Valentine Steak Night

0:00Welcome to the barbecue show you guys in a grill and now with the tastiest tips recipes and stories. It's stunned and Jake. Hey, that's us. Thanks so much for joining us once again on the barbecue show. As always to my left is the stunt. And tomorrow it's Jake Paul, everybody. An hour packed episode for you today as we work our way into the holiday weekend. Some holidays. You probably should start shopping for a gift for Valentine's day if you haven't done so already. I'm just saying get on it. They got chocolates at the gas station if you need. Right, right, right. That's the beauty of it. Are you one of those people that do do that ever? You know where you go on a trip and you're at the duty free in the airport on your way home buying gifts and souvenirs for everybody. Because you didn't do it while you were on vacation. No, you're sorry. You care?

1:00I don't care. You just don't buy gifts. I don't buy gifts. What to be fair? I don't go anywhere. Enough times actually think about buying people gifts. So there is that. All right, well that's that probably. And then you said duty free and I started giggling. So that tells me enough right there. Yeah, that kind of sums it up. Best souvenir I ever got was from the Philippines. And it's inappropriate to display anywhere. Let's just say it's a little man in a barrel. If you lift up the barrel, his arms and legs shoot out on springs and other appendages as well. Got it. So enough said let's move on. I was from an employee of mine. I was an employee. I said, hey, when you go home to the Philippines, she was from the Philippines bringing back something cool when she's like, I did. That's awesome. Thank you. There you go. Her name was Pia. Okay. Anyway, I digress. Today we're going to talk about Valentine's Day. We're going to more importantly, more specifically, steak night, date night. That's right. Because you don't have to do steak night at a restaurant.

2:02You got the equipment at home. You can do it and you make it just as nice. If not better. I mean, you and I talk about this often. You can't order it. We can't order steaks at a restaurant. Most times or not, you can do just as good a job at home if not better. The exception to the rule, I guess I would say, is if you're going to a steak, a specialty place. Yes. Get the specialty thing they're known for. You know what I'm saying? If you're going to mayonnaise, get a steak. You know what I mean? I can make a steak at home. If you're going to Bergen, get a steak. Yeah. But, you know, same thing if you're going to a seafood place, get the seafood. No, I usually get the pasta. I was going to say. You think? Yeah, they don't. Hey, this sushi place is amazing. Do you have cheeseburger? I want a cheeseburger. I don't like to see this. It's fine. It's fine. All right. How was your Super Bowl? You know what? It wasn't too bad. The game itself, obviously, was what it was. But the food turned out great. So we had the smoked queso. The game. The game anyway. Sorry. Oh, yeah.

3:02The game. All you needed was a seven or two. And you had, oh, poor Jake. That a huge board, huge board, a half time score paid out. Five grand, final score paid out. Ten grand. I have seven seven. You're going to be like, win. You got something. I tiptoed through Sunday morning, like, it's going to be a great day, everybody. Yeah. No touchdowns. No sevens. Anyway. It is what it is. Yeah. But the game, the party was fun. I'm sorry. I interrupted you. No, you had the queso. So we had smoked queso at our place. We also had, we had bacon wrapped pork loin or pork lollipops. They're on a skewer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I grilled those up. And honestly, I could have did better looking back on it now. I should have, like, used them as they were cooking. I think what it is made them a little bit more fun to eat. But the bacon, Chris, stop on it. I put a little seasoning before I put them on there. And it turned out to be a fantastic bite. It was really good. What did you do season wise?

4:03Did you go because you were talking about a pork tenderloin with bacon wrapped around it on a stick. Yep. Did you, did you stay sweet? Did you add a little heat? A little bit of heat. It was the hot barbecue seasoning from Killer Hogs. Okay. That's what I went with. That's one of my favorite pork seasoning. So that's what I went with. And it was good. It turned out great. So that was really good. And then we also did meat. Well, we don't want to call it meat muffins, meat cupcakes. It was meatloaf. Okay. And the muffin tin. Oh. But then it has, first with a piece of bacon and then wrap it around. Then put the meatloaf in and then cook it. And I did that. And then when you serve it, you serve it with a dollop of mashed potatoes on top, some barbecue sauce. And then I also bought chives. I ended up not using, but you put chives on top of it too a little bit and make it look real pretty. I got a photo up on our barbecue show Facebook page. I think it turned out fantastic. Flavor wise. Now what did you do? What did you do with the meat? Did you leave just like standard ground beef and roll together? Did you doctor it? Oh, I doctor it. Okay. Yeah.

5:03We had a pond of pork, pond of beef. And then we put, there's three eggs in there, breadcrumbs. And then we went with meat church holy cow. I went with paprika. I mean, which is funny because meat church holy cow has a lot of stuff already. Right. But I just sprinkled that in at the very end. Before that, I put in paprika, ground mustard, ground garlic powder. I just got, I guess those were called. And trying to put in there a few other things. I put a few other things in there. All right. Just to keep, just, I added to it quite a bit and it turned out fantastic. So actually, I think there's one more left if you want to try it. I am. We cold. It's your choice. Yeah. We could go wrong. What could possibly go wrong here? Sure. Sure. It's still fine. Yeah. I'm sure it's fine. I know a lot of people, we've talked about this obviously when we've talked burgers, you know, hamburgers, cheeseburgers. I am, I'm a purist when it comes to that. Now I don't mind mixing meats together like you want to add some pork into your ground beef if you want to add, you know, a little bit, it's something along those lines. But I get away from, you know, doctrine up the meat too much with other stuff.

6:06Now if you're doing a meat loafy type thing, it makes sense. Yeah. I wouldn't do much with my burger, but this, I thought it okay. How the bread crumbs react for you? Did they just add a little structure, a little texture? A little structure. Okay. I actually wouldn't have done that, but the recipe I found online, six, I never make me a loaf. I don't know. And so I took what they said and added what I wanted to it as well, right? So that's where I found the bread crumbs. We're supposed to put a cup of it in. I don't have bread crumbs. So we had some hot dog buns. I need to be tossed anyway because they're getting stale. So I use those and they turned out fantastic. No pork rind though, huh? No pork rinds. That would have been brilliant. But yeah, that's fine. So, but it sounds like what I'm looking at is the presentation. I can see where it looks like a cupcake with the mashed potatoes. It's like frosting. I probably, I don't know. He doesn't pay attention anything else. I only believe about, you know, a fifth of what I see online. Everything else I just assume is made up. You know, it's all fabricated. There is that. But not with the barbecue show folks. This is how the photo turned out. And it's those kinds of shives and a little bit more bacon on top.

7:09But yeah, that's cute. Yeah. Sorry. One of those will get you pretty full, I think. I was going to say, yeah, a couple of those, you're good. Yeah. Should hit the spot. We went snacky at our party. We had ribs, but we're done party ribs. So, yes, I saw you sprinting though. Smoked them individually instead of doing them as a rack and then cutting them up. Did them individually. And they were, those turned out really well. I gotta give credit to, we're credits due to John. Above and beyond John did the ribs. We had some wings that were fantastic. We did a variety of, there was a bunch of other stuff. I think somebody had some vegetables somewhere, but I don't know. I didn't eat those. There's vegetables. Yeah, don't worry. Tara also had a veggie tray. And I'm like, why, why do you do this? You know, people come into the house. Aren't coming here to eat vegetables. That's the same thing. Sunday, my wife would always put a veggie tray out. And then at the end of the night when we were cleaning up, I'd always just toss what was left into the yard for the rabbits. Here you go. Yeah, enjoy. It's been of your, I know you got thousands of kids to feed. Your party ribs.

8:09It looks like you had some brown sugar and butter in there as well. Yeah. You brought some butter. Yeah, looks good. Yeah, Dr. I'm up and then sauce them. Let them go on the smoker in a big pan. And then when they were about ready, added more sauce. The secret ingredient, of course, as we showed you in the video. You did. A bottle of fireball. And to get the last little bit of barbecue sauce out, which I was a little hesitant. I was like, I don't know about cinnamon on the wings. Fantastic. You really didn't give it a cinnamon at all. I just added a little more complexity to the flavor. Nice. And they were great. I had a little bite to them. I had a bit of a mishap with my smoked cheeses. Okay. Where I put the cheeses on Saturday evening. And I threw them out on the smoker, went inside, and I did two different kinds. And I was like, okay, I'll check on those a little bit. And then when I went out and checked on them, and it got windy and my temp had dropped away. It was like an 80 degrees. Oh. I'm like, oh, I'm fine. It's not doing anybody good.

9:09So I popped them up a little more. Came out an hour and a half later. Oh, they look good. I'm going to give them about another hour just to see how they end up. Forgot about them. This is a classic Jake. I got busy screwing around in the house. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, wait. And at this point, because I started this at like seven or eight o'clock. And at this point, everyone else in the house is going to bed. And I was like, so I run out there and they're okay. I mean, they're on the edge of this is a non. Yeah, this is probably close to too much, but it's going to be fine. So I take the pans in the house, because it's late and I'm done screwing around. I'm going to let them just sit in the oven and just rest tomorrow. I'll bag them up and take them to the party. Yeah. Which I know everybody, Scotty and Mike Altamari are like, you've got to give them a couple days rest. I know, but it was a lot of time for that. I was in her. Anyway, Sunday, I come up stairs with my wife's like, I had no idea that you had cheesets in the oven. Oh, no. So she preheated the oven to make biscuits for breakfast.

10:13Let's just say that the top layer was black. Oh, no. I was like, oh, man. So I went through and I picked out the burnt ones but it still was not great. There was a little flavor there, but they were not great. Those poor cheesets had a heck of a run. They tried their best to stay alive for you. Yeah. Well, and I tried to get a little, because I like crispy. You do. I like my toast to be dark. I don't want warm bread. Yep. So I used a batch. I did a double batch of extra toasty cheesets. So they were already toasty. I will say that they didn't get eaten a lot at the party. I brought them home and throughout the week I've been snacking on them. And they get better tasting every day. Oh, that's good. You know, again, as they sit and they absorb the flavors a little more. And they work out fine. But yeah, that was just lack of attention on my part. And I did three sticks of cream cheese. Yes. There's one cream cheese I mixed up. And I put, instead of taking the pepper jelly and putting it on at the end and letting it just kind of candy up,

11:16I mixed it in with the cream cheese and let it smoke that way. And that actually was really solid. That sounds good. I did that, by the way, with instead of a traditional candy spicy jelly like you would use on your cream cheese, I used famous Dave's sweet and spicy pickle relish. Oh. And it was amazing. Because we were joking about how they're making spicy pickle everything nowadays. And I thought, why couldn't you do that with a cream cheese dip? So we gave it a try. Give it a try. And it turned out really well. That's awesome. So yeah, the cheese was turned out great. And you know, like I said, other than the game itself, it was a fantastic time. So we hope your Super Bowl turned out in the food turned out the way you hoped and planned. And the game finished the way you hoped and planned as well. And everybody was happy. Let's do this. We're going to talk date night because, you know, it's Valentine's Day weekend. I'm off to hook on that. We'll get into that in a little bit. But we're going to talk steaks today on the show. And we'll do that with the barbecue show continues as we roll on right after this.

12:21For photographic evidence of the barbecue food, like and follow the barbecue show on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Fire that thing up. Click the dons and let's get grilling. You're tuned into the barbecue show. With Stodden Jay. Hey, that's us. Welcome back to the barbecue show. How's my new favorite one? It definitely should be a butter named after me because I'm so smooth. I'm so smooth. There you go. That's us the smooth guys. Hopefully you can be one of the smooth guys this weekend because it's date weekend. There we go. That implies maybe you only have one day to week a year, but you know. Well, it's the one your wife seems to care about. So pay attention, gentlemen. Now there's definitely that. I get off to hook a little bit of my house because her birthday is the 15th. So I'm going to do something nicer right away the next day anyway. So as long as whatever. And I proposed on the 13th, which was not really planned, but I did.

13:21Nobody plans those proposals. They just sort of happen. We just show it up. Whatever. Here it is. Hey, look what I found. It's a ring. Oh, careful. The hobbits are looking for it. I don't know if you ever see this. I can miss Lord of the Rings thing. Yeah, I got it. I tried to watch the Lord of the Rings when I was fighting off the illness a couple of months ago. Yeah. What it feels like several months ago. At 27 minutes, I think I made it into the hobbit. The first one Lord of the Rings or whatever it's called. Yeah. Yeah, I can't. Yeah, it's a no for me for sure. I get it. If you're into it, cool. Good for you. Anyway, we're talking date weekend. Oh, yeah. Topic. Yeah. The two topics we love on the show date weekend and bath weekend. Two weeks. Bath weekend. Two weekends. We celebrate. What's bath weekend? It's medieval thing. You know, say it's finally warm enough to bathe. Oh. You mean you only shower or bathe one time a week? One time a month. A year. A year. Never mind. Anyway. Yeah.

14:21We're going to I also have a bonus at my house because my youngest was born around Valentine's day. You don't remember. Father of the Year award. Not for Jake. But this weekend, you have it. Her official birthday was on Thursday, the 12th. Oh, okay. But her party is on Saturday night. Is on Valentine's day. Night. Okay. Uh, 13 year olds. Eight of them. Over night. What could possibly go wrong? Yeah. Thank goodness for noise canceling headphones, right? Last year, I don't want to get us off the track here, but last year it was a black light karaoke rave party. That's right. I remember that. He stopped over. It was insane. They were running all over the house. Well, with wireless microphones attached to speakers, it was yelling from wherever they were. Oh, man. It was, it was pretty cool when it was going, but let's talk steaks because steak is like, I think the short of seafood, which you got to wonder, like, what kind of seafood steak is

15:22the perfect date night meal because you can get a big steak, a little steak, there's different flavors or flavors, different cuts of steak. You can't go wrong with a good steak. It's just a nice, classy meal. It is. It's a very classic date food. You're going out. You're going to spend some money on a date night. If you are going to go out, you're going to end up spending some money on a steak and it looks classy. The thing is that we're going to talk about today, you can make it look exactly like that while at home. I agree. And the, where do you want to start on this because there's so many different avenues that we can go down as far as, you know, type of steak, cooking style. I was saying, let's start with the cut of steak. Okay. That's a good place to start. Because I mean, because are you, do you do New York strip, maybe other time you grill, then on date night, you go ribeye tonight, t-bone tonight, what do you do? Is there a special reason you want to go with a different kind of cut? I know, I know a guy who does, who likes to cook today. It's not me also, by the way, but a friend of mine who does surlines when they're doing steaks on just a random day. Okay. He gets a big pack, a four pack of surlines or whatever, and does surlines.

16:24And they're great. You grow them up. They're fantastic. But special occasions, t-bones or porterhouse. Okay. Because it's a special occasion. Yeah. And so then, you know, that's, that's the way it goes. The father's day is the big t-bone and big porterhouse because that just kind of screams dad, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. It just sort of does. And you get the multiple cuts in there as well. I personally, t-bone and porterhouse, and I say them together like that because they're not technically the same, but they're pretty close. The porterhouse just thicker, right? It's cut further down so you get a bigger, you get more of one and less of the other. Okay. Lindsay the blonde butcher is so mad at us right now. He's proud. Yes. I thought you guys knew what you were talking about. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. But at any rate, and a lot of it too is geography. You know, right. I think it's Australia. They don't even have t-bones. They only have porterhouse. Okay. So it just depends on what you're into. But for me, that's, I just, when you're dealing with a t-bone especially, and I don't want to use our whole time talking about t-bones and porterhouses, you've got a bone

17:25in there which changes the, if the cooking effect. So your edges might be perfect, but in by that bone, it's not. It's different. So you have to factor that in. It's also harder to eat unless you're going to go, you know, caveman on it and pick it up and know I heard you're off the bone, like with a pork chop. And if it's a date night, you maybe don't want to do that. Yeah. The fans you want is obviously, as the English would call it, the philette, the philette. The philé is obviously the, you know, top line. Yeah. That's the top of the top. Again, I like a little more marbling in my meat. So I saved 30 bucks at a restaurant by not ordering the philé. True. It's interesting. And we went, where'd we go for the birthday party show gun. We went to great steak. But the, the perfect example, the wife had philé, I had the New York strip. I didn't think you'd be much different. You could definitely tell the difference in the cut by chewing into that. Both that philé, but that philé was just that much more tender and just had a different shot, a bite to it in general. So, no, I agree. And again, it's, it's fantastic.

18:27I like a little of that fat in there. So I always go for the strip. Yeah. I always go strip as well. I was going to ask about ribeye because it's especially on date night. I feel like ribeye is harder to hit because of the extra marbling that's in there. A little bit more fat, which I mean a lot of people love. I get very frustrated when I cook my ribeye because I feel like it's always fatier than I want. Is there, do you, you just got to cook it a little bit longer? Like, how do you see that part of it? Well, two things I would point out about the ribeye, especially when it comes to the, the ribeye, most ribeys have a fat, it's an eye in the middle of it. Yep. And I see a lot of guys what they'll do is they'll cut that, that big chunk of fat out. Okay. And if you cut that eye a fat out of the center of your ribeye and then push it back together, it fits perfectly. Okay. Like the glove. It just re kind of commits itself. If it's a big one, you might want to string it. Right. I don't do a lot with the string because I'm not a good, and I never did the boy scout things. I'm terrible with knots. Yeah. But it is a nice way to hold it back together and you can do that. The other thing I find with my ribeys is that what inevitably ends up happening, especially

19:28if I'm cooking several of them, as the fat starts to render down, your ribeye kind of falls into two or three pieces. You kind of end up with your cap and then the one side and then your other smaller piece. And I end up usually just pulling those apart and they become separate, smaller states kind of a thing. But if you do it right, that fat and you get it rendered down, the tricky part is rendering that fat down to the perfect spot without overcooking the meat. And that can get a little bit dicey. The good news about the ribeye, and there's a reason you'll see it in the price, is that even if you overcook your ribeye a little bit, it's still tender, it's still flavorful. Whereas like a sirloin or a filet, if you overcook that, it gets tough. Yeah. And you don't run into that as much with the ribeye, which is really, really nice. So that's kind of an extra little bonus, if you will, as far as just finding that perfect little nuance. If I'm looking at date night, my number one is going to be filet, number two is going to be ribeye, number three is going to be strip. And you know, from there on down, I don't know, what about you?

20:29No, I think, I mean strip, I feel like every day cooked, so I'm going to either go with the filet, or I'm going to go with the ribeye because I feel like the ribeye is nice. But nice a t-bone. Yeah. And that looks pretty awesome on the grill too. It looks like you're really tried something when you got a big piece of meat like that on there. And when I think date night, I think about going out and trying to replicate that a lot of times, I'll get the strip, because I'm cheap, and I don't want to pay the extra for that. So more to continue in a moment. You're listening to The Barbecue Show, and we'll be right back with more. Oh, yeah. Barbecue show is back. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a Jake. Welcome to Valentine's Day weekend. So glad you could join us on all these great stations. I'm trying to convince my kid that this is you and I singing this. Yeah, you got it in the studio one day, you started riffing, and this is what happened. She's like, she just gives me that 13 year look like.

21:32No dad. Yeah, anyway. They know everything now. Yeah, they do. Valentine's Day weekend, as I mentioned, and we're talking date night, we're talking steaks really specifically. Different ways to cook steaks. The last thing that we talked about, the different cuts, and yes, there are probably hundreds of different steaks cuts that you can get into, and you know, flat irons and denvers and flanks and all kinds of stuff. But we're talking about a slab of meat you're going to throw on your grill. What grill are we throwing it on, stunt? Well, we're doing steaks, we're doing charcoal. Let's get into it. Yeah, charcoal, I think for sure. Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you don't have the option, obviously you can do it on your blackstone or propane grill as well. This would be the one where I would recommend staying away from your pellet smoker. It's not going to get as hot as you want it to be, unless you're going to want us to do the smoking reverse seer type situation. But I think you want to be on a hot, I've adopted this from you, and definitely I think tastes better when you go hot and fast, and you get that steak off, you let it sit for a little bit, and you dive in, and it's right there.

22:34So here's where I will, here's where I'll differ with you a little bit on this. I just thought I was going to agree with you. No, I agree. Everything you said, I definitely agree with, but here's what I'm going to, the caveat I would throw into this is that we're talking today's show is about steaks, but it's about date night steaks. Oh, I see you're going to go. Okay. So my thing is, and I realize we're kind of weird at my house, we do steaks a lot, especially through the summer. I mean, for years, it's been Sunday of steak night, and we do steaks. And before you think I'm all that boozy, most of the time again, it's the Sam's Club Four Pack of Surlines, and we throw a couple on it, and they're great. They're fantastic. You get the right sides, and it's good. And it's 90% of the time is done on charcoal. Right. If it's date night, and we're doing steaks, which is something we do a lot of, I'm going to do it differently just because it's date night, I want to do, I want to, I want to make it special. Okay. Again, as boozy as it sounds, a season, a perfectly seasoned steak on some hot charcoal, and nail that thing to, you know, medium rare, it's kind of same old, same old.

23:36You know, I don't want to make a sound like it's easy, but it's just kind of the same old, same old. So this is where I would get a little more adventurous with, with some extra, some extra flavor and a aromatic, I'm ready for this because then you get a little more of a flavorful steak, and it's not the same old steak that you get, which is why you go out for date night. You want to get something that's a little different. Right. So you're doing something different, right? So I'm going to lean in at this point, I'm going to lean into the flat top or the cast iron on the charcoal or cast iron on the, like my gas grill has a side burner that I can get pretty hot. And here, you still want that hot, hot heat. You still want to have that, that good, you know, you really want to get a good sear and a good crust on it. Right. But I'm going to go with, I'm going to go with on a cast iron pan or on the flat top. I'm going to do side one with a little bit of butter, and then I'm going to introduce as I flip it, especially this is why it's great in a cast iron pan. Then you're going to introduce some butter, because you don't want to do too soon, you don't want to burn the butter. Yep. Then I'm going to introduce some thyme, maybe some rosemary, and some garlic cloves that I

24:40just peeled, whole cloves peeled, and then smashed them a little bit. You know, don't take the time to dice them up. I mean, you can go crazy if you want to, but just because you're just trying to add a little bit. You're adding the flavor to it. You're not going to eat the garlic. You're not making a garlic steak. You're just enhancing the flavor and the aromatics of the steak with that. And then what I'm going to do is when that bottom side is searing and it gets seared, then I'm going to get into, instead of like on the charcoal, I'm going to go a couple minutes on each side until I think it's perfect and peeled off. On the flat top or on the cast iron, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go a really hard fast sear on each side, and then I'm going to go 30 seconds on this side, 30 seconds on this side, and I'm going to keep flipping back and forth to keep the cook even until I get it there. But I'm also going to be basting that butter and garlic and rosemary thyme back over the top of it to add to that flavor profile and to kind of just give it a little bit of that extra brilliant when you get the butter in there, paying that just, that really adds

25:42to the flavor and the tenderness of it. And when you put the butter that's been cooking with the herbs, you know, with your rosemary and your thyme and your garlic, that just infuses down into the meat as well. And so now you get a fancy steak that you made on your back patio. Not a bad idea, now, that's really good. We went on a date night two years ago, I want to say, I was for a birthday slash Valentine's day to this place called Traveille in Robbinsdale, it wasn't far from Heckimula, it's not far from there actually. Anyway, and you cooked your own meal, we paid a lot of money to cook your own meal by the way. That's a whole other conversation. But like you said, it's a very restaurant quality, you taste those different flavors in there from the garlic. By the way, you know, you keep garlic in a jar, do you know, or keep the thyme? Where? In a bottle. If I could do that, keep thyme in the bottle, that's so great. Sorry. No, no, no, don't get it. Yo, no, you earned every bit of that. I worked for it. You definitely put your thyme in.

26:43Here's the thing, the difference between when you go to a great steakhouse, and you think, wow, how come we can't do steaks like that at home? There's typically, I'm going to say three basic reasons. One is the cut of meat. A lot of them are using better cuts of meat, but don't get scared off by that, because if you're buying them, put your shop or a meat counter cut of the steak, you're probably in the ballpark of what the restaurant you go to is using also, you know, and they're not using top-of-the-line wagyu every single time. Right. We didn't talk about wagyu yet, but I'll mention that in a minute. The other thing that you have to remember, it's the cooking style. When people talk about one of the reasons people like to eat at home is because it's healthier. Your head would probably explode if you knew how much seasoning and how much butter your average high-end restaurant uses when they prepare your food. It's mind-boggling. Yeah. So when your mother-in-law is like, that seems like a lot of seasoning to me. You can trust me. This is not a lot of seasoning. So don't be afraid to overseason. You can only scrape a little off if you think it's too much, but you'd be amazed how

27:44much of it cooks off in the pan and does not infuse into the meat, so you have to be careful that you do that. The other thing is the temperature that you cook at. A good steakhouse is probably broiling their steak at like 1700 degrees, and that flame is an inch and a half away from the meat. Right. And they're just, they're hitting that thing hard, and then they're probably finishing it in an oven to get it up to the proper temp they want to serve it so that it's nice and warm when it comes out. That's the difference between what we do with a steak that's three quarters of an inch thick rather than an inch and a half, and so on and so forth. So don't be afraid to play around a little bit with that. I mean, once you start doing a steak in a cast iron pan around the flat top with some butter and you're moving it around and you're flipping it more, you know, it's not a cheeseburger. You don't have to flip it only once, you know, flip it a few times to get it nice and even and get that color good. And then you also don't overseer it. Right. So you don't, you know, you want it seared and you want it that golden brown, but you don't want it black. You don't want to burn it. And I hate to keep talking about restaurant steaks because we were talking about doing this at home, but we went to our date night a few weeks ago before, months ago, yes,

28:46already before a show. And we had the St. Paul Grills where it was right in that way, goo, which was a lot of money for a two by two piece of steak, but it was delicious in a hat that perfect golden cross to talk about having too much seasoning or not and had to be just, I mean, they knew what they're doing. It's perfect. And you just got a break when you cut through the, well, the knife, you heard it kind of cut through that crust and the rest was like butter. Yes. And it was just such a wonderful. That was a really great steak. One of the top five steaks I've ever had. And yeah, it just to your point of getting that crust on there and the seasoning was perfect. So whatever they put on there, it was never too much because it definitely had flavor. It was really enjoyable. I agree. Here's the thing I'm going to suggest as well. It looks fancy and we've discussed this before. If you're going with the filet, I don't care how you're cooking it. If it's got bacon wrapped around it, take the bacon on. Oh, you don't need the bacon. I mean, it's just for one, it never crisps up the way you want it to. So it's hard to eat. Yep. For two, I mean, I like it. I mean, it looks neat in the counter.

29:46You know, through the glass of the butcher at the butcher, you're like, wow, that looks really great. But once you start cooking it, keeping the bacon on there, now you've got a toothpick in the middle, which is going to affect your cook temp and things like that. I'm just not a fan. If that's your deal, man, go for it. Enjoy it. But to me, I just think that you can do way better without that on there. Yeah. And more so, I think they put that on there to dress up a cheaper piece of meat normally. I've said that for eons. It's just, you know, it comes down to what you, what you really like. The key here is there's two ways to really, really nail a steak. One is hot and fast, like we've talked about, not depending on the thickness of that steak and the, the temp that you can get. Now, most people in their backyard on their gas grill or, you know, your flat top or even your cast underpants, you're only getting, you're only going to get so much heat. So you have to make sure you're probably going to do your whole cooking on that apparatus. If your steak is an inch or less thick, you're going to do all your cooking at that as you see it. Yes. If it's much thicker than that, then you might need to consider doing it hot and fast on a cast iron pan and then slipping that steak into the gas grill or the oven for 10 or 15

30:52minutes to let it finish. It comes up to medium rare in the middle. But be careful with that because you can really take a steak over quickly, especially if the steak is not that, maybe you've got one that's like an inch and a quarter inch and a half thick and you've seared it really, really well. And then you take the whole pan and slide it into the oven. More than about four minutes, you're probably pulling that steak out and it's going to be medium well. Yeah. So just be careful on that because you can really, you can really go wrong. We had steaks a few weeks ago. I'm not sure I've even told you. We had a flare up on the charcoal and I wasn't paying attention and I saw it, pulled it off really quick and I looked at it and I'm like, oh, that's got to be done because it's getting real close to black right there and cut in past that crust though and to be imperfect. We must have had the flare up soon enough in the cook where it was like, probably I didn't temp it, but it's probably like a 135 or something in the middle, just still pink. But the outside was just a good crust, basically charred, but it was still actually pretty decent flavor. So it was a cool experience because I was like, and I just ruined our steaks, but we're still going to eat them.

31:53Because it's what we got. Turned out pretty good. That is a great point. If you're going with hot and fast, you got to pay attention, don't be walking around the house. This isn't a plastic grill outside. Yeah. This is not a pellet smoker. Smoker in my house is it takes longer to get the charcoal ready than it does to cook the stance. So you got to be right there. Now, the other thing you can do is, again, for date night, I wouldn't use the smoker, but you can slowly take the steak to about 95, 100 degrees in your regular grill or your smoker, then put it on the high heat and flash that thing and go take it to the desire temp and get your crust in there and add some extra things if you want to do it that way. But to me, that's a lot of screwing around when you could just nail it. A couple of things we have not talked about, which we're going to do after we take a quick break is we need to talk about sides because it's a date night. And if you've got a gal, she's going to wonder where the sides are. Guys are happy with the meal. We got to have the rest. And you tipped on it mistakes, mistakes that people have made.

32:53I got a doozy for it because we all make mistakes, but again, it might have been the save of the century. I'm excited to hear what it is. Maybe it's speculation. Maybe it's me just over reaching a little bit. I don't know. We'll find out in a minute. Date night, steak night on the barbecue show. One more seven. Oh, and the barbecue show mail bag. We got a lot to do and a very small amount of time to do it. So quick break. We're right back on the barbecue show right after this. You're listening to the barbecue show with stunt and Jake. We're back. It's Valentine's Day weekend. If you're listening to this live, we're talking date night, steak night, we can steak is the perfect date night food. Well, it's an easy one to do at home, so you don't have to leave. That's right. We've covered a lot of bases so far, but we have not talked about sides.

33:56Yeah, one of the things that does guys will tend to forget about pretty quickly, I feel like he's not the truth. Meets the star for us, right? Right. The wife always thinks she needs to have some sort of green thing on the side. We've been actually ordering a lot of firecracker green beans lately, by the way, even I've enjoyed those, believe it or not. I was like, whoa, what is this? That firecracker seasoning is actually pretty good. I'm sure that all is, but that's what she called it when she brought it home and I cooked it and it tastes good. Firecracker shrimp. I've seen a lot of it. See, that's what I've heard of before. Firecracker green beans. So when it comes to sides, I am a big fan of, especially if you're doing a steak and you're doing it as a date night and you want it to be, if you're doing it fancy-like, everything we've talked about tonight, then what my suggestion is definitely going to be, keep it simple. Less is more. Yeah. If you've got a beautiful steak, you don't need the fanciest sides you can come up with. I think, for me, shrimp on the grill is a great addition to go with your steak.

34:57Yes. Especially then, too, because you can go with a smaller cut of meat. If you go a little smaller piece of meat, that's a little thicker. It gives you more leeway for error when you're cooking the steak. But then, with a few shrimp, it doesn't overdo it. And there, here again, I'm talking a little olive oil, maybe some butter, salt, pepper, garlic, or you can get crazier. I like a little Greek seasoning sometimes, or a firecracker if you want to go with a little spice. Yeah. If it's date night, you might not want to get too spicy. Yeah. That's true. You know? Yeah. Bad breath. Bad breath. Heartburn might ruin plans for go dancing later for whatever you're thinking. Yes. You're going to go dancing. I will say some things to avoid, too. You're talking about the ones you got to do those different things. Heavy stuff. Because it's going to take away real quick from your actual steak. I'm a big match of data and mac and cheese guy, and I understand those are definitely heavy choices that maybe go good for your barbecue, and they have friends coming over. Probably that's the best for a date night, is it? It is not a bad idea to keep it light, and have those choices be something smaller so

35:59that you don't have to worry about having that indigestion later or going, why not finish my plate. That was too much. The classic girl toparagus. Here's the beauty, too. If you're going to do a steak, asparagus, and some shrimp, which I think would cover it, some people might say any more, but you can do all of that outside on the grill. I like a little olive oil on the asparagus, roll it around, hit it with some salt pepper garlic, or just a little salt and pepper, and then just grill it. Whether it's on your charcoal grill, your gas grill, or whatever grill, grill it till it looks kind of grilled. I like to get a couple grill marks on there. That really adds to the presentation of what, and then when you take it off and put it on a little tray, hit that maybe with some lemon. Squeeze some lemon juice in it. Yes, I love that. That just bangs. That's it off. But it's classy. It's classic. It's simple. It adds to the meal really well. I can't believe I'm going to say this. It adds to the meal and adds to the plate. Again, mashed potatoes, macachies are kind of a yellow, they're pale, green, really looks

37:00good on your plate. If you're trying to make it appealing to the eye, you would at a restaurant at a date night, it definitely helps. You know, if we're going to put a candle on the table at a date night, because it looks like you tried even harder, guys. And crusty bread, I see you made a note about crusty bread. That's a good one. We love to get lucky. I love bread with steaks. I don't know why. French, like a French baguette. And you cut that thing on a bias, right? Yep. And then you can do this again. You can do this on the grill if you want. The oven is a lot easier inside. Take your pieces in a basting brush and baste a little olive oil on both sides. Maybe hit it with just the slightest little bit of salt. Throw that thing in the oven and let those crisp up nice. And then take them out and put them in a little bread basket and then get some little what do you call those little ramekins? Yes. And then you put the ramekin and you pour olive oil and some balsamic vinegar in there together. And then you dip your crusty bread in a restaurant. Yeah. Boom. And you know what that takes? Nothing. Nothing. It takes 30 seconds of prep and you look like a rock star. Oh, you had a note on here about, so we've been prepping, guys.

38:03We've been actually like making show notes. It's just kind of weird. I don't know what to do with myself. We're going. We're going places. Steaks fails. This isn't really a complete fail. But the Jake and Jen honeymoon up at, we took a couple like a long weekend. I forgot, married up in Alexandria. Okay. Somebody gifted us some, some fillets wrapped in bacon. There was an issue with the, we had a gas grill up there. The old school Weber with like the griddle type top. It wasn't really a griddle, but it was all cast iron. It had a valve issue. And if you didn't open the valve for the gas line really, really slowly, it would trigger the sensor in there. So you would only get about an eighth of an inch of flame. And I tried, I tried four or five times to get this thing to light and get heat because I want to do these things hot and fast. I couldn't get them. And it took 45, 55 minutes to cook these steaks because I could not get enough heat. And when they were done, they were amazing. They were probably the best steaks I've ever done on a grill because they ended up being

39:03low and slow. And because they sat there in that same spot absorbing heat as long as they did, they did get just the finest little layer of crust. And they turned out that they were fantastic. So if things go sideways, the life gives you lemons. You make fillets. Beautiful. Nice. You can never know. You can pull it out. But don't just give up and panic. Take your time, switch gears and go a different direction. It turned out to be fantastic. And it worked out, worked out really really well. And it should have been a note to your wife. And he tells me it's going to be ready in 15 minutes. It's never ready in 15 minutes. Three hours later. It was honeymoon. You shouldn't know. I should have figured out. What do we got in the mail bag? Oh, man. Here we go. Real quick. I think we're running short on time. Yeah, we got like a minute. Yeah. So we have from Matt and Fairmont. Thank you for texting in by her, not texting to email it in, ask the BBQ show at gmail.com. He says, I made steaks last week, same issue kind of he was on the grill but took forever. I don't think I'm doing charcoal, charcoal right. How do I know when the charcoal's ready to cook on? Am I supposed to wait till it's covered in a bit of ash?

40:05Do I spread them out? Do I lean piled up? So on so forth, kind of make it a quick here. He wants to make steak night for his wife again soon. How can you do it? Easy. Number one, get a chimney if you don't already have one. That's the best way to start your charcoal and keep it pure and tasting good. Use more charcoal than you think. Okay. When the charcoal, when all the layers, when you're looking at the chimney are gray as far down as you can see, then your charcoal's probably ready. Help it in a pile, like a mountain. Keep the mountain. Don't lay it out flat because you want to have a heat source. It's up close to the grate. If you need to, if it looks like you don't have enough cooking surface on near the top, add some more charcoal and mix it in and then kind of make sure you get it ready. But what you're looking for is everything to be that gray, ashy look so that it, then you'll know that you've got the heat. Perfect. So to this point, covered in ash kind of is the way you want to look. If your charcoal is still partially black, it's too soon. Okay. That's the biggest thing. You want flames you not of it or not? Sure. Okay.

41:05Flames still coming out or not. Okay. Sometimes I don't know if you want it just to be sitting there and like, just, you know, just coasting. Nope. If you've got little flames popping in here and there, that's okay. Because again, you're going to move it to the hot spot and then move it off the hot spot. Right. You know, when you're cooking with charcoal, it's an active dance. There you go. So actively dance with your steak and your date night and let us know how it goes. So experiment and have fun. Now go fire that thing up. Thanks for listening to The Barbecue Show with stunt and Jake. Missed an episode? Get up anytime on your favorite podcast platform. Just search for the BBQ show. Until next time, fire that thing up.