Episode 9: The Perfect Steak

Episode 9: The Perfect Steak
A great way to impress a dinner guest—or treat the dad in your life for Father’s Day!—is with a perfectly cooked steak. Still, a high quality steak can be expensive to purchase, so the last thing you’ll want to do is mess it up during the cooking process. But don’t worry: I’ll teach you how to cook the perfect steak! I’ll go over the best cuts to buy and the foolproof cooking methods you’ll need to know to sear your beef the right way. Ready to tackle the perfect steak?
Show Notes & Links for Episode 9:
What We Ate:
We just spent a week in Maui, and savored tons of tasty bites while chilling out on vacation. Our family heads to Maui about once a year ’cause we were suckered into buying a timeshare many moons ago, when my resolve was weakened by an mind-altering affliction called pregnancy. (But to be honest, we haven’t regretted it!)
As usual, we visited our favorite restaurants and hunted for new culinary finds while we were on the island, but my favorite bite of the week was on our final morning on Maui, when we cut up a sweet, aromatic, shockingly yellow organic pineapple that I’d plucked straight from the fields at Kumu Farms the day before.
On this episode of our podcast, Henry and I chat about our Maui eats, and share details about our fantastic farm-to-face dinner at The Mill House, a new restaurant located right in the middle of the same plantation where I harvested my ripe, sunshine-yellow pineapple. Chef Jeff Scheer makes it a point to source virtually all of his ingredients straight from the organic farms on-site. Henry’s favorite dish of the night was the umami-packed Dashi Cioppino, and I can’t forget the Lilokoi Posset, a chilled dessert made with thickened cream flavored with tangy passionfruit, or the grilled Mahi Mahi with corn puree, blue oyster mushrooms, and piperade. (Okay, okay—calm down. Corn may not be Paleo, but I will always make an exception for organic local corn grown just a few feet from the kitchen.)
To peek at some of my Maui eats, check out my Instagram feed and the hashtag I used to organize my island photos, #NomNomMaui. Want to check out the neon yellow pineapple that I picked myself? Check out this pic—and this one, too.
If you happen to find yourself on Maui, get yourself over to Maui Tropical Plantation so you can visit Kumu Farms, fly across a zipline, and dine at The Mill House. (Preferably in that order.) The official Grand Opening of the restaurant is July 3, 2015, but Chef Jeff Scheer and his team already have their ducks in a row, and are serving diners now, during The Mill House’s soft launch. By the way, not only is Jeff the Chef (I’m a poet and didn’t even know it!) Maui’s Chef of the Year for 2015, I think he also looks strikingly like Bradley Cooper.
And for those of you clucking with disapproval because you spy some beans or corn in my photos from Maui, listen up: when I’m on vacation, I don’t eat 100% Paleo. You can learn more about how I travel while Paleo in Episode 7 of our podcast, but in short, it’s not much of a vacation if I’m freaking out over everything I’m eating. After all, stress management is an important part of health and happiness, too—right?
Main Course:
In this episode, Henry and I focus on how to select and cook the perfect steak. This premium cut isn’t an everyday food; steak is an indulgence both because of the expense and the sheer primal joy that we derive from enjoying a seared, juicy cut of properly aged meat. The animal sacrificed its life so we could thrive, so it’s important that we take the care to cook it the right way. Unlike other cheaper cuts of meat (like brisket, short ribs, or oxtail) that are super forgiving with low and slow cooking methods, a premium steak really needs to be cooked properly to be delicious. We discuss the importance of sourcing 100% grass fed beef, where to buy it, and how to cook it—no matter if your method of choice is grilling, pan-searing, oven-roasting, or sous vide cooking.
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