Make a Smoky Steak Seed Oil
Steak has always been my favorite protein and I prefer to cut it into bones. But after the meat has been eaten and the martini has been polished, it always seems sad to throw out a bone that is too small to make a noticeable amount of broth.
This is part of the Lifehacker Eating Trash With Claire series in which Claire Lower convinces you to turn your kitchen waste into something edible and tasty.
I mean, you could accumulate a whole bunch of steak bones to end up making the broth – or you could toss one into your regular chicken broth – but before you’ve gnawed it, you can use a single bone to add a meaty, smoky aroma to the oil.
Aside from the bones, you can also use the droplets to flavor your favorite milk spread. Just drain and save the cooking oil – usually duck fat in my case – and remove the frosting from the saucepan with a little wine. (Red or white will do, but obviously red will greatly affect the color or oil.)
Scrape the pan with a wooden spoon and pour everything into a bowl. Then you need to decide how you are going to extract all that meaty flavor. You can use a simple pot on the stove, a slow cooker, or – my favorite – you can look over it .
Whichever method you use, simply mix the drips from the frying pan and the delicious deglazed nuggets, bone, and butter in your bowl of choice. If you are using the sous-vide package, close it.
Then you will want to cook it all slowly and slowly. For sous-video, this means let everything hang in a water bath at 185 degrees for two hours, but you can just as easily put it in a multicooker for the same time or throw everything in a saucepan, cover with a lid. it and cook on low heat for a couple of hours.
After a couple of hours of infusion, pour the hot oil through a fine-mesh strainer and let the butter freeze in the refrigerator. As you can see in this top photo, this smoky butter, enriched with umami, is great for cookies, but great for whipping with mashed potatoes, fried vegetables, or spreading over a corncob. I bet it would also be pretty fantastic with hot pasta, especially if you toss in a few fried mushrooms and sprinkle the whole mess with freshly ground pepper. Actually, I think it might be dinner.