"Juice" in the pan

corblimey

Whenever I fry up steak strips (either purchased as-is or diy at home), there tends to be a build up of liquid in the pan as they fry. This is completely harmless, I'm sure, and if I was cooking for a while, would tend to boil off after a while, but I'm often not cooking these strips for very long, so I'd like to understand if this liquid is something I'm doing.

1. Buy better steak
2. Have the pan hotter/colder when adding the meat
3. Cook in batches.

For #3, the pan is quite large, so 500g of strips is usually crowded in, but generally able to fit all on 1 level.

The Hill Billy

2 & 3 should do the trick.

refusetolose

4. Make sauce from it!

rubadub

very hot and do not cram the pan. Water will come out of meat naturally, its takes quite a bit of energy to heat this up and vapourise it. If you fill your kettle to the brim with 2L of water it will take appox 4 times as long to boil as 500ml of water. By dumping it in you prolong the time needed for all the meat to get to temperature and it can stew in its own juices.

I have also taken meat out and poured off the water that came out, this can be saved and reduced down.

Proper chinese restaurants will have very high power gas cookers so they can do more at once than you could at home.

You can also dab the strips with kitchen roll to take some moisture off. Also you can leave them uncovered on a plate or rack in the fridge, making sure it will not contact other foods. The fridge will have a drying effect on the meat, you probably noticed this if you have cheese partially unwrapped, or a tray of mince only open on one end.

corblimey

Tks all. So say I go with smaller batches of meat. This weekend I was doing beef fajitas, so I cook the meat for a short time, add my veg, then my own special fajita mix of secret spices and dump the whole lot into a wrap. If I was to do this in batches, is it enough to cook off the meat a bit at a time, then bring it all together before adding veg and spices, or am I basically starting from scratch each time - half the meat, half the veg, half the spice, cook to completion, second half of meat, etc? This sounds like a bit of a palaver.

GingerLily

I would brown the first batch and put to one side then brown the second batch, and either add the first batch back to the pan or add the second batch to the first batch, depending on what the next step of your recipe is.

meeeeh

corblimey wrote: »

Tks all. So say I go with smaller batches of meat. This weekend I was doing beef fajitas, so I cook the meat for a short time, add my veg, then my own special fajita mix of secret spices and dump the whole lot into a wrap. If I was to do this in batches, is it enough to cook off the meat a bit at a time, then bring it all together before adding veg and spices, or am I basically starting from scratch each time - half the meat, half the veg, half the spice, cook to completion, second half of meat, etc? This sounds like a bit of a palaver.

Fry the meat in batches to sear it. Fry the veg on it's own first then add beef and spice mix and salt. Don't add salt to beef when you are searing it because that draws out water.

I find you need high heat for good fajitas. If your cooker isn't great for high heat then it might be worth investing into thick cast iron pan. If you can't do serious damage when hitting someone with it then it's too lightweight.

Mystery Egg

Two more tips:

1. Pat it dry before you put it into the searing hot pan
2. Don't stir it around much. Use a tongs to turn slices when they've browned.