Is my homemade steak dinner better than the fanciest restaurant in L.A? Do we have a microphone that can rappel down from the ceiling? Wait, hold on, I can just Cause I’m gonna do a full Michael Buffer, can we add like a string? Like, it just, special effects in post. In the red corner, weighing in at a whopping 22 ounces and tallying $135, the T Bone Steak from Alexander’s Steakhouse. And in the blue corner, the challenger, the underdog, the Denny’s destroyer itself, weighing in at 14, oh I hit puberty, weighing in at 14 ounces and tallying $20.99, the Denny’s T Bone. And yet to be seen. In the middle, you’re tired of this bit and my throat is about to bleed. We have a steak dinner that I am going to be making to see how it stacks up against the most expensive T-bone steak we could find in LA versus the cheapest T-bone steak we could find in LA. RIP the sizzler, uh, Denny’s seems to be it. We’re going to have a judge blind taste test all three to see if they can tell which one was homemade and tell which one was actually better to see if this is worth the money. And if this is a good budget option. I need to try these first though, because the Denny’s, now my father was a drinker. No, he actually wasn’t, my dad, my dad was a big Denny’s steak guy though. We’d like, go to IHOP and I’d be eating a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity and my dad would get the, you know, $9 steak on the menu. Thanks to inflation though, the cheapest T-Bone we could find. I think T-Bones had gone out of style a little bit. It was from Denny’s for $20.99 It was cheaper than the Sizzler, it was cheaper than the Outback. Not a lot of visible seasoning or sear on this, but again, they’re known for pancakes. This was salted for a long time before it was cooked. You can tell because it has that kind of corn beefy chew to it. It doesn’t satisfy like a steak. We got greens and mashed potatoes with both. You can tell the potatoes on these dishes are so different. These are, these are wet, man, I’ll tell you what. That’s so good. There is roughly 20 percent potato by weight in that. The rest is some sort of like dairy and what I can only describe as amorphous goo. Broccoli, somehow both under and overcooked at the same time, that’s alright. Definitely frozen and I think they just let it come up to temp when they delivered it, but that’s okay. Oh, also, on the Denny’s steak, there’s no filet whatsoever. T Bone is supposed to be New York plus filet, very similar to a porterhouse, but a porterhouse comes from a slightly different region, and it has, uh, more filet. There’s actually legal protections on it. There is not enough to get a single bite of filet on the Denny’s steak. That’s totally fine. You are at Denny’s. Bunch of theater kids. You are all theater kids. You guys go to Denny’s after shows? Everybody nodded so fast. Theater kids of the world, tell me your Denny’s order. Cause you’re single handedly keeping Denny’s alive. This probably cooked to more of a medium. We did sous vide this to keep the temp, but like, Excellent. Potatoes, they’re not as like fancy and like French pomme puree-y. Well done. This is a really well done steak. $135, that was very steep. We can definitely do it for cheaper. I think we can take it with some chefy tricks. Let’s get to it. T-bone steak, mashed potatoes, Americana. Freedom from one, Norman Rockwell [bleep] meal we’re cooking right here. Uh, okay, mashed potato theory. Real quick, there’s a lot of different ways you could go. From like the ultra French pomme puree that’s 80 percent butter, and you’re using the right potatoes, non extracted starch, yadda yadda, to the, I associate it with Rachel Ray, who, uh, would leave the skin on the potatoes, and then they would just be like half lumpy, looking like potato salads. You put them on the plate and be like I like them nice and rustic, and it’s like, nah, you only had 30 minutes on the clock. You panned yourself into a corner, and you couldn’t get those smoother, but that’s okay, Rachael Ray, we love you. You were my surrogate mother. So, I’m gonna go somewhere in between those. This is, to me, my favorite mashed potato method. It’s a little bit fancy. I’ve seen Gordon Ramsay do it this way. So, we’re going to take some heavy cream that’s on the stove right now. I’m gonna take two things of garlic. I’m gonna palm heel strike it. AITS! Oh, I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve done that, but the technique’s still there. You don’t even have to take the garlic skin off because we’re going to strain that out. Okay, and that rosemary in half. So, we’re infusing that with the garlic and herbs, right there. Steak, I’ll get to you later. Don’t you go anywhere. I’m just kidding, it’s dead. Oh, sorry! These are Yukon golds. We’ve boiled them whole. If you cut them into little squares, and then you boil them, it will be a lot quicker. That’ll only take about 10 minutes. Boiling whole, god, it takes like 30 to 40. But, the problem is, then you’re getting waterlogged potatoes, even if you dry them out. It still kind of gets a little bit mealy for me. So, if you boil them whole, you’re steaming them from the inside. You can also bake them. Hell, you can microwave them if you want. I’m gonna break them up with a little bit of butter. We’re not measuring here. Everyone likes their mashed potatoes differently. But I wanna get a little bit of this butter melted. This is just gonna make the potatoes move a little bit better. Because then we’re gonna pass them through this fine mesh strainer, or famille in French. Ah, God, it’s right on the shoe. I’ll eat that potato later. Don’t you guys mad? Don’t you guys madder? Now, we have this, what do they call this, like a pastry card or something? Bench scraper? Pastry scraper? Get just, uh, if you just get like 17 index cards and tape them together, you can make one at home! We’re gonna take this, we’re gonna very casually scrape the potatoes through. Uh, fast forward through this, but Photoshop it so my muscles look bigger when I’m doing it. Try to flex the whole time. Ow, anybody else have tendonitis? Here, Taylor, you got tendonitis. I can hear your tendonitis. Good enough for me. Okay, and now, look, there’s no potato under there, but Ehhh! Lookit! The underside. What’s happening? Is that cream boiling? I hear the cream. Do you ever cook with headphones on and then you realize how much of your hearing you actually use while cooking but you don’t because Blind by Corn is just going on and your pan’s over sizzling but you just hear RATATATUMMATATATUMMATAT ATUMMATATATUM and then you don’t actually get those audio cues. Strain in a little cream. Don’t over cream. Last time I made mashed potatoes on camera I messed them up so bad because I just dumped a bunch of cream because I was too busy being funny. Put a fair amount of that. I like a good liquidy mashed potato. That was a lot of milk that I put in there, eh? Alright. Oh, that sucks so bad. How to cook a steak. Microwave? I don’t know. What should we do? Um, no. We did a steak myth munchers episode and we found out that sous vide is the best way to do it, but not everybody has a sous vide machine or an immersion circulator. There’s like a weird population of people, they get really mad when I say sous vide machine instead of immersion circulator. Four of you, congrats, I’ve done it. Um, but, You guys ever see that movie with Josh Hotnett where he’s in the coast guard and he’s in a helicopter and he jumped out and saved people? I hope it’s Josh Hotnett coming to save us. A lot of the classic wisdom would say to sear the steak off in oil and then cook it in the oven until it comes to temp. But, I prefer cooking it in the oven until it comes to temp and then hitting it with a final sear. To me, you get just some more you know, more time. Time is a big part of cooking. It’s not all internal temp. To me, when you reverse sear it, like, you’re letting those proteins break down longer over time. That’s probably ascientific, but like, I don’t know, man. Reverse searing, change the way I cook. I put a steak in, when I get home from work, I’ll like, take a shower. Get distracted, watch some SportsCenter. Come back. Steak’s perfect, ready to sear. Small filet on this guy. Small filet on this guy. This is from a local butcher called Markanda Meats. Old school L.A butcher shop. We didn’t go for any grass fed, grass finished, dry aged, none of that. This is just called a steak. This is about $29.99 a pound. Beef is incredibly expensive to raise and it’s expensive to buy. That’s why when you’re cooking it as a nice treat, you don’t want to mess it up. So, we’re gonna pop this bad boy in the oven. 200 degrees. Should take maybe 40 45 minutes, but the main thing is you want to temperature check it. We’re gonna pull it when it reaches 120. We’re gonna sear it off, try and get it to about, uh, 130 to 135. Our steak is steakening in the oven. We have some butter melting in onions. Onions cooking in butter. What, why did I, it’s like there’s an old Buddhist koan. Old pond, frog jumps in, sound of water. And the interesting part, bear with me, the interesting part about that is that, um, it’s the, the pond is the, is the protagonist, because the pond is older, it’s eternal, it’s been there forever, so it’s not the frog that we’re concerned about, even though we started the story, but it’s the sound of water, not the sound of frog. That’s why I said the butter is melting into the onions, you see. What the [bleep] is wrong with me? We’re gonna make some cream spinach here, so we got onions and garlic. They’re sautéing in a lot of butter. We don’t want to get any browning on this because we want to maintain a lot of that delicious cream color. And now, we have, if you look closely Taylor, I invite you. Look closely at this spinach. Uh, this actually started off as 65 pounds of fresh spinach. And we cooked it down to fit neatly into this bowl. Uh, anybody who has cooked fresh spinach knows how small it, yeah, like, science cannot comprehend how little spinach there actually is in spinach. That’s why if you’re making something like creamed spinach, get the frozen bags of spinach. They have already been cooked for you, and then they’re flash frozen. All the nutrients are still maintained. It’s actually cheaper, too. And so we’re using, uh, frozen spinach right here. But the key is you gotta get all of the moisture out, and then you’ll see how small It’s reason cheesecloth. You can also just use a paper towel 65 pound. This is like the the David Blaine spinach all just condensed into this little spinach turd that we’re gonna just kind of plop in there and then we’re gonna go in some cream the cream has created a nice little milk skin and go ahead and eat that as a snack That’s nice cream is going to reduce cream reduces a lot when you cook with it. And then we’re also gonna supplement it just to get some of that thickness, because we are down with the thickness. Ooh, aah! Dang it. I can’t ever hit it, dude. Holy shoot, dude. I forgot we had a steak. Oh my god. Oh my god. And you know what else I forgot about? The Mythical Kitchen, what are these called? Muffin handlers. You can buy the new bundle of the Mythical Kitchen muffin handlers, also great for handling steak, along with the Mythical Kitchen apron, over at mythical.com. We got a new, special bundle price. Just search muffin handlers. Go on private and search muffin handlers, see what comes up. I’m curious. Buy the Mythical Kitchen oven mitts. They’re great. We’re gonna take the steak out. Boom. It’s at such a low temperature that you’re not really going to overcook it. We’ve tempted, we are at about 125 degrees and we are going to sear that off. Denny’s got the frozen blanched broccoli, uh, for me though, like the best green side at any steakhouse is creamed spinach. Here’s my theory. The steak, chewy. You don’t want to chew anything else. I want all of my sides with the steak to just slide down my throat hole. To let peristalsis take hold as soon as it hits the tongue. If you put cream spinach on your tongue and don’t move, your body will naturally, like a snake, just go, and choke it down. That’s what I want. My jaw’s already tired from chewing the steak. I’m gonna add a little bit of extra salt on top. We already salted it, but we undershot it a little bit and some of that was absorbed, so I still wanna help get that crust with the salt. Little baby filet, man, that is one bite of filet. It’s gonna get real smoky in here. Do we have a plan, or are you all gonna complain? Complain! We have a plan to complain? Complain? Alright, great. I’ll put a comment box. You’re gonna performatively cough? You’re gonna do that thing again? Yeah, okay. Well, searing it off. There they go. You know what that, you know what all that smoke is? Income, health insurance, 401k matching. You’re welcome. Not yet. Annalise made a grave mistake, and I’m gonna use her as an example. Never add your parmesan too early. Here’s the thing, parmesan does not melt properly because it has, it’s so well aged. There’s so many crystalline structures, so I always add my parmesan right at the end. But Annalise, thank you for providing a learning moment. Now, yeah, look at that crust. That’s not burnt. Now we’re gonna take this fat cap here, and you wanna sear that fat cap off. Cool. Now that’s searing. It’s gonna go really quick. This is gonna get even smokier. We’re gonna drop the butter in there. Need room to palm heel strike. Little running side swipe, palm heel strike in that garlic. We did test this side by side with a non basted steak and it turns out the basting really does help. There you go. Rosemary is good. It tastes like church. You know what I mean? Get out of the pool. This is why I use my hands for everything. Nailed it. Sizzling. Seared. Maillard. Perfectly medium rare. Spinach. Creamed. Whoever looked at a spinach and said, I can cream that, I salute you. Here’s the key. You gotta put the steak on the plate first. That way. Hold on. Hold, no, I’m trying to, this, no, that doesn’t make any sense. Then this way. Where do the sides go? You all see what I’m talking about, right? That’s fine. Steak’s going there. We adjust. We adapt. This, I’m just gonna find a mythical muffin grabber. Get these, these potatoes are my ideal consistency. Again, nothing wrong with a rustic mash. Smooth those out. Get a little potato nipple going on there. We’re gonna take some butter. Pop that on. That’s gonna melt with the latent heat of the potatoes. Chives are gonna melt. Have you guys been to the Rate My Chives Reddit, uh, page? You know, talking to Colby has. Did you cut these chives? Dude, 10, these are so fine. These are nuts. Could be a little drier. Do you dry them out on paper towels? No? You son of a. And bang, bang, flavor gang, that spinach right there. Perfect. This to me is the ideal creamed spinach. If we don’t win, listen, I’m very proud of the dish that we made. This is my ideal creamed spinach consistency. It’s not too soupy, but like, boy, you can tell how much dairy has been absorbed in that. Eh-er-eh-er-eh-er There you have it! This, listen, this is my ideal steak dinner. We got the T-bone steak, we got the super buttery mashed potatoes, little bit of chives and butter on top, then we got the creamed spinach with parmesan cheese. Listen, if I don’t win today, that’s fine, because I’m proud of the dish that I put out there. But God do I want to take Denny’s down a notch. Gwynedd Stuart from Sporked.com. Welcome to the Mythical Kitchen. Hi. Do you think you can do the David Draymond ooh, wah, ah, ah, ah, voice affectation from the Disturbed song, Down With the Sickness? Yes, absolutely. I was born and raised in Florida. Okay, you’ll try in three, two, one. Ooh, wah, ah, ah, ah. That was pretty good. It’s pretty good. Pretty good. Uh, before you I love how you being from Florida was Yeah, home of Limp Bizkit. Uh, Jacksonville, baby. Biggest city in America. We have three steak dinners in front of you. One is the cheapest we can find in Los Angeles. One is the most expensive. One is a homemade. These are all T bone steaks. Attempted to cook to medium rare served with a mashed potato and then some form of green. Are you ready to eat your first bite? Yes! I can still hear the sound of myself making that noise in my own head and it’s Oh! Ah! It’s horrible! The throat bleeds. It’s horrible. You don’t know which one is coming. So these are T bone steaks. Okay. Do you want, do you want a bite of the filet or the New York first? Surprise me. All right. Coming in. This is filet. Okay. On three, one, uh, just eat it. I don’t know. I messed up the count. It’s big. Yeah. Okay. Yes, it was. It’s gonna take a minute. Go for it. We can pause. Okay, I did it. Okay. There was like a piece of fi like, um, what do you call it? Crystal? Something like that. Yeah. Uh, would you like to try these sides from this same steak plate? Okay, fantastic. We’re going in. These are called potatoes. Okay. Mm mm. Almost, did I get potatoes in your blouse? Those are good mashed potatoes, they taste genuine. Do you like, like. Genuine. Pony? There she goes, there she goes. I tried to do the full Channing Tatum, I can’t do it. Okay, here, and this is the green side. These are, these are called, uh, brussels sprouts. Oh, okay, I missed that. Here, I’m gonna mash it, but you got it. Delicious. Yeah? Mm hmm. Do you have any inclination if that’s cheap, cheap, fancy, expensive, homemade? I think it’s homemade. That’s my guess. Homemade. Alright, you ready for steak number two? Mm hmm. Alright, we’re going in. We’re going in with the filet. This is a slightly more manageable bite for you. You can pause here. Swallowing my sprout. Yeah, I really, I think that the mashed potatoes were very good. The brussels sprouts had a lot of oils and they were like a little bit spicy. Does that sound cool? That does sound cool. And you think that I’m an oily spicy guy. Sorry, you moved. To be clear, the steak stayed stationary. I know. Safely away from her face. Okay, okay. She wildly gesticulated. I did. This is the fillet. I can provide you with some of, you eat like a duck. Hmm. It was easier to chew. I’m eating steak alongside you just because I’m hungry and I thought I was going to pass out. Yeah, that’s fair. Okay. Do we have sides? Yeah, yeah. Hold on. These are called potatoes. How are they prepared? Mashy, mashy. They’re all mashed. Oh, they’re all mashed. It’s dripping, You gotta go quick. Sorry. Okay, they taste, yeah. It’s like a herb butter situation, I’m guessing. Now we have a creamed spinach. Okay. Mmm. Salty. Salty good or salty bad? Mmm, somewhere in between. Those are really, that’s a rich situation. Right? Wow, did you taste those? Yeah, I sure did. Very rich. Okay. I like that you don’t have to chew either. Slide right down your gullet. Sure do. Peristalsis. Okay, last thing. We’re going in with the fillet. Hmm. That one doesn’t taste like as much. Okay. This one’s more cooked. Did it give you an indication of quality? Maybe. You gotta eat the sides first here. This is also mashed potato. Okay. You like, kind of went. Well, yeah, because it was kind of dripping through the forks, I’m trying my best Gwynedd. Oh, I don’t think that I like those mashed potatoes, unfortunately. Oh, you’re gonna love the broccoli. If you need to spit it out, I’m spotting you. Okay, cool. I don’t know. I guess I don’t like this one all that much. I didn’t like those potatoes at all. They’re really, they’re, why are they so loose? Uh, you can’t see them. They almost, they look almost weirder than they taste. Okay, so which one do you think that is? I think that’s going to be the cheapest one. So now you’re between plate one and plate two on which one was fancy and which one was homemade. Which do you like better between steak one and two? All, all in all, I liked I think I liked number one better. And where do you think number one was from? I think that you made it. Go ahead, take off your blindfold! You are wrong! This is from Alexander’s Steakhouse in Pasadena. Oh, really? And this was my homemade. I loaded the potatoes with a lot of butter. That’s probably why you got more potato flavor from this, because this was this was real buttery. We kind of went overboard on the butter. They’re really, really, really buttery, but it was still delicious. The creamed spinach. What did you put in it? Salt. I mean. I love it. No, the creamed spinach, uh, nutmeg, parmesan, cream cheese, heavy cream, onions, garlic, like pretty classic but. Creamed cheese. I mean, they are like, you could spread that on a bagel. And then the cheap steak. This was $20.99 The T bone steak from Danny’s. And look at the potatoes. I thought they were like a, like a cream of wheat. Why’d they do that? I don’t know. I think they made a mistake when they were reconstituting those. That looks even sadder than it tasted. I know, listen, Denny’s, you go to Denny’s, uh, for the pancakes. But I do still go. Moon’s over my hammy. Moon’s over my hammy, but I still have to say, What’s up? What’s up? What the [bleep] is up, Denny’s? Circle Pit! Ooh, wah! There she goes. There she goes. No, you want to be more here. Wider base. Wider base put in. And then you gotta throw a spin kick. Uh, this was $135. This cost us $41. Nice! To make. Do you think the price of going out to a fancy steakhouse is worth it? Um, no, I, on second thought, I prefer this completely. Look how much mashed potatoes. There’s a lot of potatoes. Who do they think you are? This has to be for a family. Okay. That makes sense. Pretty good value. They’re, they’re a great steakhouse. Alexander’s in LA. It’s good. Yeah, I really like it. But this is pretty damn good steak. I’m really proud of this plate of food. Gwynedd, thank you so much for stopping by. A medal of taste and a pleasure, as always. I thought I was gonna pass out again. It’s harder to do than I thought it would be. It is. David Draymond, come on the show. Tell us how you do it. Please do. Thank you so much for stopping by. Like, comment, subscribe, do all that. Tell us what your favorite Denny’s menu item is and what hardcore bands you want to see play at Denny’s. Yes, please. See y’all next time. 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