- [Man] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- [Woman] The following episode of Charlotte Cooks is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College and viewers like you, thank you.

- Next on Charlotte Cooks, we're cooking up a carnivores delight and we're adding some delightfully grilled side dishes too.

(playful music) Welcome to this edition of Charlotte Cooks.

I'm chef Pamela Roberts and I'm so glad you're here with me today because we are going to be cooking up these delightful little babies here.

Now I'm sure you've been to the grocery store before, and I'm sure you've heard the term T-bone steak, porterhouse steak, filet mignon, and New York strip.

And you could easily be confused at what are these differences in these cuts of meat?

Well, you know what, let's take a look at this and I'm gonna explain all four of those kinds of meat to you.

So here when you go to the grocery store and you see a T-bone steak, a T-bone steak is cut from what is called the short loin of the beef and the short loin of the beef is a nice big hunk of meat.

And from that, you get two muscles, you get the strip loin and you get the tenderloin.

And what makes the difference between a T-bone steak and a porterhouse steak is the size of the filet mignon that's on the side.

If you were to cut this off the bone, which you'd have right on this side and cut around here, you have a beautiful New York strip.

And on this side, if you cut this piece out, you'd have a little tiny piece of filet mignon, and the bigger this filet mignon piece is, as you cut down the loin, the filet mignon actually gets bigger.

And so when you're looking for a porterhouse steak, a porterhouse steak is very, very commonly known as the steak lovers steak because they're usually an inch and a half, two inches thick, they're pretty sturdy pieces of meat.

You get two kinds of meat in there.

You get the filet, which is typically not a very rich, robust beef flavor, but it is super tender and then the strip line, which has a little bit more marbling in it and it's got a nice piece of fat on the side, which really gives it a lot of flavor.

And when you put these things on the grill now, anytime you cook meat on a bone, it's gonna have more flavor to it than a boneless piece of meat.

And that's why these steaks are so, so popular.

So when you buy it, you're gonna see that they have a fat cap on the side.

You want to leave that fat cap on because that add flavor.

When I cook my meat, especially my steaks, I like to take my steaks out a couple hours before I put them on the grill and I like to bring them to room temperature.

Now, if I'm gonna let them sit out for a while, what I'll do is I'll take them and I'll season them with something as simple as a Montreal steak seasoning, which is basically a coarse combination of salt and pepper and seasonings like garlic and red peppers and different things like that, but if you want to make your own rub, you certainly can.

And if you wanted to buy it, you certainly can cause there's some really good steak rubs made up out there.

The longer this sits on here, what happens is a wonderful process called osmosis.

Inside the meat, we have cells and the cells will sit there and they're full of water.

And when you put salt on top of that cell, the water inside the cell goes oh, there's salt out there that needs to be dissolved and it releases that water and then it goes, and it dissolves all that salt.

And through a process of osmosis, it will once a cell determines that the pressure is even on both sides of that cell, it's gonna reabsorb that salt back into the meat.

So if you look at the meat while it's sitting here and you let it sit for a couple of hours with salt on it, one of the things you'll notice is that a lot of moisture will rise to the top and then the moisture will be reabsorbed back into the meat.

And that's gonna bring all those wonderful flavors from the seasonings deep into that meat so you're gonna have more of a flavor than just what's on the surface.

However, if you do not have the time to let your meat sit out, to reabsorb the salt, add it just before we grill it just like I've done here.

So sprinkle it generously on both sides and we're gonna put it on the grill and we're going to mark it.

What we say we're gonna mark it on the grill, the grill usually has straight lines on it and when we put the steak on the grill, we're gonna aim it so it's going from about 11 o'clock and then we're gonna let it sit there for about three minutes and then we're gonna turn it.

Same side, we're not gonna flip it, this side.

So what happens is we get that hash mark that happens on the outside of grills and the grill marks are really wonderful flavor and they're very attractive and so we want to do that with our meat.

So when we put it on, we're gonna take it, put it right on your grill.

Oh, isn't that a beauty?

It's beautiful, it's beautiful already.

Now you're gonna let it sit on that side for about three minutes and then once it forms that three minutes, we're gonna take it and we're gonna turn it this way.

Now, one thing you don't want to do is start picking it up and looking at it, you want to just let it sit there.

Now flare ups is when the flame comes up, I'm gonna go ahead and move this.

Look at those grill marks.

I'm just gonna take it, I'm gonna flip it that way.

Still the same side and I'm gonna keep an eye on it and if I see a flare up, I'm gonna move my steak again.

Because what happens with the flare up, it's gonna leave a greasy, not an attractive flavor, but you want to go ahead and flip it so that it's not gonna get the flare up and you can control your heat, you can move it.

I'm gonna move him down here a little bit.

So now what we're gonna do is we're gonna do something called a hasselback potato.

The hasselback potato is a potato that gets sliced and baked, but it's a little...

I like them because they're just a little bit different than a regular old baked potato.

And what you need to make them is two wooden spoons.

You're gonna put your wooden spoon sideways, and you're gonna set your potato in between it just like this.

So what the wooden spoons are going to do is they're gonna prevent the knife from cutting all the way through the potato.

And that way we're gonna have an even thickness all the way down.

I'm gonna take this and just start cutting.

You want to do an even thickness about maybe a quarter of an inch all the way down on your potato.

I love these things and you could take these and they'll cook a little bit faster than a solid baked potato.

They maybe take about 35, 40 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

If your oven's a little bit hotter, it'll be a little bit quicker, but we're not gonna peel them.

We're just gonna wash them and we're gonna take them and we're gonna make these slices.

You see how the spoon keeps the knife from going all the way down and it allows the potatoes to open up and then what we're going to do is we're gonna smear them with some butter.

So these potatoes are ready to go now.

Take my spoons.

I'm gonna take a little spatula and a little bit of butter.

Now in my butter here, I've added a little bit of herbs, like some thyme and some tarragon and things like that.

And all I'm gonna do is just smear this all over this potato, try to get it in between the little pieces so that the inside of the potato is getting some butter.

If you got to open it up to get the butter in between it, do so.

And we're gonna put them on a sheet pan.

We're gonna put them in the oven and we're gonna bake them just like we would a baked potato.

I told you I had thyme and herbs.

Now, whatever you guys wanted to put in here, you could, you can actually just use it just as it is, plain old, straight butter.

You can even use Italian salad dressing for crying out loud if you wanted to.

You want to make sure you get in some butter in between the slices so that they actually cook and separate as they cook as well.

So smear them all up and there they go.

So now all we have to do with these is take them and pop them in the oven about half an hour, 40 minutes until they're done.

You'd test in the same way you do a baked potato.

Take your knife and gently test it to make sure that the knife goes in easily and it's not hard.

And once it's soft again, just like baked potatoes, it's ready to go.

So now we're gonna pop these into the oven.

So now I'm gonna take my steak and I'm pretty sure that... Ooh, yeah, it's got nice grill marks on both sides.

So now I'm going to mark the other side and this is where you're gonna turn your heat down and actually just let the steak sit.

It's gonna take about 20 minutes for a steak of this size to actually cook to about a medium rare.

Next thing we're gonna serve with our grilled steak is we are gonna make a chimichurri sauce.

So your chimichurri sauce is a mixture of red onion, flat leaf parsley, red wine vinegar, and some olive oil with a little bit of red pepper into it.

Red pepper is basically there just for a little punch of flavor.

We're not really looking to make this a hot sauce.

And all you do with this guys is you just take a food processor.

You take fresh parsley, I'm gonna rip off the stems.

You could save the stems for something if you like, but we're gonna put this beautiful parsley all right in here.

Nothing like parsley.

Parsley is probably one of the most nutritious things that you could find.

It's so full of iron and really good stuff.

It's got a lovely little bitter flavor to it.

Bitter actually promotes your digestion.

So I just put in some red onion, I'm gonna put in a clove of garlic and I'm gonna put in a pinch of red pepper, just a pinch.

And now I'm gonna cover this up and start processing it.

So we're processing our parsley.

We want to get it nice and fine and all we're gonna do is add a little bit of vinegar, a little bit of red wine vinegar, and a little bit of olive oil.

Add your olive oil at the very end because a lot of the molecules in the olive oil, when they go into a processing machine will break up, it'll make the olive oil bitter.

But if you've got a beautiful sweet olive oil, put it in at the end to bring it together so you don't break up those olive oil molecules.

So here we go.

And there we are.

We're gonna add a pinch of salt because salt makes everything tastes better.

Just not too much salt, a little bit of pepper.

Give it another little whirl.

So now that's all you have to do to make this chimichurri sauce.

It's very fast, very simple and oh so fresh.

I'm gonna take it, I'm gonna put it in a little container for us to have when our steaks are done.

Beautiful, beautiful condiment.

So here's our chimichurri sauce.

He's ready to go.

I'm gonna take my steak, I'm gonna let him rest.

I'm gonna put him on a tray.

Now before you serve and cut your meat guys, you must let your meat rest.

So we're gonna grill some vegetables and I have some people that are gonna be helping me with growing my vegetables.

Hi Thomas, how are you?

- I'm excellent.

- Good, so you're gonna grill some corn for us.

Go ahead and grab the corn.

Now the thing about grilling corn, and now this is the way I do it.

Some people will take it and put it on the grill.

They'll wrap it in tinfoil or they'll leave it in the husk as they are and that's great, but sometimes the corn gets a little bit too dry.

And so we've already taken this corn and we have boiled it to cook it.

And now all we have to do is mark it on the grill.

So why don't you go ahead and load your grill up with your corn and we're just gonna take it and put it on and just let the flame actually do its magic and kiss those little pieces of corn until they get...

Some of them are gonna get black and blistered, and that's gonna add a lovely flavor to it.

And when it comes off, Thomas, what are we putting on it when it comes off.

- We are putting some herb butter and some cotija cheese.

There we go, cotija cheese.

It's a Mexican Parmesan, but it's a wonderful cheese that goes really good on corn.

So you can hear it popping.

It's not gonna pop like popcorn, but it will pop.

You will hear it and that means that it's getting nice and cooked on there.

And you're gonna start looking for nice, nice, nice dark...

Woo, let's turn some of those.

Oh, there you go.

Roll them around.

Oh yes, that's exactly what we want.

And you see the grill is already hot and it has to be hot for the meat and so it's not gonna take very long for you to go ahead and mark your corn.

I think these are done here, Thomas.

Let's take those off and put them... Oh yes, put them on your plate.

Oh yeah, great.

We cut these ears of corn into little pieces so that they're easier to eat because when you're having a big old piece of steak, you don't necessarily want to have a big old ear of corn either.

Sprinkle that with some of this cotija cheese and we'll have this ready to go on our platter.

Oh, that makes it so pretty.

If you guys have never put cheese on your corn before, it's so good.

Cheese and corn together is a perfect protein.

It has all eight amino acids you need.

So if you're being vegetarian, but you eat lacto, this would be a protein dish.

So this is on the side now, so great.

Thank you, Thomas, we're really glad you were here today.

The next thing we're gonna put on is some asparagus and I have another student that's coming to help me with the asparagus.

We're gonna grill this asparagus.

It's really very simple and it doesn't take very long at all and once again, we've already got our grill on and it's already seasoned from all the meat and all the corn we just cooked.

So we're gonna take this asparagus and are we gonna cook it just like this?

What are we gonna do?

- We're gonna take it and we're gonna break it.

- Just break it, just take it and bend it, and it's gonna bend and it's gonna break.

We got the tough part and the tender part.

And so that's really all you do.

And sometimes if you've got really big fat asparagus, have you ever peeled asparagus before?

It's kind of fun, I like it.

But if you've got big fat ones, you can peel them.

But if you've got nice ones like this what we call the pencil asparagus, this is great just the way it is.

To grill this, we have to put a little bit of oil on it.

So we're gonna put some olive oil on it, some simple salt and pepper.

We're gonna put it on the grill for two or three minutes.

We're gonna line it back up on this beautiful dish and it's gonna be ready to go.

So Ashley, take it away, baby.

And we're using a nice extra virgin olive oil.

And that's just because it's got a good rich flavor to it.

And here's your salt and pepper.

And here's a pair of tongs.

Now, the thing about grilling asparagus, what are you gonna be careful of here?

- I want to make sure we don't overcook them.

- [Pamela] Don't overcook them, yes.

- [Ashley] No asparagus fall through.

- So you want to make sure you're putting them on there so that the asparagus is not gonna fall out so go ahead, show us how to do it.

They're not gonna take very long at all.

Nice and tender.

You're gonna see the color pop, they're gonna get nice and bright.

It'll be amazing.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

So now we just wait for a couple minutes and then we're gonna roll them a little bit and just make sure that they're all gonna be nice and cooked.

And you got to watch the tips of your asparagus so they don't burn.

Some of the ones you put on at first will probably be ready just to roll them a little bit.

Just take them, turn them.

Oh yeah see look, coming up nice and careful.

There we go.

Our flame line is coming down the middle so that's where you're gonna have most of your action.

Now you know why that's happening.

- [Ashley] Because of the oil.

- So be prepared for it.

That looks great.

So Ashley, tell us about your experience here.

You've been here about the same time as Thomas, has he been in the same classes as you?

No, different, so what are you doing?

- So I'm going into guard.

- She gets to be in my class, yay.

Oh, that's wonderful.

So you're just a semester ahead of Thomas.

That's great, what's been your favorite part so far?

- I love learning how to be more comfortable with food and just all the different ingredients.

It's crazy how many new ingredients like yesterday, I learned about red bananas.

I had no idea red bananas were a thing.

- Well you see, there you go.

And it's so much fun, especially when we have a lot of these different chefs coming in here to the school to get exposed to them and just have all this wonderful experience because it opens your eyes, that's great.

These look like they're done.

Look at their pretty color.

Look at that lovely dark green, yes.

Just line them all up in the same direction, ooh, perfect.

Look at that, yes, it's perfect.

Blow him out, he's a candle.

Looks fantastic.

- [Ashley] They smell good too.

- Yes, they do, these are gonna be really good on steak.

So let's set those aside.

I tell you what we're gonna do now is we're gonna pull out that steak.

We pulled it out to let it rest.

I'm gonna cut it off the bone.

I'm gonna show you how you're gonna slice it and you're gonna put it back on a platter so that everybody that's gonna eat this thing is gonna be able to get a little bit of the strip loin and a little bit of the tenderloin.

And then we're gonna surround our platter with these beautiful vegetables and our hasselback potatoes and our sauce and our blue cheese and there's just so much more to do, we got to get busy.

Ashley, thanks for being with us and we'll have you back at the end.

Our hasselbacks are ready so we're gonna pull them out of the oven and put them on our platter and get ready to get this meat so we can have a carnivore space.

So our potatoes come out.

One thing we want to do, put a little bit of the beautiful cheese on there.

We're gonna put them on our platter so that we can have potatoes.

Now look at how beautiful they are.

Look at how they separated and stayed nice and open.

And they get all of this gorgeous seasoning on there.

Look at that, don't those look delicious?

So here's one part of our lunch.

What we're going to do is we're gonna grab these steaks and we're gonna put them on our cutting board and we are going to cut them.

So look, you want to see the bone.

So we see the bone.

I have someone who's gonna help me with this because I need someone to hold a platter for me cause everything here is hot.

Ian, why don't you come on board, Ian Hollingsworth.

Glad to have you here.

- I'm so happy to be here today.

- We're gonna put this on this platter.

And I need you to hold that for me while I cut this up.

How far along in classes are you?

- I'm halfway through the program as well.

I just finished baking one and two.

- So you're in my guard class.

I get another one!

What we're gonna do is we see where the bone is here.

So all we're gonna do is take your bony knife and you're gonna go ahead and cut this meat off.

Cut it right off the bone.

So what you've just done here now is created a New York strip steak.

I am actually... Let me just flip this over here, see if I can get this bone a little bit better.

See where it is.

There it is.

I'm gonna cut this bone, cut off my tenderloin.

Flipping back over, make sure we get the bone from the side.

So now we've got these two beautiful pieces of meat.

I'm gonna leave this right here cause someone I'm sure at the table is gonna want to pick up that bone and gnaw on it like me.

Let this right here in the middle.

So what are we gonna do with the rest of this meat?

Take our knives and we're gonna cut it into beautiful, beautiful, thin serving pieces.

So everybody can get a piece of the New York strip and get a piece of the tenderloin.

And if you want it cooked a little more, cook it a little more, but man, a medium rare, rare steaks like this just don't cook these things till they're well done.

I mean, they're beautiful pieces of meat.

And so we're gonna cut it all the way down into beautiful slices.

Ian, we're gonna put this... Whoops, we'll put that on there later.

Right here where it came off, putting them back together basically.

And there we are with this and then we're gonna take this tenderloin and cut it also.

And one thing you want to make sure you're doing when you're cutting this meat, you want to make sure that you're cutting it against the grain.

So when you see the long edges of the meat, you want to go ahead and cut.

There we go.

A nice little bit here and then we're gonna put all of this on here too.

And now let's decorate our platter.

Grab a pair of tongs and put some corn on there and put some asparagus on there and we're gonna just make this beautiful and make it irresistible, here we go.

One more thing we're gonna put on here y'all, blue cheese butter.

This is a combination of blue cheese and you made this for me, didn't you?

- My classmate Ashley made this blue cheese butter.

- And what's in it?

- So this is just a stick of butter that we make into a compound butter.

You just let that get soft in the mixer.

We've added some blue cheese.

I know there's some scallions on top to decorate.

Horseradish as well, it's a horseradish blue cheese butter.

So it's definitely some strong flavor, but it's amazing to go well with this.

The other butters that you have on top of the corn and what you have going with the potatoes.

- Blue cheese butter.

You can even put that on the corn, that's amazing.

And here we've got a beautiful chimichurri sauce.

Oh my goodness, look at that.

Who wouldn't want that on their table when they're coming to dinner on me.

Go to someone's house and they say we're having dinner.

Here's our dinner.

And it's fabuloso, there we go.

Carnivores delight with some beautiful grilled veggies.

Because we already had the grill on, why not?

We've got blue cheese butter.

We have got a chimichurri sauce.

We've got grilled asparagus.

We've got hasselback potatoes.

If this isn't a feast, I don't know what is.

So thanks for watching us on Charlotte Cooks.

Guys, thank you, thank you.

We really appreciate you being here.

Thanks for watching this episode of Charlotte Cooks and if you want recipes for this, send us an email at Pamela, P-A-M-E-L-A, .roberts, R-O-B-E-R-T-S@cpcc.edu, or grab them off of our website at psbcharlotte.org and thanks again for watching this episode of Charlotte Cooks and thanks you guys for being here.

(playful music) - [Man] A production of PBS Charlotte.