♪ ♪ - I am sick and tired of people throwing around the term Maillard reaction.

The reason is it's incredibly complex.

Nobody really understands it, even food scientists.

Well, what is it?

Well, amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.

When they react with simple sugars, like fructose, for example, or reducing sugars they're called, then you get hundreds of chemical reactions.

Some of those change color, like browning on a steak.

Some of them add flavor.

The other thing about Maillard is it works really well in an alkaline, non-acidic solution.

So for example, when you boil bagels, you add some baking soda to it and that causes browning or the baking soda in your cookies, so.

Maillard is complicated.

All you need to know is this.

It's over 300 degrees.

You can jumpstart the Maillard reaction.

And then also if you have an alkaline environment, that also helps as well.

As far as the other 400 chemical reactions go, nobody really fully understands it.

So let's not talk about Maillard and let's just talk about browning.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Today, I'm angry.

I'm angry because everyone, including me, has forgotten about the pan sauce.

So today we're gonna do a very different kind of pan sauce.

It's called sugar steak-- it's not what you think it is, it's not a sweet, sugary sauce, it's kind of bittersweet.

It came from the Bastien's Steakhouse in Denver, so we didn't invent this, but it's cool.

It's got a great name and it's got really good flavor.

So salt, pepper, brown sugar.

And we'll do both sides of this.

You probably want not, like, a ribeye steak or something that's got too much fat because we're going to make a pan sauce in the pan.

So a somewhat leaner cut.

A New York strip is good, for example.

Okay, we'll let that sit.

Normally, we'd use a cast iron skillet for cooking a steak.

Obviously, retains heat.

The only reason we're not using that here is because we need to see the color of the brown sugar and the soy sauce as I caramelize it.

So with a black background, it's hard to see.

So actually, a stainless steel skillet's actually a better option here.

Okay, starting to smoke, that's good.

(sizzling) When you're adding meat to a pan, or you're going to fry something, it's good to start near you and then put it down away from you.

That way it's not going to splatter.

If you love steaks, there's a place in Paris called Le Severo.

It's phenomenal.

They have this one thing which is you can never leave food on the plate.

The first time I went there was, like, ten years ago with a couple of my kids.

And my oldest daughter had the onglet, and she ate about half of it.

And the chef is right there.

He saw that she'd left, like, you know, $15 worth of steak on the plate, and threw this thing into the garbage.

Like, went like this and just looked at her really hard.

So I went back last year, and I said to the people I was with, "Look, you gotta finish everything."

So there was one of them, hadn't quite finished.

And the waiter came over and just, he looked.

He looked at this.

I said, "I'll finish it, it's okay."

So we're not using super high heat here, because we're cooking entirely in the skillet.

And if we use super high heat, the outside's gonna get overcooked by the time the middle is cooked.

There's two things going on.

There's Maillard reaction, but there's also caramelization.

'Cause you actually have sugar on the steak.

And caramelizing is totally different than Maillard.

So we're getting browning from two different areas in flavor development.

Two things about stovetop cooking.

One is you have to adjust the temperature all the time.

You know, you start out high, and then as the pan heats up and starts to hold more heat in, then you can reduce the flame.

So if you're sauteing something, it's not going to be at one temperature or one setting.

It's going to have to be constantly adjusted.

The other is there are hot spots, right?

This side of the pan was a little hotter than that, so I switched positions.

Now, you can tell I've really turned the heat down here 'cause I want to get the inside up before the outside gets torched-- but that looks pretty good, right?

Meathead Goldwyn, who's our favorite grilling guy, he always said, grill marks are for idiots.

Paraphrasing.

He said, "What happens when you get grill marks?

"Well, the grill marks are great, "but what about all that gray stuff in between the grill marks?"

Well, the meat's not seared.

You don't get any Maillard reaction there.

So on a grill, if you're going to grill steaks, what he suggests and what I do now as well, if you got a steak on the grill, you gotta keep moving it around, like every 15 seconds.

You keep moving it so the entire surface gets exposed to those hot metal grates.

There we go.

Yeah, I think that's good.

Personally, I like my steaks probably at 120-ish, something like that.

While we're doing that, I have more sugar.

Three tablespoons, little soy sauce.

Mix that together.

And that's going to be the next thing to go into the pan.

So those look pretty good.

We have almost no fat to pour off, but we'll pour it off anyway.

Leave the fond.

And we have the sugar with the soy sauce.

So now, we're essentially going to make a caramel sauce.

Take maybe two or three minutes.

Then we're going to add some water to it, and we'll scrape up the fond at the bottom.

You can do, just make up a pan sauce.

Often if I roast a chicken or something, I'll do a pan sauce.

A little bit of white wine works really nice.

Sometime I might put a little shallots or garlic into it.

Not too much garlic.

And I'll finish it off with some butter.

Maybe the juices from the chicken as it was roasting.

And you can, in about three minutes, make a sauce.

Okay, so we're reducing this down, developing some color, developing a little bit of bitterness-- again, you don't want this to be, it's not really a sweet sauce, even though it says sugar steak.

And we're trying to get this to be... ...syrupy.

This is getting syrupy.

As I am.

Now, I'm going to start whisking in butter.

By the way, I have to say, butter's coming back.

You heard it here first.

I think about 50 years ago, the entire food industry or the health people decided to go after fat.

Now they're going after sugar.

But, you know, butter actually is a great ingredient.

Okay, so now... ...we have a nice sauce... indeed.

Turn the heat off.

And we're gonna add a little vinegar.

Again, that balances out the sugar, the caramel sauce.

Aromatherapy.

Good, okay, done, sauce is finished.

And now steaks, so.

Let me actually pour back.

I almost forgot the most important part.

Perfectly cooked.

Did I hear something?

Yes, it's perfectly cooked.

So this looks fine, right?

I mean, you have sugar on the outside, you have caramelization, you had the Maillard.

But now we have something that's going to make it, like, ten times better.

And doesn't that look a little better?

And again, you can make a thousand different pan sauces, this is one we really like.

This is really hard to describe.

It has a little sweetness to it.

It's a little smoky and bittersweet, it has the vinegar.

My glasses are fogging up, it's so good-- either that or I'm about to cry, I don't know which, but, either way, it's good.

This is so much better than just a plain steak.

What's the moral of the story?

The moral of the story is spend five minutes and make a pan sauce.

Whether you're roasting chicken, you're doing lamb, you're doing a chop, you're doing a steak.

It just adds so much to it.

You like steak?

Great.

If you want to really love steak, try it with a sugar pan sauce.

♪ ♪ - Today, we're going to talk about steak, and we'll try to bust a few myths.

Let's start with a simple one.

♪ ♪ Steak is at its most tender and juicy at about 130 degrees, and 130 happens to be medium-rare.

And that's the temperature most steak lovers prefer anyhow.

Charcoal produces more energy than most gas grills, and that's why steaks are best often on charcoal.

Not because it's charcoal, but because it has more infrared energy.

And that's what we're looking at-- glowing coals.

They're going into the grill all on one side.

This is called two-zone cooking.

Infrared and convection.

You want a hot zone and a not-hot zone.

And that gives you temperature control.

And this is what we're going to do for our steaks today.

And we're going to do what's called reverse sear.

You start it on the indirect in the convection zone and warm it until it's cooked in the center and it's safe.

Then you move it over to the concentrated infrared energy and sear the snot out of it.

Okay, 120 inside.

And now we're going to move them right over hot coals.

And we're going to sear them.

We'll leave the lid up because we want all the energy coming from below.

We're just cooking the surface of the meat right now.

And it doesn't take long, and you want to flip frequently.

Frequent flipping... ...creates a better crust.

Ooh, look at it sizzling back there.

And prevents the energy from penetrating too deep.

All right, it's reading 131 now, which is the low end of medium-rare.

So let's take one off.

Bring it over here to the cutting board.

You see, we got a nice dark brown crust.

And there you go.

Beautiful medium-rare in the center.

That is just about perfect.

♪ ♪ - (speaking Turkish) - (speaking Turkish) - (speaking Turkish) - (speaking Turkish) - (speaking Turkish) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - If you're traveling through Turkey, you are very likely going to encounter some meat kebabs.

They're generally made with ground meat.

Not the big chunks of meat that we're used to, but ground meat mixture, mixed with spices and some really delicious seasonings.

And then always, of course, grilled over a hot flame.

Now, in Turkey, they don't buy pre-ground meat.

They do start with chunks of meat, and they chop it by hand.

And this is what they use to chop it with.

This is called a zirh.

The blade itself is very, very curved so that there can be a rolling motion.

And they chop the meat like this.

They can use the knife to scrape up the pieces together, and then just they keep chopping and chopping and chopping.

Now, this particular kebab we're making today was discovered at a restaurant called Kebapci Yalcin.

They were one of the most delicious kebabs we tasted while we were in Turkey.

♪ ♪ We're starting with whole green pistachios, as chefs call these green gold for good reason.

Turkish cooking uses a lot of pistachios.

They have a little bit of sweetness to them, and of course, they add beautiful green color.

We have a little dried oregano and dried mint.

Chili flake for a little bit of heat.

And of course, a little salt and pepper.

Give these a chop until they're semi-fine before we add the meat.

The ground meat goes right in.

You definitely want to use chuck, which is 20% fat, 80% lean.

'Cause you want that extra fat in there to help pull the meat together and hold in all those spices.

In Turkey, the traditional meat for these would be ground lamb.

You can get ground lamb here, it's very easy to find.

But if you prefer beef, by all means.

That's what we're using today.

We'll pulse this in.

(pulsing) Okay, that's great.

When it starts rolling all together in a ball like that, that's when you know it's ready.

See how pasty this mixture is?

This is what you want.

This is what allows the meat to be pressed against a skewer and to stay put.

Now, speaking of skewers, the thing is, we are accustomed here to these thin metal skewers, which are great.

But have you ever had the experience of putting meat onto the grill?

You go to turn it, and the skewer just turns inside the meat, and the meat stays put.

In Turkey, they get around that problem by using these incredibly beautiful, large metal skewers.

Look how flat that blade is, and how wide and thick it is.

They put the meat and they press it around the skewer just wide enough to cover the blade.

And that way when they're ready to flip, the whole thing turns over with it.

Well, we don't have these skewers here.

They're hard to find as well.

So we came up with a fantastic solution of actually no-kebab kebabs.

(laughs) And it's what we call a sheet pan kebab.

It's actually a pretty cool technique and I'm going to show you how to do that now.

We'll take all this mixture, we're going to shape it into a rectangle about nine inches long, six inches wide and about a half-inch deep.

You can certainly use your hands to do this.

Just put a little bit of water or oil on your palms and then you can press it right out.

We're going to make eight strips here.

We're using a bench scraper.

You want to mark the strips first before you cut to make sure they're even.

So now I'm going to separate this all the way through, and then just slide it apart a little bit.

You can see they slide apart really easily.

You want them to be about an inch apart.

So just keep spreading them out and separating until you get there.

And because they're only about a half-inch thick or so, they cook so quickly.

We're going to cook these in the broiler about six inches from the heat source, and it takes five minutes tops.

Look at these beautiful kebab-less kebabs.

One of the many things I loved about eating in Turkey was there was always salad-- always.

So for that reason, we made this quick and easy salad to go with these kebabs.

Usually composed of tomatoes and cucumber, parsley leaves, a little raw onion and then a simple dressing of olive oil, lemon juice and a little salt and pepper.

And now as well, on top of the kebabs goes a little bit of tahini sauce.

This is a very simple, basic version.

It's got the fresh tahini in it, then a little lemon juice and garlic.

And then we thinned it out with a little bit of hot water.

You put this on my dinner table, and I am very happy with this, but, if you want to make a sandwich of these kebabs or a more substantial meal, get a nice, pliable bread, fold it in half and just spoon over a little bit of tahini.

Then add a kebab or two, ♪ ♪ Top with just a little bit of salad.

And look at that.

Now I get to embarrass myself on TV by taking a bite of this.

Mm.

This is so good.

These kebabs are so fast and easy.

And these pistachios create an incredibly tender texture as well as adding a lot of flavor.

This is our Turkish beef and pistachio kebabs from Milk Street from our travels in Gaziantep, Turkey.

♪ ♪ - We have this amazing chuck roast here.

Beautiful piece of meat, it's really well-marbled, and I'm going to break it down for a no-sear stew.

This means I'm going to take away as much fat as I can so that broth doesn't end up really flabby or you end up with big chunks of fat in the finished stew.

The knife work, be it meat, be it vegetables, be it anything, is really reducing these asymmetric amorphous shapes down into geometric sizes that are going to cook evenly.

If we end up with a lot of different sizes, things are going to cook unevenly.

So let's make sure we get all of the string, and then we have something that is sort of a cube.

So we're going to cut this into even sized planks.

Let me take a step back for a second.

You want to cut meat with the longest, sharpest knife you have.

We want to make sure to slice, not saw.

We don't want to go back and forth.

This is why those Japanese sushi chefs have such long knives, because they're cutting huge fish, and it's one long cut.

You don't ever see them sawing back and forth.

So let's work with one piece at a time here.

I'm going to stack this out of the way, and then I'm going to cut this into quarters.

And you can see we have fairly big fat pockets here.

Something like this.

We can use the tip of our knife and excise those big pockets of fat.

And a lot of the time, the way the fat ribbons through the muscle, it's just going to pull right out.

So I'm not even cutting that.

It just pulls right off the membrane.

So you're going to ask, why don't I just buy stew meat that's already broken down?

Stew meat is mystery meat.

You have no clue what's going into that pot of stew meat at the store.

It's trim, it's scraps.

It tends to be loaded with fat, random bits and bobs.

Buy a chuck roast and break it down yourself.

You have so much more control-- same thing with chickens.

Buy whole chickens and break them down yourself.

It's fun.

We've left some fat, right?

There's intramuscular fat which is going to render out as the soup cooks.

It's going to simmer slowly, it's going to keep that meat moist, it's going to add flavor, but nothing's going to come across as greasy.

Now we have this beautiful plate of this gorgeous chuck roast ready to cook.

What about meats cooked over dry heat?

So a grilled steak, well, you want enough fat left on a steak to moisten it.

It also protects it.

That acts as insulation, it's gonna render.

It's gonna help keep that meat really moist.

And if you're grilling, that fat is gonna drip on the coals.

It's gonna create beef-flavored smoke.

That's then gonna flavor the steak.

So we want to leave a fair amount on, but not too much.

Too much fat left on the steak can prompt flare ups, it can burn, it can scorch.

You can get sort of those smudgy looks to your steak.

So my rule of thumb is I leave about a quarter-inch around a steak.

So I'm just gonna cut down through that fat and start trimming away.

A lot of steaks have sort of a tougher exterior just between the fat and the meat.

That can sometimes cause the meat to curl up or bow as it's cooking, 'cause it's gonna seize up.

So I may go through and make just small cuts so it doesn't seize as it cooks.

So that steak now looks, well, just about perfect for the grill.

So we trimmed up a gorgeous chuck roast to make stew with.

We trimmed some of the fat, not all of the fat off the steak.

And we're gonna wrap up the show with my favorite cut of beef, short ribs.

♪ ♪ - Chris showed you how to cook a steak.

Bianca worked with ground beef.

And now we're gonna use short ribs.

And there are two key steps to making this recipe.

One, let the oven do the work.

And two, choose just a few ingredients, but use a lot of them.

Let's start with the beef; so trim your short ribs and you want to transfer them to a nine by 13 pan.

As a note, you can actually use bone-in short ribs.

Sometimes, they're easier to find than boneless.

The recipe works exactly the same.

Next, with this, you want to season them well.

So we're gonna do a teaspoon-and-a-half of salt and one teaspoon pepper.

I'm gonna sprinkle all over, now we're gonna add bay leaves-- I understand bay leaves are controversial around here at Milk Street.

I love them, but you need to use a lot of them.

So we have ten bay leaves.

These are dried, you don't want to use fresh bay leaves.

Ten fresh bay leaves would be pretty overpowering.

And California bay leaves also have a real citrusy flavor that, with a long braise, wouldn't be quite right.

All right, next we're gonna use eight shallots.

Remember, I said just a few ingredients, but a lot of them, so, slicing them thinly, not only are you bursting more cell walls and getting more flavor, you're also helping them soften so they become this, like, really beautiful, almost a thickening agent in the sauce, they give it body.

I'm just gonna sprinkle these all in here.

All right, so we have our ten bay leaves, our eight shallots and a bottle of beer.

I like to use a Trappist beer.

I think those flavors go really well with all the shallot and the beef.

So you want to cover it tightly with foil.

You'll notice I didn't brown the beef.

This goes into a 325-degree oven for the first part of its cooking.

We'll crank it up later to get that browning.

♪ ♪ It's been two-and-a-half hours.

I'm going to go ahead and close the oven door, but turn it up to 425, which is a really important part of getting that browning.

Oh, this smells so good.

So what we're gonna do, we're gonna slather these with mustard.

So now we're adding a lot of contrast, right?

We're adding this piquant, acidic, fiery contrast to this beautiful broth that we've created.

So as I do this, what I can see is the magic of braising.

Through time and heat, these become meltingly tender.

That's why I say the oven does the work.

Back into the oven for 30 minutes, but at 425, so we get that browning.

All right, so it's been 30 minutes, and you can see all the work that the oven did for you.

There's all this browning on the mustard and the meat.

You can see that the sauce has reduced.

You see where the sauce line was?

So we've got intensified flavors that took so little work.

So our final ingredient is a lot of dill.

It's a really nice complement to the peppery mustard and that beautiful floral broth that we've developed.

We like to serve with egg noodles.

It's also good with mashed potatoes.

I tend to eat them on their own.

They're also great the next day as a sandwich.

See how this just falls apart?

You can taste the mustard, but it's a little bit mellow, so it's not punching you in the face.

It's a lovely, peppery back note.

And the shallot's almost my favorite part.

I love how shallots just melt into the beef broth we've created with that beer, and then that hit of dill-- so each one had its role, but then also remember the oven did everything for us.

It created the beautiful broth during the first section of cooking and then it created all that deep browning when we uncovered the ribs.

So remember, when you want to go low and slow with beef, this is the way to do it.

You can find this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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