What are you consuming right now?

seeing as its the time of Christmas and a time of feasting, thought I'd resurrect this thread

drinking a glass of nice Sauvignon Blanc, I'm round my Mums house for Christmas, and they'll be nine of us tomorrow when everybody else turns up, tonight it's just very low key and really cool

gonna shuck some Isle of Mull oysters in a minute and drink the rest of that bottle

lush

enjoy your Christmas and cheers!

Lot of fucking eggnog and rum. Steaks are marinading and about to go on the grill in an hour or so. Decent bottle of red ready to be opened in advance of meal so it can breathe (really need decanter) and fucking bobs your uncle.

pls show bobs

Today I had bucks fizz in the morning which turned into me drinking the whole bottle of prosecco before mid-day.

Then a bunch of fancy IPAs, smoked salmon, a nice selection of prosciuto (sp?)

Now quite a lot of red wine, some brie and pate and crackers... yeeee

Bob. Is. Your. Fucking. Uncle.

holy shit nice

Hot damn. What's the red stuff? Chutney?

very nice

Ta muchly. Red stuff is quinoa with beets (put them in the rice cooker at the same time). Steak was maybe just a touch overdone (like maybe 30 seconds too long on the grill) but still juicy as fuck and flavourful as hell. Carrot and parsnip from local farm, their carrots are so fucking good.

Stilton. Camembert. Yum.

I've been making so many breakfast burritos lately.

I'm gonna make one with duck, chorizo, egg, avocado and so on a little later.

I bought myself a nice steak to have for xmas dinner but I ended up being waaay too drunk to cook yesterday and wasn't ever hungry enough for a full meal. Will cook it today and hopefully do Chen's justice.

sea salt and black pepper cashew nuts and a pint of Kentish Pip cider

pretty great snack and beverage that's just hit the bullseye tbh

Here we go. Ribeye steak, caeser salad and boiled romanesco broccoli with butter, salt and pepper

I waaaay overcooked the steak for my tastes but I'm kinda rusty and I'm not used to doing all these sides. Usually I just cook a steak and fucking eat it.

this was my first plate of christmas dinner:

and this was my second:

and then today I had my third:

...and fourth (not pictured because food coma left me too weak to operate camera).

drank far too much very nice wine too, a couple of nice amarone's and a few other Valpolicellas, lots of Champagne and Crement as well. 

I've hit the wall with the booze now though, so drinking a pot of tea and eating too many ferrero rochers.

iirc you like your steak almost blue don't you?

That looks like medium to medium rare. That's where I like to keep mine tbh (med-rare). Going to do up some striploins friday, all this steak puttin' me in the mooddddd. 

I noticed you and Chen both barely seasoned your steaks? Depending how we're feeling we go full opposite, use a chicago style rub to give the steaks a really nice crust and seal all the juicy goodness inside.

Kinda like this:

Ribeye we usually leave pretty plain though. 

steak just needs salt on it prior to frying imo, bit of pepper on after is good (it just burns off before, so a waste of time). rubs only make sense if you slow cook something. 'sealing juicy goodness' is a myth, resting meat keeps the juices in not creating a crust. rubs might be good for a reverse sear of a big steak, never tried that, but my preference with steak is just to taste the meat (assuming it's a nice tasty grass fed cow), still should give it a try. I think we've had this conversation before...

yeah nah, I wanna taste that steak. I just left it sitting in olive oil, salt and pepper. I also did that thing chefs always do: cut a clove of garlic in half and rubbed it all over the raw steak. Surprisingly it worked!

And yeah I like my steak raw af

that was @SG. Caze is correct. I just wanna t a s t e t h e m e a t 

yeah the garlic thing is good, another thing to do is mounting: melt some butter at the end once it's nearly finished cooking, drop some crushed cloves of garlic in and some thyme, and baste the steak with the melted garlicy herby butter.

  On 12/26/2018 at 10:21 PM, caze said:

steak just needs salt on it prior to frying imo, bit of pepper on after is good (it just burns off before, so a waste of time). rubs only make sense if you slow cook something. 'sealing juicy goodness' is a myth, resting meat keeps the juices in not creating a crust. rubs might be good for a reverse sear of a big steak, never tried that, but my preference with steak is just to taste the meat (assuming it's a nice tasty grass fed cow), still should give it a try. I think we've had this conversation before...

Yeah, sorry but you're still wrong ;)

I've done it countless times and it works great. Juiciest steaks we've ever had have a nice rub on it. And of course rested.

Like I said, depends how we're feeling. Sometimes its a bit of salt and pepper, sometimes its a nice rub. 

  On 12/26/2018 at 10:23 PM, caze said:

yeah the garlic thing is good, another thing to do is mounting: melt some butter at the end once it's nearly finished cooking, drop some crushed cloves of garlic in and some thyme, and baste the steak with the melted garlicy herby butter.

why garlic and thyme? Don't you just want to taste the steak?

sorry but searing doesn't hold juices in, that's just a fact. ask a food scientist. searing actually causes meat to loose more moisture, slow cooking, or sous vide will keep the most moisture in. but all starting off with a big heavy sear will do is develop lovely maillard reaction flavours. resting will also stop the meat losing moisture because the muscle fibres relax and the water will redistribute throughout the meat, if you cut into a steak just after cooking it'll just gush out.

searing is all about that maillard. Nice caramelization and crust ftw.

edit: sorry I think we're saying the same thing caze. You're right that searing alone doesn't hold in the juices. Me-mis-spoke. 

The only rubs I have used do not overpower the steak either, usually a bit of garlic, sugar, and chipotle, maybe a touch of lemon peel. 

  On 12/26/2018 at 10:26 PM, Bulk VanderHooj said:

why garlic and thyme? Don't you just want to taste the steak?

 

I do. I only really do that with a lamb steak, a pork chop or a pork tenderloin, but you could do it with a steak too if you wanted.

  On 12/26/2018 at 10:31 PM, Bulk VanderHooj said:

searing is all about that maillard. Nice caramelization and crust ftw.

 

edit: sorry I think we're saying the same thing caze.

as long as you're not saying that searing leads to juicy steaks we're good

lol I said it earlier but I know it's not true. You're right.

mmm... 

Definitely on pork tenderloin. Haven't tried it with beef and I don't really like lamb. Ok I'm going to do steak back to back this weekend, once each way lol. Once with this rub (https://silkroadspices.ca/products/old-chicago-steak-spice) and once with some thyme/garlic butter. 

This time around I marinated the steak with a little balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, touch of honey and some salt. I only rub steaks if I’m blackening in a cast iron.

Dry rub in ribs is a different story altogether.