Chris Young recently posted a video contradicting the [Kenji’s Serious Eats meat myth](https://www.seriouseats.com/old-wives-tales-about-cooking-steak) that tempering is not worth it.
People are bringing up Kenji and Guga Foods in the comments along with some other interesting thoughts. Curious what everyone here thinks?
Link to Chris’ video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmuwqqHjgT4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmuwqqHjgT4)
by Paulios
5 Comments
My take is that there is more than one “best” way to do much of anything. Such things are subjective and allow for a variety of techniques to choose from based on preference. Frankly the best steak is one that I made and ate myself. No one is going to convince me otherwise.
Kenji kind of covers it. It was beyond 2 hours to see enough temp change, which is well beyond what most articles claim as 25-30 minutes.
And if you have dogs or cats, good luck with leaving it out there for 4 hours.
Pasting a response from Chris from someone bringing up the Serious Eats article:
> I just read Kenji’s article—and I’ll preface this comment by mentioning I both know Kenji and think highly of his work—but in this case I think he ran too uncontrolled of an experiment.
>First, how much the surface warms up matters more than the core, since a warmer surface reduces the rate of power flow from pan into the steak.
>Second, he did not control the cooking temperature from steak to steak, indeed he explicitly says he cooked them over “hot coals”.
>Third, I showed the video of each steak, of the same thickness, at the same core temp, and bloomed after slicing for the sane amount of time.
>I haven’t watched Guga’s video yet, so no comment on his methodology. But I think you’ll have to judge my video evidence for yourself and see if you think there is a noticeable difference after 15 minutes of resting.
Kenji’s post says his steak was only warmed to a core temp of 49.6°. Chris’s video says the core temp of his tempered steak was 74°, because he left it at room temp for four hours. Also, the cooking method was different — Kenji used a grill while Chris used a pan with oil. Differences in starting temp and heat transfer method would make a big difference in the final result.
Both Kenji and Chris are right.
Chris mentions resting the stake for several hours. He does it on an aluminium sheet.
In Kenji’ article he mentions that the myth is “Letting it sit on the counter for 20 to 30 minutes will bring the steak up to room temperature”. In his test the internal temperature raised ~12°F for 1h50m. I guess the internal temperature might raise 20-25°F if on an aluminium sheet for 2-3 hours. But there’s something else Kenji mentions. You can save most of this time by actively heating the steak using another cooking method like sous-vide. The reverse seared method does pretty much the same thing.
Also don’t forget to dry brine the steak.