Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Semi-success with multi-steak cooking

Last night Jenna and I had our friend Adj over for dinner to thank him for looking after our cats while we visited Jenna's family. The fact that he's also just a fun dude to hang out with obviously had no effect on our decision to do so. In any case, we went to Costco and got some shiny new steaks to cook up and I figured we should attempt a multi-steak cooking process to keep it from lasting for too long. So I busted out my little cast iron griddle to use in addition to the big skillet. heated them in the oven set to broil for like 12 minutes, then slapped the steaks on (one in each pan) and let them go for 3 minutes each on each side. herein lies the difficulty. Cooking two steaks at once seems like it may take a bit more time, since the same amount of heat is now being given two places to go instead of just one. Also, the steaks we got were unnaturally thick this time. One of them was closer to an inch and a half thick than it was to our standard inch-thick ribeyes. That should also have given me the signal that maybe it needed some extra time, but I would not be deterred. Having decided that 3 minutes is the magic length of time for steaks, I neglected to modify it, even though I had changed two of the variables.

Alas, the extra-thick steak came out pretty underdone and the steak we cooked at the same time, though of a normal size, came out slightly underdone as well. So now we know that extra-thick steaks need to be cooked for a longer time (I'm guessing 3:15) and steaks cooked together need to be cooked for a slightly longer time (I'm guessing 3:15 if they are both normal thickness, an extra :15 if they're extra thick). Still, the dinner was a resounding success, as the mashed potatoes I made the day before were still tasty (once we got them warm, which only happened after I burned myself on the container) and the broccoli was also good.

I have noticed this tendency in myself and my cooking and I need to keep an eye on it in the future. once I find something that works, I invariably change some aspect of it without modifying the rest, and am usually displeased with the results. Still, I'm also not a big fan of coming up with one way to cook something and then never ever varying that method again, so I suppose I just need to get a better handle on how to modify temperatures or cook times based on what other aspect of the recipe I'm changing.

Anyhow, after food we played the Name Game for a good long while, which was very entertaining. We learned several new names which I promptly forgot, but which may spark some kind of recognition if we pull them again down the road. Really, it was a fantastic evening, and one I'd like to repeat on a somewhat regular basis, if possible. Thanks to both Jenna and Adj for their attendance and for their company.

No comments:

Post a Comment