I specifically choose this number because 4 hours is the FDA Food Code limit for time without refrigeration. Finally, the amount of warming at the core doesn’t actually matter as much as how much the surface warms up. The flow of heat from the pan into the steak is controlled by the temperature difference between the pan and the surface of the meat, so warming the surface reduces how quickly energy flows into the steak, resulting in a shallower temperature gradient. I cover this in more depth in my frequent flipping video.
My grandmother tempered her steaks by pouring boiled water into one of her cast iron pans to get it warm and then added the seasoned steak to it, letting sit for about half an hour covered with foil and then flipping it with a fresh pour of hot water to the pan in between. This was 30 years ago.
Just watched all your steak videos, I'm loving the "science" aspect and hope to see more of these styles of videos with different meats and food in general. 10/10
But the real question is, who cooks their steak in a pan and only flips it once? Flipping often after you have established a nice crust on both sides, makes a steak straight from the fridge cook just as evenly as your 4h tempered one 😅 Establish crust on high heat, reduce to medium and cook until medium rare while flipping as Many times as you like
I warm my steak (after seasoning, before grilling) using the soften-butter setting on my microwave multiple times over a half an hour. The setting is *very* gentle and the time between runs allows less-cool/warm spots to spread out. It's quicker form of temper and I always thought of as a lazy half-sous-vide. I sous-vide and reverse-sear on other occasions.
My thoughts exactly. With constant flipping, the extra heat can move towards the cold centre or dissipate into the air, instead of overcooking the grey band. If the steak is even enough with constant flipping, the video is a moot point.
Cooking temp too low. 375F is a very low temp. Closer to 450-500 will give more crust with a hint of charring. Allows the outside to get done quickly before enough heat is transferred to the center of the steak.
If I'm not using the charcoal grill, I cook mine in a ripping hot cast iron pan 1 minute per side and then flip again and into the 400F oven to finish. Don't see gray banding like that.
Chris, what can I say... simply phenomenal. I just devoured all your content. It's so good that makes me want to work in food science too... Any way.... I'm really impressed with what you do, and from very far (Chile) my deepest congrats and appretiation.
Another option; put your steak on a cooling rack in the oven with the light on for an hour or 2. It'll both dry out the steak and provide a warmer environment than your average kitchen. You can also use this method for the bulk ferment for doughs.
3:50 This is known as heat transfer rate and you're spot on. The higher the difference between the pan and the steak, the faster heat will flow or transfer, thereby cooking much faster and overcooking the outside.
This video makes no sense to me. Heat transfer itself does not cause cooking. Heat transfer also has no inertia. So starting cold only results in a more uneven gradient and a slower total cook time. The tempered steak must have been cooked for much shorter, or it would be beyond overdone.
@@TastyMunky Also, Heat transfer doesn’t have inertia, the medium does (the steak) which affects heat transfer coefficient, k. Assuming they’re similar steaks, k, a constant, can be ignored.
It's all about conduction, a cold steak is cooked 2 min, flip, 2 min flip, 2min flip, 2 min flip, the steak will be gold crust, and a beautiful med rare ALL THE WAY THROUGH.
yep, my grandad and my dad used to do this and I do it now, definitely the best way. what I'm shocked about is that you season the meat before cooking it. we never do this, because we strongly believe it makes the meat tougher. if you want to keep a lovely tender piece of meat as tender as you can, cook first then season. I specifically mean salt. If you want to put some pepper or garlic on before cooking that's fine, but salt goes on after. Maybe this could be your next test, but you have to start with two pieces of meat you're confident has the same tenderness.
This content is great. I just found the channel and really happy to find a channel doing some quality experiments. I imagine it's a lot of work to prepare it. Please dont stop making videos :)
I've put a couple of steaks between two cast iron skillets to speed the tempering. Aluminum is a great heat sink too if it has a lot of surface area like a full or half sheet pan.
1:00 No, when a steak is ordered you pull it out, season it and slap it on the grill, it's already ordered, you are too late to temper. Fine dining and steakhouses might pull an estimated number of steaks based on daily and weekly sales to temper, but regular restaurants aren't doing that.
I worked right at the BBQ style grated grill of a major restaurant in Whistler, as the Escargot guy - I also Tempered the steaks - we had a long wire shelf, almost a meter above the grill, 3 meters long and when an order appeared, I would grab the required cut of steaks and put them up at the far end of the shelf from the grill. The line of steaks was usually at least 25-35 steaks long, so they had plenty of time to warm up. It as fairly hot up on the shelf, (maybe 100F) but the Grill Chef would keep an eye on the meat. Generally they would sit out for an average 15 - 20 mintes before they hit the grill. When the order came off the grill, it was given the Snails if ordered, and placed on another shelf to the area where all the sides were added to the meat, and sent to service.
![สาวเมืองเพชร - ธีเดช ทองอภิชาติ [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kEt7F9PvO3I/mqdefault.jpg)
This just in; local man finds excuse to eat like 15 steaks.
Kidding! This is AWESOME! I love this type of A/B testing, something I think we would really only get so accessibly on the internet. You're doing good work and I love this!!!
I'm supposed to have an excuse? 😲
Americas Test Kitchen, this type of A/B testing is their bread and butter.
Having lost my patience at all the bs in conventional cooking wisdom, seeing people actually test them is so nice. I always want to know WHY should I do X and how much it actually makes a difference and then I can understand when to break that rule.
but it still looks like bs. All these graphs were shown without experiments or sources. His experiment showed a significant difference only for 4 hours of tempering, which no one would do. I also bet that if the steak was flipped not once but many times, the grey border would be a lot narrower.
@@EvilPyromaniac yes, on a skillet use medium-to-mediumhigh heat, high smoke point oil, flip every 90 seconds or so, and if you want to use butter, add in the last 3-5 minutes.
@@EvilPyromaniac I take the steak out an hour before and have noticed much better results.
And there is obviously a whole spectrum between flipping once and flipping every thirty seconds. Up to a certain point, the more flipping the better.
think of heating an ice cube to 100f compared to a cup of water exactly the same (pretend the water doesnt flow and move). u will melt much of the outside and heat a lot of it to 100f and still have a frozen core whilst the “cup” of water will warm up a bit more evenly having most of the layers towards the core not needing much energy to reach 100f. the ice cube has each “layer” needing substantial energy and the total needed energy for the whole cube needed to get to 100f is much more and the outer most layers will have been 100f or more for awhile while the core is just warming up. i hope that makes sense
There's a similar phenomenon in music composition. in a music degree you take multiple theory classes to learn the "rules" but every great composer knows that these rules only exist to know what rules to break and what effects breaking those rules will have. in essence, the rules exist to be broken.
There are also a lot of people in the composition community that treat the rules as set in stone, but we've seen in music history what happens when the rules are set higher than they are supposed to be. you get the baroque period which lasted much longer than it really should have from the point of view of music evolution. We DID get back on track, but only because the evolutions of the classical period happened really quickly before transitioning to the romantic period.
As someone who has cooked professionally for 20 years I'm going to dispel the idea that this is done in professional kitchens. I'm not saying it never is, but 95% of kitchens other than super high end, Michelin star/ James beard level slow dining restaurants have time to let their steaks sit out to come up to room temperature, it just isn't done. For health and safety reasons steaks are kept in refrigeration until an order comes in and immediately fired. The only extra time that may be taken apart from cooking is to let the steak rest at the end of the cooking process. We would love to have the time to temper steaks but in the commercial setting customers are generally far too impatient to get their food for us to have time to do so.
I can tell you for sure olive garden and golden corral don't do it.
Thanks. That’s what I assumed.
Yeah, home cooks rush it, steaks should rest on a rack for as long as it cooked. Probably 6-7 minutes but it depends on thickness.
i love waiting 4 hours for my steak
@@slain4ever Technically you waited all the years and time since you were born to get the steak you are about to eat. What's a couple of extra hours to have a really good steak?
MORE VIDEOS CHRIS. MORE VIDEOS FASTER CHRIS. I BUY THERMOMETER CHRIS.
W comment
How much does it cost for these bad comments?
@@jasonapplegate4352 less time than yours
Funny. Good
@@jasonapplegate4352 $$$ but they aren't poor value if that helps
Fantastic video. I asked myself those question many times. Unfortunately tempering meat for 15 minutes in a professional kitchen is very impractical (no customare nowdays want to wait 30 minutes for a steak). So there is a better trick that gives you perfectly cooked steaks and no tempering needed. Instead of flipping the steak only once during cooking, flip it every 30-60 seconds. It seems counter intuitive but it allows each side to cook more gently as it keep cooking and resting consecutively instead of being exposed to a high temperature constantly for few minutes . You'll still get a beautiful browing on your steak and it will have a very even cooking through it.
I just watched a video Chris posted 9 months ago where he details this. I'm really curious if an experiment like the one above could be run that compares the tempered steak done properly to one flipped consistently un-tempered, and if flipping rapidly has any effect on a separate tempered steak at all.
Or just reverse sear it like a normal human, problem solved
@@adamcoe takes too long in a restaurant.
Shit I just said the exact thing
I do this to the grill at work. Some times I noticed my steak cooking too fast or almost burning. So I learned to keep it moving.
As a matter of habit I always just left mine in the refrigerator until I was ready to throw it right on the fire. Really this was a survival technique as I’m easily distracted and I’m usually drinking copious amounts of wine when I decide to put flame to meat. This way I know at least some portion of the burnt morsel will still be pink. Good job nice video!
Hey Chris, I recently discovered your channel and I must say, I'm absolutely blown away by the quality of your videos. I ended up watching all of them at once! Your expertise in cooking a perfect steak and understanding the whole idea of temperature has taught me so much. I was surprised that you are the founder of Jouel, which happens to be one of my all-time favorite kitchen gadgets. I just wanted to express my gratitude for creating such exceptional content and kitchen tools that cater to home cooks and foodies like myself. Keep up the fantastic work!!!!
Thank you for the kind words. Hope to get some new videos out soon.
Jouel? Sounds familiar, Is that the Sous Vide stick in Kickstarter? I think it is actually spelled Joule which is a unit of work or energy,
@@ChrisYoungCooks Hi Chris! I was hoping to get your clarification on something. Around 6:05 you mention to place the steak in lukewarm water. I noticced that the thermometer seems to be reading the water to be 71 Fahrenheit. Is that lukewarm water for you? Or is it meant to be warmer?
This really helps settle a difference of opinion my husband and I had. We’ve been married 13 years, and he’s cooked approximately 5 times for me, (he’s NOT lazy, but requires forearm crutches to stand and walk) but recently purchased a NICE grill. He went all out and when he wanted to let the steak “rest” BEFORE cooking and I was unsure about it. Now he can temper his steaks for a short while in confidence. I’m sending him your video now so he can say “ha haaaaa I was RIGHT!” Which up to this point has been about the same number of times he’s cooked 😂😋
Freeze frame at 5:32 ... He stuck the thermometer much closer to a pan-edge in the 15 minute and 4 hour tempered steaks. Inconsistent test conditions is not good science.
@@SansNeural It's not hard science anyway. It's just a piece of dead cow.
@@SansNeuralgood point and that would totally alter the cooking times, making the experiment well, worthless
It’s always fun to take shots at your s.o when they are not around. Bad look btw
@@LS-fc7nx I dont think you are reading the situation correctly. Shes sending the video to him so he can have the satisfaction of being right. And in all likelihood, he has also read the comment himself.
Good look btw.
Tip for speeding up tempering: Sit the meat in a room-temperature skillet for 15-20 minutes.
Remember the "Miracle Thaw"? It was basically a slab of aluminum, and that is basically the same as an aluminum skillet. The skillet is just good at absorbing heat from its surroundings (air, counter top, whatever) and also good at conducting it to the meat.
basically a radiator
@@GrimK77 Yep. I was thinking: heatsink. But, I'm mixed up on the direction of higher to lower temps, haha!
@@EdwoodCA - think of it this way: take two objects, one of which is warmer than the other. The atoms in the warmer object are bouncing around more than the molecules in the cooler object. Just like bouncing balls can transfer their energy to balls at rest, heat transfers from more energetically moving molecules to those that are moving less. The “warmer” atoms lose as much energy as the “cooler” atoms gain. This is how heat transfer works. I hope that visualization helps you with a mental model of the “direction” of higher to lower temperatures. Cheers!
I think that's one of the reasons why cold steak doesn't work so well. When Chris says "While the pan was at the same temperature - a constant 375F for both of these steaks", I'm not sure it is true. The pan gets colder when we put a cold steak on it and we need to heat it up back as well. Probably on a grill the difference will not be as dramatic
@@maximkuleshov8852absolutely correct. A big cold steak will suck heat out of the pan.
I really appreciate the inclusion of Celsius alongside the Fahrenheit when discussing temperatures.
Fantastic content as usual.
Chad Fahrenheit vs. Virgin Celsius
The metric system brings nothing to the table
@@beantown_billy2405 And Fahrenheit brings inefficiency to the table.
@@PhantomFilmAustralia F brings over 2x the gradient than C - 100c = 212f
It's pointless because steak is for Americans, Europeans can't even afford to heat their homes in the winter let alone eat meat. Fahrenheit all the way.
My takeaway from the video was to use a dish to hold the steak when it's resting so the juices don't bleed all over my cutting board and soak in. And I get to use the meat juice for a pan sauce afterwards.
I use a grill / grid. I hate when I see so-called chefs put steaks on a cutting board to "rest", pure amateur idiocy. If you pre-season do the same and salt both sides.
@@torilessWhy is it amateur idiocy. They are professionals.
Banquet cook. We presear our meats and temper them for firing. Whatever the party size is, we cook to medium rare in Combi ovens. We normally pull our proteins out an hour prior so they come up to a reasonable temp. Tempering makes a huge difference in quality of finished product. You are spot on why tempering makes a difference.
I'm one of those that I like to pull my meat out to get room temperature before I cook it only because that's what my grandmother taught me. She was the best cook to date so I listened even though when she was teaching me I didn't fully understand because I was still very young like 7 years old. It's good to see videos like that that show you why certain techniques are better.
What a great explanatory video, thank you. As a classically trained cook I used this technique as a professional. I was ignorant until today that the term "tempering" is used. I was used to seeing it used in chocolate making - which of course makes total sense!
It goes snap in that case.
I was always taught "temper for about 20 minutes for a more even cook", but this is the first time I've seen it not just explained, but demonstrated.
I probably won't risk the full 4 hours, but after seeing the 15-minute temper I can see why I was taught 20 minutes. It's a reasonable compromise.
This is the second time youve brought up this aspect of thermodynamics and it continues to blow my mind
Thermodynamics sets the rules for our world. Being able to think through the thermodynamics is kind of like having a super power.
I did my own experiment in a similar manner to prove 20 minutes isn’t long enough to be significantly different. A 1 1/2 inch sirloin starting 4.5C took 3 hours to reach a room temperature of 18C (England in winter folks!)
For safety reasons I’d certainly recommend seasoning your meat with salt for the tempering period and also brushing with some cooking oil.
salt it regardless of safety, always dry brine steaks.
@@bloodlove93 Unnecessary steps - dries out the meat and over seasons it.
@@KatzenjammerKid61 that is not at all true. Dry brining pulls moisture out and the meat pulls it back in. Don't use more salt than you need and you won't have an over seasoned steak.
@@KatzenjammerKid61 Learn the science. While salt can be used to cure meet and dry it out, that is a process that takes weeks and months, not minutes or hours. Salting up to 24 hours of time does NOT dry out the interior of the steak at all; it only dries out the exterior -- which is precisely want you want to brown the steak and create a more robust Maillard reaction. Just make sure to salt steaks at least 45 minutes before cooking, because that's how long it takes for the salt to draw out some surface moisture, then be re-absorbed.
@@KatzenjammerKid61 oh, I’m sorry. I thought my 14 years experience in curing meats as a butcher might count for something…
The graphics on these videos are always amazing!! So good to see the graph showing the visual gradient! Well done
I've never heard it called tempering. I've always heard it called "blooming". The best restaurants I've worked at always bloom for 2-4 hours (at 4 hours bacteria starts to build). And I was taught the reason for it is not even cooking, but to allow the fat to "bloom" and expand through the meat more. I love this channel. I've been a chef for 30 years and it's nice to learn the science behind all the things I've been doing my entire life.
I feel like I pretty much always did this already, not on purpose but because I'm busy seasoning and cutting up vegetables and I leave the meat lying on the counter while I do that.
But it's still good to know that this actually improves the cook of a steak and that I should be doing it on purpose!
Another excellent vid, Chris! I've always wondered if I was doing the right thing by tempering (because I DO temper all the proteins I cook) and now you've reinforced why!
As a side note, cooked a ribeye the other night using the rapid flip method.....HOOOWEEE! Stunningly spectacular results so THANKS AGAIN!!
Rapid flip has become my new favorite way to grill my meats...
Chris, 3:53 ,heat doesn’t “flow slowly”… nor does it “surge.”
You end up having to cook the colder steak longer for the core to get to the same temperature… which means by the time the center gets to your temperature, the outside is gonna be over cooked… it’s time, not some “surge.”
Lan Lam has an instructional video for a cold sear steak, which has worked reasonably well for me. It involves salting the day before, drying the steak, and then flipping every two minutes for the heat to come into the meat at a slower pace so as to avoid the uneven cooking and the grey band of overcooked stead. Any thoughts on this technique?
That is logically better over time because you don't need to clean up or use water or other materials to temper the steak when you can use a cold pan and a low temp to slow cook the steak slowly but steadily from the get go.
It's not just about the end results, it's about the time and cleanup you create from prepping and cooking the steak. The less cleanup, the better.
I've used that tech a couple times and if you want an easy steak without a pan sauce it's a very solid method. I personally still prefer the crust from a hard sear but can't beat the lack of clean up
@@cisrael468 Another useful tool is a flamethrower or a handheld torch that can sear it.
Other than making making a bit of smoke you don't need any plates or anything, you can sear it with flames in the pan.
Thank you Chris! Your instructions have VASTLY improved my in house Steak cook for any steak. My Wife loves the 2 inch thick ribeye steaks with the reversed seared method. Three Cheers for you and your videos!
🙏
5:30 regardless of the evenness of the cook, you can definitely see that the untempered steak had by far the best crust on it, with the 4-hour tempered steak having barely any crust at all.
My process is to season the meat a couple of hours before cooking, and putting it into the refrigerator. That leaves the salt to pull the moisture to the surface and let the surface dry. It takes about an hour to get the moisture to the surface and another hour to get it dry. The dry surface is vastly more important for the crust than any other consideration. Depending on the weather, tempering the meat for an hour or four may leave the surface wet. Cooking very hot will give an excellent crust and will not overcook anything more than the outside of the steak. The remaining heat will penetrate and cook the interior relatively evenly. Tempering is fine, if the humidity is low and you have several extra hours; but chefs, are in professional kitchens and they are not waiting for 15 or 20 minutes, let alone 4 hours, for meat to "temper" before they cook it and serve it.
Really interesting, well thought out and executed video. I can tell you that my girlfriend does this and we battle all the time over it. My thinking (like the rest of the planet) was keeping the center cold would allow for more of a buffer zone. I'm going to say this out loud, but don't let her hear it- I WAS WRONG.
The term you are looking for is Delta T. That’s the difference temp of the steak and pan. Thanks for the video. Never gave it much thought. Will be tempering from now on.
Delta T is usually the difference in time if you're working in math and science
@@Leto_0Not so, time is delta t (lower case). Most agree that capital T is temperature in my experience
I tempered a roast recently and it blew mind how well it turned out. I wish my mom knew about this when I young her roasts were well let’s just say they were rough
Sous Vide and sear - done and perfect 👌🏽
Great experiment Chris! I recall Kenji with SeriousEats had done this experiment and reached the opposite conclusion. As such, I'm curious if there are other factors at play in your setup. For example, another commenter mentioning the salt.
Also, the water trick is very good for bringing frozen meat or cold eggs up to temp as well!
Didn’t know Kenji ran the experiment, so can’t comment on why he reached a different conclusion. As I pointed out, it wasn’t until about 15 minutes that I started to get a meaningful difference as you can see in the video.
Quoting Serious Eats:
"After 1 hour and 50 minutes, the steak was up to 49.6°F in the center."
"After two hours, I decided I'd reached the limit of what is practical"
Yeah, then I got a different result. You’ll have to judge from the video yourself whether the 15-minute temper is visibly better than no-temper. To my eye, it was more evenly cooked. 🤷♂️
I think the more important question is: does that even matter if you do constant flipping?
It matters much less. They’re attempting to accomplish the same end, reducing the rate that energy flows into the steak.
I’ve been playing with variations on this method with pork chops. I found i really liked putting a pork chop into sous vide at 115f for about 10-15 minutes then turning the bath down to 100f then frying in a press-pan-with butter, salt and pepper, to 115f which Carries over to 140 or so…setting it to 100f and waiting 30 minutes also has been great. I’ve read all of mc and it has been very helpful for me for years, so it’s great to Glen more nuggets of knowledge from you, Chris. Thanks for everything!
Informative video. I've always noticed it's easier to cook a steak evenly when it's closer to room temperature but hadn't really though about it this much. I usually just take it out of the fridge around 30 minutes before I cook it - any longer than that and I get too hungry thinking about eating it.
That is actually too long for burgers, they get limp, 10 than form the shape than warm up the grill which takes 5-10 minutes.
Very useful information. I like the warm water technique a lot: cuts down on time and keeps the meat sealed.
I’m genuinely curious to see what it would look like when you normalize the two results on cooking time to achieve the same internal temperature? What was the variable difference to reach True Core temp between the two steaks? And did that have a variable difference on the crust, in these visuals it did indeed look like the crust of the cold steak was more browned than that of the tempered. Furthermore, was steaming taken into account in this experiment, I imagine a vast amount more moisture would be held in the cold steak versus the tempered steak, would you not agree? And if so, as a cooking expert, you know that a considerable amount of steaming in a pan leads to the greying of meat, rather than allowing for Maillard browning, but doesn’t necessarily correlate with a more well-done toughness of meat but less visually presentable product.
I just found your channel today and I love it! I like your scientific approach! :) I'm looking forward to the other videos!
What a great video. Like your initial thoughts I always assumed that starting with a colder steak was the way to go. Truly spectacular info.
No, but that works for meatballs in a sauce.
Was skeptical of tempering for years. Thanks for the video!
Tempering in tepid water seems like a nice solution for the time and inefficiency it takes to warm them sitting on the counter (not to mention the food safety concerns). I'll have to try it out.
Eat raw meat
Go with sous vide, it’s he only way I’ve found to get my steaks to perfect medium rare all the way through.
food safety lol! millions upon millions of people eat meats butchered on cross contaminated chopping blocks, are hung on hooks washed with sewer water and are displayed in the open air at 20-40c temperatures for hours and hours for centuries without any issues what so ever
Last year I took a cooking MasterClass and the Chef kept repeating to temper meat, even chicken (though for a shorter period of time). I have been following this advice since. Thank you for confirming through your experiment.
I like the idea of tempering in water but if you are going to do that you might as well just cook it in the water sous vide and then just sear it at the end for the best results.
Presuming a circulator is available, that’s not unreasonable.
Presuming a circulator is available, that’s not unreasonable.
I bodged a sous vide bath by placing a small cake rack at the bottom of a large sauce pan, keeping the water a medium-high heat (checking the temperature with a food probe and adjusting with water either from the kettle or the tap).
The result was exactly the same as a sous vide bath but massively more labour intensive. Just buy a circulator.
Someone has to say it so I'll say it. My mom, rest her soul, would always take out the red meat from the fridge one half hour before putting it in the pan and a bit less time for chicken. For frozen meat she would immediately wrap it in aluminum foil and put it in the fridge in the morning the take it out one half hour before cooking. Why ? I never asked so I will never know. ... yes I did too, years ago but since the kids are gone we don't do that anymore. Being a much older couple we don't eat as much now. We rarely temper our oatmeal ! ! !
Always a great video !
Tempering just seems like an extremely inefficient way to let a steak come to room temp. I'm wondering why you weren't using the constant flipping technique that you demonstrated to be superior in this video? Since using that technique I have had no issues with cooking steaks straight out of the fridge.
Exactly. This wasn't the only issue I had with his experiment, too. It's pretty obvious looking at the sears that both steaks had that the colder steak had had more cook time total vs the tempered steak. Typically, you see cooks finish a pan seared steak (especially as thick as the ones he had) with a basting of butter, which allows the steak to be heated quicker because the whole steak is being heated at that point. The butter also heats it at a lower temperature than the direct contact with the pan surface, which is much much higher temperature.
It's the high temperature of the pan for such a long cook time that causes the large gray bands. This experiment is bad because it doesn't even consider other cooking methods, like how nice steakhouses would normally do which is sear in the pan then finish in an oven. Honestly, there's so many variables which he didn't account for, that I'm honestly pretty disappointed.
I can imagine him not using these techniques this video, exactly because they diminish the effect of tempering when using them. After seeing this video, I could easily grasp how tempering works and could see clear differences between steaks that have been tempered or haven't been tempered without making it too complicated for the experiments sake. I can imagine the techniques working, but you would probably still have more grey band on an untempered steak using the constant flipping technique, or basting it.
What I do agree on is that he could have at least mentioned those techniques like he did with sous vide and reverse searing
Yeah Heston uses the constant flipping technique also.
@@timrushing81 u just artificially make a normal steak “thicker” and must compensate…while u could use such superior methods on a tempered steak achieve better results, right?
@@leafster1337 Yeah, this is useless. I'm all for being consistent for a controlled experiment to make a point, but what good is that point is if you don't even use the method that you would actually use when cooking?
Flipping is like accelerated tempering while you cook. Gives time for heat to work it's way in and come down a bit before hitting it again. He's explained why it works himself, and those same arguments apply to this scenario.
My trainer (mum) showed me cooking 20-30 seconds per side until cooked as desired. I recently tried allowing the steak to warm a little (maybe 20 minutes) to not fridge temp! I think turned on the heat, allowed butter to start melting and wiped it around the pan. Then put the steak in as per my mother’s instruction…. Worked beautifully. The pan and constantly flipping meant the tempering continued and the heat was constant on both sides resulting in a well browned, evenly cooked to just under medium and tender to eat sirloin steak
One way to get a more evenly cooked steak is to flip it three times while you're cooking. When the meat cooks it tenses up where the heat is being applied to. Flipping it (and letting each side rest a little while not under active high heat) allows the center to become more defined.
th-cam.com/video/YFpnNixm5Vs/w-d-xo.html
That's an awful suggestion. Everyone who's works in a kitchen you don't touch the steak until it's ready to turn or flip. Moving it or flipping it any extra time produces a shit sear.
@@Chris-cv1yh you're more than welcome to look in The Food Lab and/or try it for yourself. J. Kenji López explains it much better. There are plenty of ways to get that great sear regardless of how much you flip it. At least my 15 years of restaurant experience has taught me as much. It just takes a little knowledge and skill is all.
Thanks Chris. Loving your thermometer and your TH-cam videos.
Great video. Two things come to mind:
Cooking causes phase changes and chemical reaction, and those require input of heat, not just changing the temperature. It's the difference between bringing water up to 210 and actually boiling it. That's one reason why tempering helps, you're getting rid of one phase change in some of the fat, and making the rest easier to accomplish.
The other is that tempered meats are going to be more pliable and have more surface area in contact with the cooking surface. More even heat application. Think of how hard it would be to cook a tortilla chip vs. a soft tortilla. Tempering makes the meat flexible and puts more in contact with the pan. Also helps prevent bigger temperature gradients which will 'curl' the meat down towards the edges, where there's less to dissipate it. I'm sure we've all cooked a cold steak or burger that ends up with a ring of char along the edges and none in the middle.
One thing that's important to consider is that professional chefs use much thicker steaks normally. A lot of these tips from professionals on how to cook steak(temper, constant flipping) only work on steaks an inch thick or more. I've been able to cook a steak from the supermarket medium rare with a beautiful crust only by completely disregarding the advice from chefs and cooking it on the absolute highest heat I can straight from the fridge and only flipping it once, I don't even have time to baste. As soon as the crust is good enough it's done inside
Stop buying 1/2" steaks.
100%! Even if it's an inch and a half, this is absolutely fine. They make such a big deal about that little grey band. I guarantee that if I took 2 1 1/2 inch cuts of ribeye from the same roast, and put one in the pan right from the fridge, and the other sat in a bag in luke warm water for 15 min before it went into the pan, then blindfolded you and asked you to pick which was which, you CANNOT tell.
@@fr201 Why? people should eat how they want to eat. My family hates souvide and medium rare. Most people don't like medium rare, they just say it because of steak purists who tout it as better, along with the 1 inch minimum bullshit to. Surprise, surprised, did you know that most beef is ate with seasoning beyond just salt, pepper, and garlic? No? Then don't tell people what to buy or not buy, if you don't know jack shit.
Short video, very well explained (in a simple way so everyone can understand too), straight to the point and some actual examples for evidence. This was a great video, no long ass explanations no one cares about
Absolutely loved the graphics at 3:40 to show viewers what it looks like inside the steak due to Newton's Law of Cooling in regards to thermal conductivity. Well done.
I discovered this by accident, when i had a small fridge and had to leave some stuff out. I now have plenty of fridge space, but like to bring meat up to cool room temps before cooking. Nice to see a structured experiment and the science behind it.
Also, i bought your thermometer.
That was definitely an eye opener and I was surprised that even a 15-20 min hangout on the counter would make that big a difference. I'm not sure I'd be wicked into leaving chicken out that long but most of the time I'm reverse searing chicken anyway so likely not a huge deal. Great test!
For sure isn't worth it to temper chicken. You don't want it reaching 40° for any amount of time, and it needs to be cooked 155°-165° anyway so there is a 10° buffer between safe and overcooked
lol reverse searing chicken
I have seen chicken sit in display cases out in the front of the store in the morning sun in Tijuana, Mexico. But I do not think our immune systems is as good as theirs... apparently. Nasty. Every time I ever ate when I was down there I got sick.
@@cosmicraysshotsintothelight yeah chicken is something very dangerous in terms of pathogens
The health risk of leaving chicken out on the counter for 20 minutes is at worst negligible.
Always love the videos! Even paced instruction/education that doesn't bore or is distracting. Great Video Chris!
Your science-y approach is bang on. Like Kenji, Ethan C et al, your scientific method combined with food knowledge is a winner! Thanks man
It is a well known fact that gradually heating a piece of meat will give you better uniformity. That's why people use reverse sear or sous vide. But you do not need to leave the steak outside of the fridge for several hours to get this result. Many cooks and chefs have proved that it does not improve the quality of the cook. Doneness uniformity is totally dependent on the way you cook it. I've cooked reverse sear and sous vide steaks with LESS uniformity than charcoal grilled steaks that use scorching hot heat. Even cooking, in my opinion, is far more important than simply letting the steaks sit in 70F air for hours.
Fascinating! I think I and others have dismissed tempering due to the large temperature gradient between the pan and the steak (only about a 10% change going from 40F - > 375F vs. 70F->375F). But from the perspective of internal temp to finish temp, it's much more dramatic. Thanks as always!
That makes sense, it is more about the internal temperatue, 40F to 125F, vs 70F to 125F
This was super helpful and insightful. I’m going to try this today!
I've worked 4 years for a major steakhouse casual fine dining franchise and we definitely don't "temper" the steaks.
Yeah, it's myth.
What a fantastic, informative, no BS video
Chris, I sometimes pre-sear meat cold out of the fridge before sous vide cooking it (if I'm cooking it in a sauce, or it is easy to over cook during searing like a pork chop), sometimes combined with a post-sear to refresh the crust. The rational being that the meat being colder will minimize the grey band that forms during the brief pre-searing step. Am I wrong? Should I be doing the pre-sear on tempered meat?
…Why are you pre-searing if you’re just going to sog it with sous-vide? Even if you do it again to re-crisp it, it’s just more work…
@@mahbuddykeith1124 I explained that above, if you read my comment
@@bostonbesteats364 Rhetorical question, Boston. Don’t bother with a pre-sear if you’re going to sous it. Sear after, because at that point it’s already well-tempered.
@@mahbuddykeith1124 You are completely missing the point. Perhaps watch ChefSteps video today, which will explain it to you
Great video. I never temper my steaks because I like them as rare as possible as long as they are warm inside. I use a super hot pan to sear it as quick as possible. The resting time is usually enough to make it just warm inside but without really cooking it. But just to make sure I'm not eating cold meat, I also pre-heat the plate in the oven so that it warms up the steak slices.
could you do a video on if butter basting a steak while cooking actually makes it taste more buttery? and perhaps explore different methods of applying the butter, like cooking the butter alone with herbs while the steak rests and pouring it on after. i would love to see an objective approach from you on the subject
I'd settle for butter baste vs butter resting vs butter injecting
Pretty sure Guga already tried this.
Guga Foods. Sous Vide Everything.
@@jeweltorkelson yes, all great ideas!
@@Un1234l oh im a massive guga fan! i've seen all his videos and hes one of my favorite food channels (well, two channels i guess haha). but guga isnt exactly scientific about his methods, which i honestly love about him. it would just be cool to see a different approach thats a bit more of a controlled and considered approach to the question using food science :)
@@bullethelldemon
Surprised you say that about Guga. His experiments have been very controlled using thermometers and precise temperature control and same cut on the same cow.
I've heard the arguments on both sides but nice to have a side by side. Great video...
Dude your channel is absolutely amazing!! The information I'm learning from your vids is awesome and makes cooking so much more fun and enjoyable with great results. Amazing work!
First time watching. That was clinical precision. Beauty.
Hi Chris! Great video! However, are you sure that your results aren't due to the excess water pulled from the cold steak since the salt was just applied and would draw out moisture? I'm not fully sure if this affects your experimental setup, but evaporation of water requires magnitudes more energy compared to heat conduction. To me it seems like the 4 hour steak would have more time to dry-out and this would affect the amount of energy that gets transfered into the meat, which in turn might explain the difference in results.
Meat is around 75% or so water, when you dry brine, you would see a relatively small amount of water inside the container that holds the steak. I doubt that it would play a significant factor.
@@CoolJay77 Just to clarify, im not saying that the steak itself will be significantly dryer. Just that the salt will pull out moisture on the steaks surface which may affect the cooking process due to excess steam production. However, I'm not sure if the excess steam will contribute to more or less heat transfer. My guess is more, and this might explain why the edges get overcooked quicker.
@@putumban96 After about 45 minutes or so the water is reabsorbed into the steak, see Kenjid article on salting steaks
@@putumban96 The water on the surface of the steak would dissipate within seconds as it comes in contact with the hot pan. By your reasoning, you could spray water to the surface of the steak.
@@CoolJay77 Yeah i might be incorrect here, you and @prex both raise good points. It's just that salting/seasoning the steak adds another confounding factor to the experiment, and I'm curious if this affects the results somehow.
Wonderful video, thank you. I've been using the microwave to introduce some energy into the steak to bring up the internal temperature faster, using the "power level" feature that pulses the magnetron. I give it 8 minutes or so at 10% which works out to 48 seconds of heating spread out over the 8 minutes. Avoids hot spots and gently warms up the steak to room temperature.
So leave your steak out for 4 hours.. you I don't know, just suis vide them? These type of things all feel like "Here are a bunch of tricks to try to get close to suis vide even doneness" Think I'd just fire up my Joule. ;-)
I would think that, aside from the warm bath, a heat defuse/defrosting plate would be a better way to go than just leaving it on a standard plate or cutting block to temper.
your videos made me see things i have never seen before, and i have seen over 2k hours of cooking content
what a nicee work you have done dear
Hi Chris thanks for the experiment. Just to add little, but maybe 4 hours to temper is a bit long. The FDA recommends, "Never allow raw meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, or produce that requires refrigeration to sit at room temperature for more than two hours; the limit is one hour if the air temperature is above 90 °F. (If you're not sure whether certain produce requires refrigeration, ask your grocer.)"😊
Actual FDA food code allows 4 hours in the danger zone, which is why I used that as my limit. See see 3.501.19: www.fda.gov/media/164194/download
I absolutely love this type of videos. Instantly subscribed. I really like the explanations. And then you show it!
The grey is caused by steam. So the more important thing to do is dry brine your steaks (assuming they are not already aged) for at least 40 minutes prior to cooking. Ensure the surfaces are dry before searing.
Came to this video at random but the harmony of his explanation made me feel quite relaxed.
Hey Chris. If i stick in the thermometer half way how does it still find the correct core temp? I assume it looks for the lowest temperature across the sensor array. Is there a threshold to filter out possible ambient temps?
Yes, works exactly like this.
Yes, works exactly like this.
Yes, it works like this. And yes, it does sone filtering to distinguish between sensors inside and outside the food.
@@ChrisYoungCooks sounds great. i believe you're really onto something with this feature. i will definitely look into buying one.
Your channel is about to blow up.
If you get mad at the chef for not leaving out your steak before cooking it, would that be considered a temper tantrum?
if you already have a sous vide but want to grill it. simply put it on the sous vide at 75 degrees for 20minutes and you're good. No need to wait 60-180 minutes to temper
Interesting, Guga just did a video a few weeks ago saying he doesn’t temper since it only raised the temp a couple degrees over 30 mins or so. Curious if you find that difference more noticeable. May have to experiment myself…good reason to have a few steak nights. Thanks for the video!
Guga very often does a reverse sear though (even regarding his grill method) so it would still line up. Not much of a reason to do it with that method or sous vide.
In this video it says it was tempering for 4 hours. Obviously far longer than Guga's 30 minutes.
That's because Gugu didn't have the balls to let a steak sit out growing bacteria for four hours before cooking it.
It may also make a difference that Chris here is only flipping the steak once, whereas Guga always does the constant flipping method. That may by itself already help overcome at least some of the need for tempering the meat by preventing the sides from developing as sharp a gradient during heat transfer.
So, I haven’t watched Guga’s video yet. But as you can see in the second half of my video, there is a noticeable difference at 15 minutes.
I also say I don’t recommend more than 4 hrs, and I specifically choose this number because 4 hours is the FDA Food Code limit for time without refrigeration.
Finally, the amount of warming at the core doesn’t actually matter as much as how much the surface warms up. The flow of heat from the pan into the steak is controlled by the temperature difference between the pan and the surface of the meat, so warming the surface reduces how quickly energy flows into the steak, resulting in a shallower temperature gradient. I cover this in more depth in my frequent flipping video.
My grandmother tempered her steaks by pouring boiled water into one of her cast iron pans to get it warm and then added the seasoned steak to it, letting sit for about half an hour covered with foil and then flipping it with a fresh pour of hot water to the pan in between. This was 30 years ago.
Oh my God. She was boiling the steaks. Disgusting
Once again you tell us the reality of things not the "facts"! Thx
Just watched all your steak videos, I'm loving the "science" aspect and hope to see more of these styles of videos with different meats and food in general. 10/10
But the real question is, who cooks their steak in a pan and only flips it once?
Flipping often after you have established a nice crust on both sides, makes a steak straight from the fridge cook just as evenly as your 4h tempered one 😅
Establish crust on high heat, reduce to medium and cook until medium rare while flipping as Many times as you like
You're so straight and no BS. Instant sub. Calm, no bait, no clout chasing, actual testing and controllable environment. Bliss.
I can't stop laughing out every time he mentions his thermometer, he never misses the chance to detail about it.
Gotta fund making these videos!
Whatever gets me more of the most knowledgeable scientific cooking videos on this site!
I warm my steak (after seasoning, before grilling) using the soften-butter setting on my microwave multiple times over a half an hour. The setting is *very* gentle and the time between runs allows less-cool/warm spots to spread out. It's quicker form of temper and I always thought of as a lazy half-sous-vide. I sous-vide and reverse-sear on other occasions.
Microwave. Someone call the police
I'd be interested to see the same experiment with constant flipping
My thoughts exactly. With constant flipping, the extra heat can move towards the cold centre or dissipate into the air, instead of overcooking the grey band.
If the steak is even enough with constant flipping, the video is a moot point.
Love your channel ! Great information ! Would love some behind the scene info about how you do these unbelievable shots !
I never temper my steaks and my steaks have never looked that bad after resting. They look like the one you tempered. Something wasn’t done right.
Cooking temp too low. 375F is a very low temp. Closer to 450-500 will give more crust with a hint of charring. Allows the outside to get done quickly before enough heat is transferred to the center of the steak.
If I'm not using the charcoal grill, I cook mine in a ripping hot cast iron pan 1 minute per side and then flip again and into the 400F oven to finish. Don't see gray banding like that.
Chris, what can I say... simply phenomenal. I just devoured all your content. It's so good that makes me want to work in food science too...
Any way.... I'm really impressed with what you do, and from very far (Chile) my deepest congrats and appretiation.
Another option; put your steak on a cooling rack in the oven with the light on for an hour or 2. It'll both dry out the steak and provide a warmer environment than your average kitchen.
You can also use this method for the bulk ferment for doughs.
And grow bacteria on the surface
3:50 This is known as heat transfer rate and you're spot on. The higher the difference between the pan and the steak, the faster heat will flow or transfer, thereby cooking much faster and overcooking the outside.
This video makes no sense to me. Heat transfer itself does not cause cooking. Heat transfer also has no inertia. So starting cold only results in a more uneven gradient and a slower total cook time. The tempered steak must have been cooked for much shorter, or it would be beyond overdone.
@@TastyMunky Also, Heat transfer doesn’t have inertia, the medium does (the steak) which affects heat transfer coefficient, k. Assuming they’re similar steaks, k, a constant, can be ignored.
Very well tested and explained. Thanks, very useful.
It's all about conduction, a cold steak is cooked 2 min, flip, 2 min flip, 2min flip, 2 min flip, the steak will be gold crust, and a beautiful med rare ALL THE WAY THROUGH.
Thanks for demonstrating and not just giving an opinion. I always reverse sear, so good to know I can go straight from the fridge.
yep, my grandad and my dad used to do this and I do it now, definitely the best way. what I'm shocked about is that you season the meat before cooking it. we never do this, because we strongly believe it makes the meat tougher. if you want to keep a lovely tender piece of meat as tender as you can, cook first then season. I specifically mean salt. If you want to put some pepper or garlic on before cooking that's fine, but salt goes on after. Maybe this could be your next test, but you have to start with two pieces of meat you're confident has the same tenderness.
This content is great. I just found the channel and really happy to find a channel doing some quality experiments. I imagine it's a lot of work to prepare it. Please dont stop making videos :)
I've put a couple of steaks between two cast iron skillets to speed the tempering. Aluminum is a great heat sink too if it has a lot of surface area like a full or half sheet pan.
1:00 No, when a steak is ordered you pull it out, season it and slap it on the grill, it's already ordered, you are too late to temper. Fine dining and steakhouses might pull an estimated number of steaks based on daily and weekly sales to temper, but regular restaurants aren't doing that.
phenomenal video! top channels on cooking by far
I worked right at the BBQ style grated grill of a major restaurant in Whistler, as the Escargot guy - I also Tempered the steaks - we had a long wire shelf, almost a meter above the grill, 3 meters long and when an order appeared, I would grab the required cut of steaks and put them up at the far end of the shelf from the grill. The line of steaks was usually at least 25-35 steaks long, so they had plenty of time to warm up. It as fairly hot up on the shelf, (maybe 100F) but the Grill Chef would keep an eye on the meat. Generally they would sit out for an average 15 - 20 mintes before they hit the grill. When the order came off the grill, it was given the Snails if ordered, and placed on another shelf to the area where all the sides were added to the meat, and sent to service.