I have always been a minimal flipper. I like putting the steak on the grill or in the pan and flipping it as few times as possible. But I was recently reading an article on Serious Eats about flipping your meat multiple times so I decided to give it a try. Their thinking behind it made sense. I didn’t fear the meat not getting seared enough and was only worried about the steak not getting cooked all the way through before the outside got over-seared.
I had some Wagyu Ribeye steaks that were given to me by Snake River Farms (disclaimer: I did receive these steaks for free to review them. Even if I paid for them I would give the same review) so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and compare them to a standard grocery store ribeye. I have not had much experience with Wagyu or Kobe beef so this was going to be in interesting test for me.
These Wagyu Ribeyes are the “Filet of Ribeye” which is the nice, round meaty part of the ribeye with most of the external fat trimmed off. After aging for 28 days these steaks are expertly vacuum packed and sealed so they will stay fresh in your freezer. The cattle these steaks come from are a cross of Wagyu and Angus so you get the marbling of a Wagyu and the flavor of Angus. You can order these steaks in 6, 8, or 10 ozs and these ones were the 8 oz variety. I weighed them and one was 8.0 ozs and one was 8.3 ozs.
Here is what these steaks look like compared with a standard grocery store ribeye:
You can see how much more marbling the Snake River Farms steaks have compared to the grocery store steak. They were also cut much thicker (1.5 inches vs a bit less than 1 inch) so the cooking times for these two steaks would be much different.
Like I mentioned earlier I wanted to try multiple flips on these steaks. The Serious Eats article suggested every 30 seconds so that is what I went with. I let the steaks come to room temperature for a bit after seasoning with salt and pepper and then I got my cast iron pan heating on the stove. I wanted to get the pan as hot as I could so I left it on high for about 5 minutes before adding a bit of canola oil to the pan. Have I ever mentioned how smokey pan searing a steak can get? Open your doors and windows:
After 5 minutes of flipping every 30 seconds the grocery store steak was reading 120 on my probe thermometer so I removed it from the heat and tented it with foil. It had some nice color on it and looked like you would expect a decent steak to look. But the thicker Waygu Ribeyes were only at 70 degrees. They already had a nice dark sear on them so I started getting worried the outside would get too burnt before they got up to temp. I kept going however for another 3 or 4 minutes before I gave up on the multiple flips. They were only up to 90 degrees but the “crust” was quickly becoming “burnt” so I moved the pan to the oven to finish. I pulled them out of the oven when they got to 120 degrees and tented them with foil. Here is what they looked like:
The steak in the back was borderline burnt on the outside but the one in front wasn’t as bad. I was pretty scared to cut into these steaks since they are about $40 each and I didn’t want a ruined steak. I don’t know if I have ever felt so much trepidation cutting into a steak but I grabbed my knife and cut in (after resting for a few minutes of course) and here is what I was rewarded with:
The steaks were a nice medium-rare which is about where I want my ribeyes. I probably could have rested them for a couple more minutes given the amount of juice on that plate but I didn’t let that juice go to waste, I poured it over my roasted potatoes. No reason to waste such deliciousness.
I sat down to the table and took a bite. My first impression was “Wow, this is moist”. As I thought, the crust on my steak was a bit bitter because it was a bit burnt but the inside was wonderful. Every bite brought a new string of flavors too. Some bites were a bit fruity, some were a bit nutty, some were grassy, and all of them were very rich. The store bought steak had pretty much just one flavor which was very good, just not as complex.
As far as texture goes in some ways it was like biting into a juicy pear. The moistness is kind of hard to describe. Because there was so much marbled fat in the meat it was very, very juicy and almost felt wet. It really didn’t taste fatty at all but as you can see in this picture there is a LOT of fat in the meat:
If you want to talk price the grocery store steak was $12.99 per pound so about $.81 per oz. The Wagyu Ribeyes cost $39 for an 8 oz steak which works out to about $4.85 per oz (that drops to $3.35 if you order 8 or more) so about 6 times as expensive. Were these steaks 6 times as good as a grocery store steak? I am not sure on that. They were at least 6 times as interesting when it comes to texture and flavor.
I don’t think I could justify dropping $80 on a couple steaks for a normal dinner but I would definitely pay for these steaks for a special anniversary dinner, a birthday dinner, or some other special occasion like that. You can order these steaks from Snake River Farms and get free shipping with code FREEAFF.
As far as the multiple flip? I don’t know if I would try it again with a steak this thick. Maybe I got my pan too hot as well. I have two more of these steaks in the freezer and will probably cook them with the reverse sear method to see how they turn out. I am not throwing the multiple flip method out the window yet but it will be on the back burner for a bit.
