Can my homemade cheese steak beat the best cheese steak In LA? In the red corner we have the frozen JTM brand cheese steak kit from your local freezer section. This cost a whopping $4 and 37 cents per sandwich that is actually damn cheap. And then in the blue corner we have the best, most expensive cheese steak in all of Los Angeles. This is from Matu Steak and this costs $25 made with pure Wagyu grass fed steak trimmings only served at the bar and yet to be seen fighting in the tartan kilt because if I ever fought, you bet your — I’d be wearing a Tartan kilt is my cheese steak that I am going to make from scratch. Now you all know I’m very passionate about cheese steaks, but I’m gonna throw a couple curve balls here. ’cause here’s the thing, that is going to be a tough cheese steak to beat and hell, maybe that one will be too. I’m gonna make my own, I’m gonna do my damnedest, and we are going to have a judge blind taste test, all three to tell which one was the cheapest, which was the most expensive, and which one was made by these bird loving hands. Not that makes it sound like I have. I was trying to make like a Philadelphia Eagles reference because that’s where the cheese steak was invented, but then it just sounds like I’m doing inappropriate things to toucans. Let’s get cooking. For the record, no birds have ever been harmed by, well, there was that one. It was a science camp and it, anyways, we’re making a cheese steak. Now, normally I would just try and make a normal cheese steak, especially when we’re trying to compare it to an expensive restaurant and a cheap freezer version. However, I’ve made a lot of cheese steaks on the show and. I’ve made one cheese steak that I’m maybe most proud of, but I’ve never actually shown you guys how to make because I made it on Gordon Ramsey’s show, Idiot Sandwich against Rhett and Link I made Gordon Ramsey a Conata cheese steak ’cause I love cheese steaks. I think it’s the world’s perfect sandwich, but also I grew up in Southern California and so I love Mexican flavors. So that’s what we’re gonna do today. We’re gonna start by making some habanero pickled onions, uh, the habanero. That’s what beautiful Gordon Ramsey said to me when we shot on the most bizarre live Vegas set ever, that was so unexpected. It was crazy. But what a fun time. Go check out that episode if you haven’t seen it. We’re gonna make some habanero and oregano pickled onions. We’re doing this in the style of a pickle called Escabeche, and you’ll see. The, the etymology nerd comes at me. So, Escabeche, if you know the term like ceviche, esche comes from the same etymology meaning like, uh, preserved in some sort of acid vinegar or citrus. You also see the word, uh, esco in Jamaican food. If you found that interesting, just check the, just answer the survey that comes up that says, that was interesting. Josh keeps saying shit like that. We’re gonna cut up this onion. So, you know, like you’re supposed to trim off the end of an onion if you want like perfect slices. What I do is I’ve learned to diagonal cut all the way around. Do you ever do that? No. Check this out. It’s what I do is I just, I start diagonal cutting it and then you gradually taper it up to the top. And then you walk it back and then you diagonal cut it again by the time you get up here, you got perfect. And one more. Look at that. No waste of the onion. If you found that interesting, please answer the survey. We’re gonna start doing this CVS model where we give you a big ass receipt and they go, Hey, if you could please go online and fill out a survey. And I’m like, no, I didn’t want to be here. I certainly don’t wanna spend any extra time filling out a survey. Have you guys ever filled out the cashier surveys? No. No. That’s a bummer. I feel bad for the cashiers. So we’re actually going to hit this with like a quick, quick, quick saute before we pickle it and we’re gonna get a couple of peppercorns in there. Get a couple oreganos in there. And the goal is just to kind of get this like coated oil. You don’t wanna actually cook it, but you want to get like a little bit of scorch on it. It’s actually a really cool technique. Let that scorch a little bit. Habanero. A little bit of spice in there. That’s the thing that cheese steaks for me are missing a little bit. You got so much lovely fat from on that beef, but ya ain’t got no spice. So I’m gonna take habanero. We’re gonna add that to the pickled onion. Just whole nice chunks in there. In theory, this is just to like spice the onion, but I’m not gonna touch with my hand. I think this is gonna poison everybody. The fumes, it’s gonna poison everybody. Sorry. Sorry. Ha. Cool. And then while it’s still hot, ’cause we want to get a little cook on the onions, we’re gonna add vinegar to cover and then we’re gonna pop that in like a mason dry or something. Add a little bit of sugar in there. Just a tiny bait. You don’t want it to be a sweet pickle, but sugar does help round out pickle brands. And then a whole lot of salt, eh, eh. Boom. There we go. That’s gonna be so nice. Now, steak, uh, don’t have to clean your cutting board ’cause listen, if you get a little hot and air flavor on your steak, we’re gonna do like a carna, ada marinated thin slice rib. Now for cheese steaks, what you want to do is slice a rib as thin as possible. You go to the best spots. In Philly, they’re getting all their ribeye, generally pre-sliced the running like a frozen steak through a meat slicer to get like paper thin slices. You throw it on the grill and then you bash it up. Uh, but we ain’t got a meat slicer. What we do have. Frozen puck of steak. This is ribeye. All the best cheese steaks are made with ribeye. The best way to slice as thin as possible is to freeze it. So I’m just gonna run my knife through it. Ooh, my hands are cold. I’ve gotten so soft in my old age. Does anybody like feel that Where you like crave, you go outside and it’s like 56 degrees and you’re like. I could go for a cardigan right now. You guys feel that? I feel like I’ve been seeing that like actively in me. I’m gonna slice this as thin as possible. Check back in a couple minutes and I’ll make a marinade. My hands are so cold. This steak was truly a frozen brick. I can’t close them. But what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna make a little marinade. So typically cheese steak would just be salt and pepper. Hit it on the grill, boom. Done. But I wanna add some extra flavor in here. If you guys have been wondering what I’m up to in my personal life. I’ve been blending a lot of raw onion to marinade meats it, woo. So that’s a huge update for me. So we’re gonna go ahead. That’s it. That’s all I got for you. We’re gonna add some onion. You don’t need much, but, okay. So here’s why I do this. So this is actually a big technique in Middle Eastern cooking, especially in like Persian or, or even Armenian kebabs. You will like marinate the meat in onion juice. It gives us this incredible fragrance. What I love about blending the whole onion is you get like, you get solids. You know you like curds for the spices to actually stick to and I think that’s really cool. So the onions actually gonna like soak up some of the spices dit with blending garlic and give it a nice palm heel strike. I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve done this. I just got nervous to Palm heel. Strike the garlic. I don’t know if I have it in me anymore. I, God, I still got it. Look at that. It’s a big ass clove of garlic too. That’s a heavyweight garlic gun Weight glass. One garlic. We’ll do two Garlics ice. Right. Pop that in there. I’m gonna juice some orange, get a little bit of acid into that meat, and a little bit of caramelization. And then you can take the orange that’s covered with your raw meat hands and just save that for a nice little e coli snack later. Little funny, little e coli shower orange. Okay, so now we got a bunch of spices we got. A little bit of cumin, oregano, uh, paprika and chili powder. And that’s gonna go in there. And you know what? Not, throw on the rest of the haing arrow. Why not? That wasn’t in the plan, but you should, should I add some peppercorns that, so do people know about shower orange? You all know about shower orange’s. Like the greatest joy in life is to just go into the shower with a cold orange and eat it. That way you can get all the juices on you, Winnie is nodding. Uh, you can get all the juices on you, and you’re already in the shower, so you can shower off. Yeah. What that presupposes is that you have an issue in your fully clothed day-to-day life of just completely getting covered in orange juices, which I do not. So for me, every day, if you have a certain lack of shame or self-respect, you know, you can shower orange in your full clothes and just walk around. Sticky covered in orange juice. It’s like shower beers. It’s like, dude, I’m drinking a [bleep] beer two hours before that. You guys don’t have [bleep] beers too? Yeah, buddy. Okay. And now what I like to do when I season my meat is I like to estimate the amount of salt that I need directly onto the meat, not add any salt to the marinade. That’s a nice heavily salted beef right there. Is that runny enough? Yeah, it’s gonna work Habanero. Creamy, creamy, Crip craps. I don’t know why I’m pouring it directly onto the meat and not into the bag. This was, I got freaked. What happened is the habanero hit me and I freaked and I poured this directly onto the meat. ’cause this doesn’t make any sense. This, this is not culinary viable and I can’t touch that with my bare hands ’cause I, it is gonna ho and arrow. Now I gotta figure out how to get it into this bag. Yeah. I love all the people who are like. I have a DHD and can’t figure out how to do things or cope with life. And watching Josh makes me confident that I can do stuff and I’m just like, I gotta get the meat into the stack, but I don’t know how. And so you’re welcome. For the inspiration, you should do this. Check this out. You know, they make tools to help you with your daily tasks in life. Just go ahead and tong it in there. Nice. There we go. Okay. This seems like it’s working. This seems like it’s working. I think I’m a hero for having gotten as far as I have in life with my brain being this dumb, frankly. There we go. And now, now this is, this is where the real technique comes into play. Oh dude, I meant to add some water to the pickles and I didn’t, ’cause I always, God dang it, you’re a hero, Josh. I always do a 50 50 water to vinegar. Solution for pickles, and instead I just poured straight vinegar in there. Never too late. Never too late. Pickles are gonna set, they’ll set in the fridge 50 50. So if you are worried about your beef not being thin enough, I know we’re a beef positive environment here, but you do want your beef to be like as razor thin as possible for a cheese steak. So what I like to do is I put it in a sack and then I repeatedly Palm heel. Strike it. Until it is uh, uh, pounded out. So she’s gonna go ahead and Heights, Heights, Heights. And you’re just gonna do this. You’re gonna kind of Donkey Kong, pound the marinade into your beef. Surely there are other tools, but I don’t think that’s any fun. So this is actually how I would do this at home with no cameras on. He’s dead. You killed him. Okay, so now we have a sack of beef. That is just completely pounded into oblivion with the marinade. And we’re gonna go ahead and cook that up. Make some cheese sauce. Make a cheese steak. Famous actor Kevin Bacon once said to, to me, the best cheese steak is the one that’s on your street. And I would generally agree with that. Like the best cheese steaks that I have, they’re, they’re not the super fancy ones. That said, I’ve never had this one from Matu. It is a fine dining restaurant, but also it’s like their little bar snack and it’s a great way to use up steak trimmings that they would have otherwise. I only did this episode because I wanted to try this cheese steak and I didn’t wanna drive all the way down to Beverly Hills. ’cause last time I did that I got a parking ticket and their parking meters only take coins. You guys know this. What the hell’s up with that 25 cents is eight minutes. Yeah, like it’s, take a card. Take a card. I’ll give you my Anyway, so the point is I think I got some tricks on my sleeve to try and beat this fine dining cheesecake ’cause I can’t compete with our product ’cause I have had some really good cheesecakes that use really good product. Um, Angelo’s Pizzeria in Philly makes the best cheesecake they I’ve ever had in my life. Wood rose, also in Philly, they make a homemade cheese whiz that I am going to do today. Wood Rose does like a little truffle cheese whiz. I’m gonna make a Chipotle cheese whiz right here trying to accent some of those Mexican flavors in the steak. I’m pretty stoked on this. This is what I made for Gordon Ramsey as well, and I think he was genuinely impressed. I was gonna like, add more things. I was gonna make like a Pico de Gao and maybe do like an avocado situation. Uh, and then I got way too distracted messing around with re and link, uh, in Gordon Ramsey to actually focus on my cook. So this is what I ended up with, but I mostly got it all done. We’re gonna add a little bit of milk. To that pot. We’re gonna add some salt in there. We’re gonna put some sodium citrate. I’ve talked about this before. This is the chemical that makes American cheese, American cheese. This is the chemical that makes American cheese melt in that beautiful way that it does. We’re adding about a teaspoon. This is crazy. So we’re gonna add Cooper sharp cheese. Cooper Sharp has become a Philly institution of the White American cheese game, and I, I recently in a video called Cooper Sharp American Cheese and people were like mad about that. It is. It’s American cheese, it just look it up. Um, it’s not a craft single. I think the problem is people think of American cheese as just like craft singles and that’s not what it is. That is pasteurized, processed American cheese food. Then there’s also pasteurized processed imitation cheese product, but real American cheese. It’s just cheddar basically melted down with milk and some other things and then added to a loaf. Is that exciting to you? I love loaves of cheese. Okay, so we’ve added our milk and our cheese. Now the chemicals in the sodium citrate should get this two perfectly melt and blend together, and I’m going to take. Chipotle’s and Adobo. This is a great thing to just keep in your pantry. You got like the whole Chipotle’s in here. They got all the seeds. That’s fun. You chop it up, add it to a mayonnaise, spread it on a sandwich. But what I’m going for right now is just the juice baby. That’s the adobo. That’s some good stuff. Chipotle are smoked and dried a jalapenos, but then they’ve smoked and dried this and then re-wet it and it makes some little smoked juice. Perfect. So we got that in there. I’m just gonna go ahead and stir this up till it’s all nice and melty. Check back in a sec. And look at this. When it all comes together, it is a perfectly silk and delicious, extra thick cheese sauce. Cheese whiz does have a, it’s like a little bit of like a chemically processed flavor. This is just like real good cheese, some Chipotle’s, a little bit of salt and whole milk. I’m gonna give this a taste. Dude, this is exciting for me. Sticks to the spoon beautifully. Look at that. I can’t believe I fed Gordon Ramsey. This. That’s nuts, dude. Oh yeah, Josh. Wow. Incredible. You’ve done it. You’ve done it again. Well done buddy. Hey, I want to offer you a star in my restaurant. Stars is where you work for free. Don’t get paid any money. And I go, yes, Papa. Yes, Papa Ram. Yeah. I’ll come. I’ll come do it. Papa. Like I’m a Dickensian orphan. Alright, cheese sauce, man. Let’s make a sandwich. Jay. Salt Lee’s the best goddamn second. I was gonna try and make a Philly baseball reference and realize that I know nothing about baseball. That’s okay. Uh, we have some onions and poblanos running down. Typically cheese steaks, you can get peppers added, but that’s like a trap. Like you never go to Philly Cheesesteaks, but get peppers. Some do some say add sweet peppers, that hot peppers, whatever. Masu steak, they put a whole freaking Italian long hot in their cheese steak, which I think absolutely rips. The Italian long hots are great, but for our sake, ratting, some poblanos in there. ’cause again. You like tie in together all these Mexican flavors. When you saute them, you don’t really want a lot of browning, and that goes ditto for the meat when you’re hitting a cheese steak. I see a lot of people cooking cheese steaks. Typical wisdom says, hit a steak hard and fast. Get a lot of browning on it. None of the good cheese steaks that I have have any texture browning to the meat. The meat’s sort of almost like griddled and steamed in itself. And so we’re gonna try and do that as well. Get out in nice little, there we go. And you wanna move it and chop it as fast as possible. There we go. What someone look up what position Chase Utley played. Infielder. It’s an infield. He okay. Oh yeah. Infielder. But what kind of infielder? It’s like, was he second base? Second base second. Jason Ley was the second baseman. Look at me knowing a baseball thing. Holy shmokes. We wanna keep bashing up that meat. There we go. We got this lovely silky cheese sauce over here. Should I do the real Philly thing where I just name old Eagles players that I kinda like? Carrel Buckhalter, Jason Avant, Reno Mahe, Todd Pinkston, LJ Smith I thought was good. We, we had a really good run at tight end, and so I feel like LJ Smith doesn’t get the flowers that he deserves. John Runion dirtiest player in the league. You see the video of John Runion, just spearing a man with his helmet after the play was over. It’s beautiful. Holly Yalu vitae. Isaac say Malu, and then the male urge. This state is looking nice and wet and frat. In theory. I don’t think you should need teeth. To eat a cheese steak. There is a bit of a debate, but I feel like the debate’s been settled. I think the only place that like still kind of does this is Gino’s and they’re the racist ones. Um, look up Gino’s cheese steaks, racism. It’s not funny. It’s, but anyways, I don’t think you should need teeth to eat a cheese steak. I think you should just be able to gum it right down. Go ahead and give this bad way of taste. Look at this, Josh’s using tools. Yum. Dude, that is excellent. Keep this going on. I’m gonna wait for a little bit of that steam to cook out. ’cause you don’t want cheesecake to be too wet, which I know is a crazy thing for me to say that. Oh my god. A sandwich could be too wet, but it could, it’ll let the steam kind of cook out. But actually what I’m gonna do, Amarillo rolls. Listen. Are there better cheese steak rolls out there? Absolutely shout out to CIO’s. Also shout out to the, uh, Angelo’s Bread cartel out there. Anyways, I’m gonna hollow out the bread a little bit. That’s just so we can fit more steak in there. And then you get a nice little snack that you can dip in your homemade cheese leaves. So what we’re gonna do. Pop that bread over the top, get that nice and steam, and then we’re gonna sort of reformulate this again. Architecture is a big part of it now. Big little bread snack here. We sell some cheese whiz over here. Yeah, that’s good stuff. Philadelphia leads the nation in twisted tea consumption. Oh no. Look at that steak steam. There we go. Ready? Alright, so check this out. What I’m gonna do, I’m gonna take some of these whis. We’re gonna get it on the inside of that roll also. Hey, shout out to the underrated cheese steak styles out there. Lehigh Valley cheese steaks, put marinara sauce and pickles on it. I see you. I see. That’s what I grew up with. Also, I learned that they just tore down the brass rail guys. They just tore down the brass rail. I know at one, one of the allentown’s proudest institutions next, if they close down Yoko’s hotdog, we Ryan. Yeah. Ow. I got moten steak on me. Ow. Typically, you shouldn’t favor hand this, but I’m doing it right now. I don’t care. I wanna pack as much steak in there as possible. Use the spat. There we go. And now we’re gonna take some extra cheese whiz. We’re just gonna go right on top of it, try and get it in the crevasses. There we go. Oh dude, I didn’t leave room for pickles. Whatever. We got our pickled onions with the oregano and the habaneros right there. That’s just gonna go right on top. This is mimicking like the cherry peppers. Look at that grease dripping dude. That’s what we want. Hell yes. Pop it right in there. Typically, you’d wanna fully wrap up this cheese steak, but I’m just gonna make it in a little cheese steak boat. You guys can see what freaking monstrosity that I’ve made. Hell yes. There you have it. We got the uh, carne asada cheese steak. This is Southern California meets Philly. Last time Southern California met Philly, we had a, a wide receiver named Nelson Aguilo, the greatest eagle in the history of Eagles football. This is dedicated to you, Nelson, gwStewart@spark.com. You’re in here in a blindfold again. Yeah. Nobody has asked you to wear the blindfold. You just keep coming in on your own accord. This is my own blindfold. It’s so no one can tell if she’s sleeping at work. Uh, we have three cheese steaks in front of you. One is the cheapest cheese steak. Los Angeles. One is the most expensive cheese steak in Los Angeles, and one is one that I have made with my own bird loving hands. Not like that. Ooh. Um, you ready to eat? When you say bird loving, you mean the Eagles? The Eagles? Yeah. No, I knew it. Not toucans. It’s definitely not a sex thing. All right. First one coming in. Bird cans. You gotta like, gotta open pretty wide for this. Uh, there it goes. Hmm. Boom. What are you tasting? Mostly meat. I don’t taste a lot of like toppins or anything like that, but that could have just been ’cause my mouth wouldn’t open wide enough. Which is you got, you know, we all have our problems, but yeah, it’s good. I wanna taste another one, and then I’ll have a better frame of reference. Okay. We can do that for you. Okay. All right. Hold on. A lot coming in. Okay. I’m, I’m sorry. Whoa, what the hell? That’s like really saucy. It’s like no cheese steak I’ve ever had before. Well, what do you look for in a cheese steak? As far as like the split between cheese and meat. Wow. And it’s like pickled peppers on it. Does it have, I don’t, I didn’t taste a lot of meat, but it has a lot of fun accoutrement. Mm-hmm. Do think lot of peppery flavor. What do you think that that’s like, I’m sorry, did I bother you? I can leave you. Accoutrement could mean two things, could mean something really chefy, or it could mean you’re trying to like hide the meat. Okay, that’s true. So I have a feeling that I understand what you’re saying and I, it’s a great feeling, isn’t it? A great feeling to be understood. Those argue you wanna be loved or understood. There’s no right answer. You ready for the last one? Yeah. Hmm. Ooh, Yummm. The, um, the beef feels like, it’s like very thinly sliced, tastes like high quality too, like, that tastes like good steak to me. But you don’t, he is getting a cheese steak. Is that right? You know better than I do. Me or them, you’re not making eye contact with them. No, that’s true. So most cheese steaks are made with, most are made with ribeye, but some are also made with obviously minute steaks or, or steakums. I love steakums. I think most people at home would be better served using steaks than trying to slice a ribeye really thinly. Did you, so do you like cheese whiz or American cheese or whatever? I like both. Typically, if I’m especially in Philly, I’ll go with Cooper Sharp, which is like the the best white American cheese. Oh, okay. Nice. Not to be confused with Cooper Deje. Pick six in Super Bowl. Love you, coop. Love you. The exciting. Can you say the exciting whites are back? The, no, I don’t think I want to say that. Why? Can I taste the first one again? Yes, you may make sure you get a representative bite. Hold on. I have seen right here. Go so eager. Here you go. Coming in. Okay. I think I have my info. Gwynedd, which one do you think was the most expensive steak in Los Angeles? I think it’s the that one. The one you just fed me. Which one do you think was the cheapest cheesecake in Los Angeles? The one in the middle because it’s so saucy. And which one do you think was the one that I made the last one? Which one was your favorite? Um, the last one was my favorite. Gwynedd, take off your blindfold. The last one that was your favorite is a frozen cheese steak kit for $4 a pop. I know. I’m as mad as you are. It’s, no, I ate that. It’s so good. What’s the brand? JTM. I gotta Google what it stands for. This is a really incredible product. It’s spectacular. The gap at like, this is a great expensive cheese steak. It’s from Matu Steak in Beverly Hills. Okay. This is the bar only cheese steak. It’s really good. Obviously we had to shuttle it from the restaurant. Mm-hmm. But I love that bread. Yeah. Same, same thing. We use an amarosa roll. I love a nice wet cheese steak. Also, I tried to make it like a carne saada style. Okay. Cheese steak, because I, I made the sandwich for Gordon Ramsey and he really loved it. So I thought you might too. Apparently not. That’s okay. The gap though, between this $4 cheese steak from the freezer and a $25 like expensive restaurant cheese steak. Mm-hmm. It’s not that big. That’s really good. No, it’s really genuinely crazy and I think that’s really good information. I would absolutely buy that. And I do think this is really good. I really did get confused ’cause it’s so saucy and when you said that like maybe they’re trying to cover something up, I was like, oh, okay. I get it. I’m trying to cover up my own flaws and insecurities with the cheese sauce. But I like that. What’s in the sauce? ’cause it’s like, it’s like Chipotle or something? It is Chipotle, yeah. I made like a homemade Chipotle cheese whiz. Okay. And then made almost like a carne asada marinade with like blended onion and orange juice and stuff. For the steak. It’s beautiful. Habanero pickled onions on it. It’s really beautiful. Thank you so much. Um, you can usually whenever I do this, you know what the cheapest thing is because it lacks flavor and this actually has a lot of flavor. That tastes like just a guy in Philly yelling about Ryan Howard’s career with the Phils, put that into a bag and shipped that out here. Right. So the liberals in California can eat it. Gwynedd, Thank you so much for stopping by. Even though you hated my steak. Sorry. I feel really sorry. I like you as a person and a coworker, and I think you do good work. I think we’ll get past this. We might. Watch the exclusive last meals episode with Stevie out now at mythicalsociety.com.