♪ We're talking top round every way ♪
♪ Talking top round ♪
♪ Hear me say ♪
♪ Choo choo talking top round ♪
- Today we are going to fry some steaks
to see whether we can make a London broil any better.
It's not a very highly-valued cut,
but we think if we dredge it, maybe fry it,
it might get a little bit better.
- We're gonna get into it, fry some steaks,
eat those steaks.
- Here we go.
(upbeat pop music)
- So we take the top round off of the rear leg,
one of the four muscles.
We got a top round, bottom round, eye round,
and sirloin tip.
Top round we love for a lotta different reasons.
We're gonna take off a couple different steaks,
but we get a large piece of
♪ London broil ♪
♪ Which not a lot of people like ♪
♪ Because it's not very good ♪
- [Ben] What we're gonna start doing
is breaking down the top round,
and we're gonna get to that real heart
of the London broil.
- [Brent] Why do you think we should use the top round
as our chicken fried steak?
- Top round is from the top part of the leg.
It's the biggest of the muscles that come off of the leg,
but it's also, you can see, really, really lean
in the middle here,
and that's why it's really, really good for something
like a chicken fried, country fried,
you fry it, I fry it steak.
- [Brent] We have
♪ London broil ♪
That's my baby.
- [Ben] Let's just get a slight little cut
and taste it just to get some raw flavor.
(upbeat rock music)
- I think a little bit thicker than this
just so we can pound it and will cook evenly.
- We got our meat.
We're gonna start pounding it out.
My first cut here,
we're gonna see how thin we can get these.
(mallet banging)
How you feel about that?
- Woo!
That's a bad bunny, baby!
Look at that.
- Brent, why do we need to pound to out.
- We need to pound it out
(bright digital tones)
just so it's nice and even.
It doesn't need to tenderize it,
but we wanted to make sure that it cooks evenly.
- Ready?
- Giddy up, now!
- Yeah, woohoo!
Here we go!
Yeah, gettin' it!
Yeah, get after it!
- Banging?
(Ben yelling excitedly)
- Think we got a steak ready to go.
I think we probably want more salt than less salt.
So I would say we should salt these.
Then we can do our baptism.
Then we can do our refrigerated wait time.
Then we can do our fryin',
and then we can eat it.
(funky upbeat music)
All right, beer batter first.
We got 1-3/4 cup.
Go, go.
I'm gonna need one tablespoon of salt.
Yes, yeah, do it by heart.
Do it by love.
Teaspoon of cayenne.
That is not enough.
Let's double down.
That's more like it.
Add some beer, man, 12 ounces.
- Beer.
- That's 16 ounces.
You need 12 ounces.
Y'all ready for this?
(funky upbeat music)
All right, so once that's incorporated,
then we just need to let it sit for a half hour.
Beer batter done.
Let's do buttermilk.
(funky upbeat music)
Is that teaspoon or tablespoon?
- It's small T.
- Small T?
- So, salt, B pep,
cayenne (beeping) baking powder.
Some old garlic.
- Need a little onion?
I gotta say I think this is gonna be better
because it has onion and garlic.
- The recipe said to not include the buttermilk?
- So you put it in the dry.
Then you dip it in the buttermilk.
Then you put it back in the dry.
Then you fry it.
Cool, that's two.
So Brent, when you're doing tempura,
put together the flour, salt,
two cups of water.
We're gonna use Topo Chico
because you know we want those bub-bubs.
This is a separate bowl.
This is where we're putting our cornstarch and our vinegar.
- [Brent] Cornstarch.
- We shockingly are not tempura masters.
- You're not a tempura master.
- [Ben] Mix it up.
Whisk, this is great.
- Check out this technique. - Couldn't find a
smaller whisk, huh?
All right, I think you can add it in now.
Just wanted to get the cornstarch dissolved.
We didn't wanna do it in that big mixture.
So now we're good to go.
We're ready.
- Let us dredge.
- Let us bathe.
Make sure it gets covered.
(upbeat pop music)
Boom, one down.
We got our beer batter.
Ooh, that's a thick boy.
So this one already had the flour,
so we're just gonna drop that there.
All right, that's two!
(upbeat pop music)
We should let them set for like 15 minutes if we can.
So we'll just put them in the walk-in.
(upbeat pop music)
Okay, it's been 10 minutes!
Let's get to fryin'!
- Woo!
(tongs clanging)
- Got a couple of pieces of beef.
Got two hungry tummies.
- Beeoo!
- Let's fill 'em.
Buttermilk first.
- [Brent] Buttermilk, baby!
- Buttermilk up first.
(upbeat pop music)
All right, beer batter.
(upbeat pop music)
Are you ready to put in the tempura now?
(upbeat pop music)
Let's eat a steak!
Buttermilk you, baby.
- [Brent] Ooooooooooooooh.
Ooh, that's overcooked steak right there.
- All right, well, let's eat it.
- Let's eat it.
- I'm pretty good with that,
but I think the meat steamed the crust a little bit,
so it's not quite as nice.
- It's a little greasy.
It's good.
- It's good.
- If I were drunk, I'd be really happy with this.
- You are drunk.
- No, I'm not.
- Let's try the beer battered.
Cool, look at that.
- [Brent] The batter actually looks really nice.
- Yeah, it's got some crunch to it
that you can hear cutting into it,
which is great.
Well, it tastes like beer.
- Already don't like this one.
- [Ben] Yeah, it tastes like beer.
I don't really want it to taste like beer.
I want it to taste like beef.
- I'll blame the technique and not the masters
of beer battering.
- Ready for tempura?
- Let's do it.
(jazzy pop music)
- That's good, good texture.
- Tempura's definitely the best texture for the breading.
I don't think it actually adds anything to the steak,
but I would say maybe we actually did this
with a better steak, it would actually be pretty good.
- I think you're absolutely right.
I think this is where we were talking about
you wanna use the London broil because it's cheap
and it actually sees some benefit
from being fried in all this fat,
but if you actually did like a New York strip
or something like that with the tempura,
that would actually play off it very, very well.
So which one are you liking the best?
- Power ranking number one, tempura.
It was the most successful of this experiment.
- Wow, okay.
- Two, buttermilk.
If I was extremely hungover
and was able to have that with gravy
and like three eggs and a stack of pancakes,
I'd be very happy.
- Okay.
- Beer batter.
- Way down at the bottom.
- Don't really need it.
That's black out drunk good.
- I got buttermilk number one.
- Buttermilk, why? - I was shocked
you went tempura number one.
- Why?
- I think the texture's really, really good on the tempura,
but all the flavors of the garlic, the cayenne, the onion.
I'm gonna go ahead and say because we're not fry masters,
we probably could've fried it better.
I probably could've fried it better.
- So do you think any of this actually made
the top round any better?
- I kinda do.
I just think it's more interesting.
The top round when it's cooked, just flatlines for me.
There's nothing exciting about it texturally.
There's nothing exciting about it flavor-wise.
The tempura and the buttermilk are both more interesting
to me than just frying the London broil.
So there ya have it.
We disagree on tempura over buttermilk,
but we like both of 'em.
- We did a semi-successful experiment.
- The one thing we can agree on,
do not beer batter your steaks ever.
Just don't do it.
You're better than that.
(jazzy pop music)