Hamm’s Meat of the Month – Rosewood Ranches NY Strip
If you have been a follower of AVIDGOLFER over the years, we have featured hundreds of restaurants across the Metroplex, but for 2022, we thought we would try something a little different. Yes, we will still feature some restaurants from time to time, but we would like to introduce our readers to a new feature… the Hamm’s Meat + Market Cut of the Month. Hamm’s Meat + Market in downtown McKinney and AG will collaborate and focus on a different cut of meat each month and give our readers some sure-fire methods on how to prepare them and become the hero of your next dinner party or backyard barbecue. Stick around for this feature because we promise you’re going to learn something.
If you’re talking about a great meal, then you can’t do much better than a flavorful cut of beef. A steak almost always steals the show at any dinner party, and one of the easiest and most flavorful is the New York Strip. To make the flavor and quality even better, you must try a cut from Rosewood Ranches, and even more specifically, their Texas raised Wagyu, which can exclusively be found at Hamm’s Meat + Market. Wagyu translates to “Japanese cattle”, but most of the Wagyu we see is raised right here in the United States. Wagyu beef has a higher fat content, making for gorgeous marbling throughout the beef, which when cooked renders and adds a rich buttery texture and flavor.
The strip is from the short loin of the cow and consists of a muscle that isn’t tremendously active, which leaves the meat tender and easy to prepare. You may be asking how this cut got the name “New York” strip. Well, one of New York City’s oldest steak houses, Delmonico, which opened in 1827, served this short loin cut as one of their specials, and because it became associated with the city, the New York Strip was born.
When the strip is still attached to the bone, it often comes with a sidecar of Tenderloin, which then turns the strip into a T-Bone or a Porterhouse. The Porterhouse carries a slightly larger portion of tenderloin.
When it comes to preparing this cut, there are several ways it can be done.
One of the tried-and-true methods is the standard charcoal grill. Get the charcoal started and let it come to temp to make sure your grill is thoroughly heated to at least 500 degrees. Then season the steak liberally with your favorite spices, you can never go wrong with Dalmatian, the traditional salt and coarse black pepper blend, but if you are looking for something with a little more pop, then you may consider adding some granulated garlic or using another pre-packaged seasoning like Hamm’s Brisket Rub, 2 Gringo’s Chupacabra Steak Seasoning, or whichever rub might be your favorite. To be honest, when it comes to seasonings, it’s all about your personal preference. Some like pepper forward, some like more salt, and some like a little spice. Season your steaks however you see fit!
Once your steaks are seasoned up, go ahead and drop them on the hot grill grates and listen to the sizzle as the charcoal does its work. If you like your steaks a nice mid-rare, then plan for about four to six minutes per side. Give the steak a quarter or half turn halfway through on each side to get those dynamite grill marks. If you are unsure about how done your steak is, I would invest in a good probe thermometer. I personally use a Thermapen Mk4 and it works great. They can be found at Thermoworks.com for about $100, but there are many cheaper options on Amazon as well. Using a probe assures you will never under or overcook a steak again. Just give it a quick jab in the thickest part of the meat and when you reach the desired temp, it’s time to pull it off.
Now, one thing I cannot stress enough when you are cooking any type of meat, is letting it rest. When you bombard meats at high heat, in order for the juices to redistribute and the muscle to relax again, it requires some rest time before slicing. So, be patient and let your Rosewood Wagyu New York Strips rest for at least five minutes before you sink that knife into it. A ten-minute rest is even better, and don’t worry, your steak won’t get cold while you’re waiting, but this assures you won’t lose all the juice as soon as you make that first cut. It’s imperative you do this.
If charcoal grilling isn’t your thing, then there are a few more ways you can prepare a strip. One of the easiest ways that has become increasingly popular over the last several years is sous vide. Sous vide translates to “under vacuum” in English, and that’s exactly how you begin to sous vide a steak. I have invested in a Food Saver system to vacuum seal my steaks, but there are other methods as well. In fact, there are reusable vacuum bags on Amazon that use a small manual pump to pull the air out of the bags and they work just fine for not only sous vide but keeping other produce fresh as well.
When you get down to brass tacks, sous vide is just a water bath. You can purchase a sous vide unit online or at your local retailer, as they are much more commonplace now than they were several years ago. I have an Anova A4 model and love it. It comes complete with Wi-Fi, so you can connect it to your phone to adjust temperature and monitor your progress. Essentially, the sous vide unit circulates water at a steady temperature around the meat, meaning it is impossible to overcook.
The first thing you need to do when preparing to sous vide a strip is season. Again, pick your favorite and liberally coat the meat. If you want even more flavor, you can add some fresh herbs or even some pats of butter to the bag. The next step is sealing the steaks in your vacuum bag, and then set your sous vide unit to the desired temp and drop the bag in the water bath.
Depending on how you like your steak, you can find an abundance of charts and guides online to choose the temp to run the unit and how long to leave the steaks in. One bit of advice I can give is to make sure you set the unit about 10 degrees below the preferred finished temp, as we are going to sear the steaks once removed from the sous vide bath. For example, I like my steaks rare, so I usually run my sous vide at about 120 degrees for about 90 minutes.
Once my steaks are nice and soft, I will either fire up my charcoal kettle, or get my Blackstone Griddle screaming hot and then sear the steak for a minute or two per side to get a nice crust and get the temp to about 135 degrees. If you choose, you can baste the steaks with some butter as they sear for added richness, or even add a pat of cowboy butter on top post sear to make this meat knee-buckling good. Again, rest the steaks afterwards for a few minutes to let the juices work their way back through the meat. Voilà! There you have it. Sous vide Rosewood Wagyu New York Strip steaks.
There is one other method of grilling steaks I wanted to mention, and that is the reverse sear. Similar to sous vide, this method adds a smoky component to the meat. I have a Traeger Pro 780 at the house and I use it all the time. But for steaks, there is a simple method that adds some great flavor.
Again, we start by seasoning the meat. Next, fire up your smoker or in my case, Traeger at about 220 degrees. I add the steaks on and roll indirect heat on them until the internal temp gets to about 120 degrees, then I will remove them and crank the heat up as high as it will go (on my Traeger, this is 500 degrees) and then sear the steaks off that way. If you have a traditional smoker, feel free to use a kettle charcoal grill or gas grill to sear, or you can add wood and get your offset screaming hot as well. The real benefit here is adding some great smoke flavor to the steaks before you sear. Some people don’t like complicating the flavor of a great steak with a smoke component, but to each their own. This is simply another vehicle to prepare a great steak and one that you might consider if you have never done one this way.
There we have it, three different methods to preparing a Rosewood Wagyu New York Strip, with three different results and three different flavor profiles. Of course, you can tweak these suggestions any way you see fit to your own taste. Cooking is meant to be a vessel for creativity, and by no means are these the only ways to get a great result. Happy cooking, and we’ll have more meaty goodness for you next month.