Steak Your Claim
Some of you experienced yesterday’s Your Daily Lex in ways that were unpleasant.
They only had the left audio channel or the right audio channel or something.
That happened not too, too long ago, and now it happened again.
I want you to know that everybody involved in that catastrophe has been fired.
Your Daily Lex.
As regular listeners know, or Lehman Lex devotees know, Lehman and I have a song on our most recent album called Steak, where he sings about how much he loves steak, because he does.
I would not consider myself a great cook of anything.
That’s just not a skill I’ve taken time to develop.
Before we had kids, I made dinner at least half the time.
Once we had kids, that changed a little bit.
Lauren loves making food, so it’s not like I’m shirking responsibilities.
It’s like I do these things and she does that thing because she really enjoys making food.
I really enjoy making stuff that I like.
One of the problems is I don’t like healthy enough stuff, so it’s not a great option.
Anyway, steak.
For a long time, we just had no steak in the house because Lauren doesn’t really like red meat, and at least two of the three kids involved also don’t really like red meat.
We might have hamburgers on occasion or hot dogs even more rarely, but steak was just not a thing that most of them were into.
There was a brief time where Sierra liked steak, but it was very brief.
Liam is a big fan.
If we go to a kosher steakhouse, he’s always very excited, and that happens once a year.
I had encouraged Lauren to pick up some steaks for me and Liam at the supermarket.
This was probably a year ago now.
She wasn’t sure which ones to get, so she would come home and bring home a skirt steak, which is fine, but not what I was thinking about.
I went with her a couple times, but anyway, got to buying some good steaks.
I was like, how the hell do you make these?
I did tons of research.
I bought books.
I studied.
None of this is true.
I looked at some websites.
I experimented with a couple different ways of making steaks.
Each time I make steak for me and Liam, he gives me his review.
A couple weeks ago, we grilled steaks.
I had never done that on the grill before.
He’s like, this is my second least favorite.
He’s like, to be clear, that’s still great because it’s steak, but it’s my second least favorite.
He and I tend to prefer medium for a while.
Since he was a kid, he preferred medium.
Well, now he’s a big, very old 13-year-old, but he’s more into medium, I would say at this point.
My tried and true method, I used again yesterday and made absolutely the best steaks I’ve made to date.
I now would say I consider myself great at making steaks.
I was going to say an expert, but I’m not an expert because I still consult my note where I saved all my favorite Frankensteinian recipe steps.
Not that there’s that many steps involved, but here is Lex Friedman’s approach to making steaks.
Step one, take the steaks out of the fridge and give them 20, 30 minutes if you can.
Step two, dry the steaks.
Pat them dry with paper towels on both sides.
Step three, cover them in coarse salt and some pepper.
I mean cover them.
There’s coarse salt all over those bad boys on both sides.
Step four, turn on the stovetop with barely any oil in a pan.
Cast iron if you have it, which we don’t, or stainless steel, and get it super hot.
Super hot.
Crazily hot.
Step 4A, turn on the exhaust fan over your stovetop and maybe open a window.
Then, just put the steaks in there.
Yesterday, the steaks were so big that I had to do one at a time, which was funny.
I’m doing somewhere, depending on what level of doneness we want, maybe two and a half, three minutes a side.
Of course, you can always use a meat thermometer, and I’m a big fan of meat thermometers, but typically, call it three minutes a side when there’s two minutes left.
Maybe three minutes a side one, I flip it.
One minute into side two, I take some margarine and put that in the pan.
If you’re not kosher, you would probably use butter.
Liam doesn’t love garlic.
I will typically put a little bit of garlic in.
If it weren’t for him, I’d probably put a little bit more, but I put margarine in.
My instinct is I always put it right on top of the steak, and then one second later, I’m like, no, that’s not right, and I put it just next to the steak in the pan so that it can start melting.
It just adds this little burst of margariney, buttery flavor to the steak at the final two minutes or so.
Then, of course, the steak is finished, and you wait four or five long minutes if you can, because it’s better that way.
There’s all kinds of science-y reasons why you let the steak sit, although now some say you don’t need to let the steak sit, but I like to let the steak sit.
I like to let the steak sit.
That’s my new vocal warm-up.
I like to let the steak sit.
I like to let the steak sit.
Nope.
I like to let the steak sit.
I like to let the steak sit.
You pause it and give it a shot.
Say it three times.
I like to let the steak sit.
Anyway, they were phenomenal.
They were so good.
Oh, my God.
I can’t believe how good the steaks were, so now I’m telling you about it because that’s what I was excited to share, was that, man, I made some great steaks yesterday.
Anyway, hope the audio was acceptable.
I’ll probably spend a couple days fine-tuning it because I decided it’s time to abandon my old logic project for this podcast, which was giving me too many errors at this point, and start anew.
So this is an all-new version of Anyway, Blah, Blah, Blah, Nerd, Nerd, Nerd, Blah, Blah, Blah.
Happy rest of your Tuesday.
Go have a steak, Lex.