(upbeat music) - I'm Sam Spiva and I'm the founder of Spiva Cooking.

Bremerton is just such a wonderful area, with great state parks and great nature and really good people.

Kayaking is always a fun thing to do in this area.

Take the Bremerton to Seattle ferry and just experience all the great outdoor activities here.

There's more and more food establishments opening up that are exciting.

I started Spiva Cooking during the pandemic.

I was a corporate chef for a large adventure cruise company and I would go travel around to all the vessels and train their chefs on how to make meals, things like that.

When Covid hit, the company really had to downsize, and I lost my position.

I was doing some meal delivery for friends and family while I was trying to figure out what that right thing was and I made a barbecue pork shoulder as one of those dishes for the meal delivery.

And for that, I made this barbecue dry rub.

I had some extra of it and I posted it up on social media and all of a sudden, orders started flooding in.

I had 50 pounds worth of orders to fulfill.

And so it was a couple of crazy days of grinding and sending it out.

And then I just started thinking, okay, maybe there's something here.

So I started adding different types of flavors and developing my packaging and investing some time into building this spice business.

I went to the Culinary Institute of America in New York and that's where I met my wife, Heather.

After culinary school, we worked in the Seattle area for a number of years, traveled to central Asia, lived there for a few years, and then came back to this area again, moved to Bremerton about four years ago.

We have experience and background in so many different cuisines, and for me, travel has always been a really important part of my career.

And that informs a lot of the flavor profiles that we end up going with.

Of course, we add our own creative twists and inspiration, but we really want it to have heart.

And when people taste it, we want them to be transported to those areas.

Most people don't think of spices as quality.

They think of herbs as quality.

They say, why would I use the dry version if you can have the fresh version?

And it's just a totally different product, that it comes in its own levels of quality.

A lot of the ways that these spices are produced are with such attention to detail by the producers, whether the chilies are being smoked or the way it's dried in such a way that preserves the quality, and these processes are now even certified by countries because they've been doing them for generation after generation in this specific way that keeps the integrity of the product.

We started thinking about what it would look like to have a retail store and be able to do events.

We realized that there were a lot of people in Kitsap who wanted to learn more about cooking.

They wanted to cook more healthy with real whole natural foods and ingredients, which is a huge passion for Heather and I.

And so we decided, instead of just looking for a warehouse, we really wanted to find a spot where we could do events and have a little retail presence.

But for us, it's just really important to be a resource for the community, and we've always had that passion for bringing people together, and this is a way for us to continue to do that as well through the spice company, rather than just seeing our product on a shelf in some random store, there's a person behind it, a family behind it, where you can come in, and we can engage over food and talking about the things we like to make and your personal preferences and how you might be able to build flavors with some of those ingredients that you really like to cook with.

Today, I will be teaching you the four tips to cook a perfect steak.

So we have these beautiful grass fed, beef New York strip steaks that we got from a local farm here, Clark Farms in Sequim, Washington.

And the first tip I have for you is to temper your steaks, which means pulling them outta the refrigerator a good one to two hours ahead of time.

And what that's gonna do is allow them to cook more even.

The next tip I have for you is pre seasoning.

We're gonna be seasoning with one of our blends today, the Red Eye Rub, which is our coffee chile seasoning.

We're gonna put a good, healthy dose on here, really load it up on both sides.

Tip number three, using a hot pan.

You want it to be really hot.

Otherwise you're not gonna have a nice crust and you're not gonna have a consistently cooked steak.

So we're gonna add some avocado oil, and then we're gonna add our steaks.

These are gonna cook for about three minutes on each side to get a nice brown.

So this is a great process for steak, but it works really well for any kind of protein.

So we're gonna add a little bit of garlic and some butter.

And as this steak is cooking, we'll just start to tilt our pan and baste the steaks.

Okay, so now I'm gonna get some vegetables going in this pan.

So while those are going, the final tip, tip number four on the steaks, the most important one because I know I'm excited to cut into this, but don't do it.

If you do it all the juices will be flowing all over your cutting board and all of those juices contain the flavor.

And so we wanna let this rest.

So a steak that's this thick, a good five to 10 minutes is what it's gonna take to rest.

If you have a big cut of meat, like a brisket or a roast, it can take up to an hour.

Now we're gonna set these aside and then we'll cut our steak and build the plates.

There's four tips for making a beautifully cooked steak, protein, whatever you have in your refrigerator.

Doesn't take a long time to build flavor, but it really packs an absolute punch of deliciousness.

We really love to know that the blends that we're making are creating an atmosphere where people can experience joy and community and come around a table together and have laughter and fun.

And I think for us, just knowing that what we're doing here is making an impact in people's lives, it's really fulfilling.