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I've started using flake sea salt (sort of wastefully) as my general purpose salt1. I do not season steaks before I cook them, partly out of laziness, but also because I don't notice much of a difference. One unintentional benefit of this getting to impart saltiness and texture, if using a flake salt, at the same time. Flake salt imparts, for me, all the pleasurable texture and saltiness of something like a potato chip but without all the other parts (which I generally don't care for). When I add flake salt to something like my lazy steak bowl, it feels and nearly tastes as if I crushed potato chips into it.

Footnotes

  1. I generally prefer one thing with many purposes to single purpose things in the rare cases where the multipurpose thing performs just as well.
100 sats \ 4 replies \ @freetx 6h
Speaking of steak....lately I've been grilling frozen steaks. That is I buy choice or prime+ strips/rib eyes when they're on special and freeze them. Then go straight from freezer onto grill - no seasoning obviously.
Get a good sear on outside - even though inside will still be 50F. Then season and move to cool part of grill and let go at ambient 300F until inside comes up to 125F or so. Eat.
I got the idea from America Test Kitchen....the claim (which I buy) is that overall you wind up with juicier steak since the colder inside prevents the muscle from over contracting too much and squeezing all the liquids out.
I have a suspicion that lots of steakhouses perform this trick....
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18 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 5h
I've always wanted to try cooking a frozen steak that way but never did. It makes abundant sense that you'd get a better sear. I'll try it with confidence the next chance I get.
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50 sats \ 2 replies \ @freetx 5h
It makes abundant sense that you'd get a better sear
Exactly, I think thats why it works so well. I know very high end steakhouses will blast raw steaks at like 1400F in broilers for a few mins which gets a nice crust an leaves inside medium rare. Obviously we don't have ovens that can do that, so this is a roundabout way to achieve the same result.
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25 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 5h
We usually reverse sear steaks. Even thawed, we are probably getting a worse sear because of the temperature thing.
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33 sats \ 0 replies \ @freetx 5h
Yes, I normally sous-vide steaks and then reverse sear. But agree that you can get some coloring that way, but you never get the thin crunchy layer of crust.
Doing the frozen steak trick results in a mouthfeel that is closer to "steakhouse".
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