How to Level Up Your Steak Quesadillas | Blackstone Griddles

How can you elevate a steak quesadilla? How can we take a simple steak quesadilla that everyone has made and take it into new territory, into flavor town? We're not taking it to flavor town. It's gonna be a lot of flavor though. I'm gonna show you guys some quick and simple techniques to elevate the tried and true steak quesadilla. Obviously, we're gonna start with our steak. However, I do want you to notice this is very, very thin. Inside skirt, actually inside and outside skirt. Outside skirt's a bit thicker and hardier. Inside's a bit more like this. So we wanna cook this fast. We wanna cook this furious. But that doesn't mean we wanna burn our seasoning. If you haven't had the street taco seasoning, it's fantastic. It's really, really delicious. But all of those rich and wonderful flavors in there will, can and will. Is that how you say that, Andy? Yeah. Can and will burn. So just salt, just pepper to start. Now, don't worry. We are gonna use some of that seasoning later, but I find if we go early, we lose some of that vibrancy of it. So we're gonna go to the griddle, a bit of oil. Can you tell how smoky that is? Yeah. This is key. Absolutely key. I see a lot of people get worried about really, really high heat. Don't. You need it for a fantastic sear on your meat. All right, here we go. This is what we should hear. See how aggressive that is? That's what we want. Hard and aggressive. But we don't have any of the seasonings on there just yet. And we're not gonna cook that for very long. So let's get to our vegetables. I've got some onion. We talk about this on a CJ show. There's just something magical about the aroma of onions and beef. You know what I'm talking about, Andy? Absolutely. I can't quite describe it. If they made a candle out of it, I'd probably buy it. I'd buy a hundred. Something else too. I don't know if you guys have like gone to restaurants and you've had fajitas where either one, the peppers and onions aren't cooked enough or they're overcooked. Did I say that right? Over or under, one or the other. I'm not a fan of either. However, if I have to err on the side of which doneness I want my onions, I'm gonna go just a little under. If I have a little bit of crunch, I think that's where the magic is. So I've got yellow onion and some pepper. If you wanted to, you could just take the seeds out if you don't like the heat. But if you're using a, they're just making fun of me off camera, a jalapeno, jalapeno. Is that better? Satisfy everyone? It's an Italian jalapeno. There you go. You can take the seeds out if you don't like the heat. I'm not a big fan of the heat. I'm getting everything ready because the next part goes very, very fast. You wanna take a peek? Let's take a peek real quick. Now we haven't been on there very long at all, but because we were going so aggressive, oh, that's what we're looking for. Not quite yet, not quite yet. But let's boogie on our fruit, our fruit. I've got limes. And you might not typically think orange on your quesadillas or your steak. However, the sweetness of the orange compounds that zesty, almost sour characteristic of the lime. That's what that's all, that's everything. Let's do our cilantro, cilantro. Here's the question. You make fun of how I say jalapeno, but do you pronounce cilantro with a Spanish accent? You know what? I don't. We were talking about it off camera. How do you say croissant? Let me know in the comments. Do you say croissant or croissant? How is croissant spelled? Like croissant. Oh, okay. For spreading that, spreading that. We're ready for a flip. All right, check it out. Salt, pepper only. Scream in high heat. That's what we're looking for. If you want to now, let's, and there's not a whole lot of moving parts of this. This is more a technique episode than a full-on recipe. You don't need a ton of recipes if your technique, I'm sorry, a ton of recipes, a ton of new ideas on old traditional recipes. Just increase your technique. Things start to get a lot better. I do, I want to go with my lime. We're going to go with one of these limes. Not all of it. Remember we talked about taking our time because the heat is so high. If you add too much too soon, the sugars in this will burn and we don't want that. So over the top and just kind of let it cascade a little bit over. Now the sugars in this, I didn't squeeze all of it. I've got a little bit more to go. The sugars in there are going to give us some beautiful color and flavor, which is fantastic if you want to. You can kind of do one of these moves where you just kind of rub it in there. We can even peek real quick. Yeah, not there yet. Almost there. If you want to also move to a new area. Sometimes when you have your steak in one spot, it soaks up all the energy from your Blackstone. You need a new space and you can see, I don't know, can you tell Ethan, if I move this to a new spot, can you tell how much hotter that new spot is? So like navigate, move things around a little bit. All right, we will be back in 60 seconds. All right, we're there. Let's take a peek. Right there, Ethan. That's what we're looking for. All right, we are still at a good temp. We don't want to overcook this. Let's let this rest a little bit. I'm going to grab all of these gorgeous onions and we're going to cook the onions in that beef fat. Oh, hey now, hey now. Beautiful. So this is like another one of those things. You could just do raw onions. You could chop the meat up first. I'm not a big fan of. We did an episode not too long ago. It's the steak bites. Cooking the meat whole and then cutting it gives us more control in our temp. It also gives us a lot more control in the juiciness of the beef. If you cut everything up small, everything's well done. So that's going to take 60 seconds. I'm going to toss it a few times. Salt and pepper, a little bit of seasoning. And then we just have to let this rest. Hardest part of making delicious cuts of beef, letting it rest. Once those onions have that slight little bit of caramelization, that's when we're going to pull them off. Remember, keep a little bit of crunch on it. Let's talk about the steak. So we've rested. I'm going to cut this into smaller, more manageable pieces. Now you hear people talk about it all the time, go against the grain, doing it this way. Let's see how our cooks look, or how our cooks look, how our cook looks. So we're still pretty rare, which is absolutely fantastic. That's what I was looking for. I want that crust, but I still want it to be rare. Don't worry about the grain. Cutting against the grain is important, 100%. However, we're going to cut this up into smaller bite-sized pieces now, so it's going to make it. You're going to be fine. Don't worry about chewy, chewy pieces. So the reason I like to do it this way, remember we talked about controlling that temp. Look how juicy and gorgeous. And we're still at rare right now. So now's the time when we cut it up. So once this is all cut up, that's when we take that board sauce. We take a little bit, actually let's do our seasoning, our street taco, that board sauce, toss everything together. Now we're imparting all of that crazy flavor. Then it's going to go back on the griddle. It's one of those things, when you actually look at it and you see it happen, it's gorgeous, gorgeous. All right, so I turned all of my burners down to low. We're going right back on. We're very rare, very, very rare. If you like your steak rare, be done now and build your quesadillas. However, I'm going to do one more step. Remember earlier, we talked about all of that fruit juice. If you add it too soon, it can scorch, it can burn because of all the sugar. Now's the time to do it. So let's take our orange. We're going to squeeze right over the top. This is going to tack up and glaze the beef as it finishes cooking. Oh, smells unbelievable. The rest of our lime. So this is where like, if you're throwing a party where the aroma happens and people are like, wow, Howard, you're such a good cook. Technique, simple technique. As soon as the juice, see we still have a bit more juice. As soon as the juice tightens up around, it's such a loud sizzle. Can you hear me, Andy? I can hear you. All right. Look at that, it's tightening up, glazing. Our steak is still beautiful and tender. I don't want to overcook it, but I do want that to hold. There we go. See how it's starting to hold? That liquid is starting to get thick. That's what we're looking for. All right, let's bring it back over to our cutting board because we don't want to overcook it. Here we go. Now it is time to build. Now there is the age old debate. Actually, maybe it's not a debate for quesadillas. Got to be flour, right? Got to be flour. CJ is just a sucker. Most of my friends are suckers for beautiful corn tortillas. I'm a flour tortilla guy. Very simple. I don't know if you guys do it this way. Some people, there might be some controversy. I'm going to take my flour tortillas. We're going to go right down. If some of that fruit juice is left over, don't worry about it. Do some of that action. Leave that on there. Now again, I did turn my burners down to low because I don't want them to burn. The way I like to do my quesadillas is the fold technique. So I go tortilla down, cheese all around. Sometimes you'll see people, they'll stack them on top of each other. I don't know why I like the fold. Do you like the fold, Andy? I'm a stack guy. You're a stack guy? Yeah. Do you know why? Do I know why I'm a stack guy? No, I don't know either. You don't know why you are? No. Oh, well. Let's take some of our meat here. We'll go on one side. So I like to stack everything to the side because I am a fold kind of guy. Beauty. Load these up as much as you want. However, if you load them up too much, they start to look funny. Although to be fair, it's really hard to photograph quesadillas. You ever notice that? Because they're so flat. Yeah. Then all of the other toppings. And this is a place where you can get fun and do whatever you like. I like the onions. I like the heat of the pepper. If you're into it, and I most certainly am, Herdez makes this fantastic cilantro lime sauce. Make it yourself or buy it. Sometimes it's nice to have a little cheat. And my favorite. Let me know in the comments. Cholula or Tapatio? Do you have a preference, Ethan? Cholula. Cholula? I've never- 100% all the way? Tapatio though, so. Oh, yeah. That looks awesome. All right, let's load up the other one. Let's make a few of these. When you flip, you're just looking for toastiness on that tortilla. You're just looking for color, melty cheese. It's a quesadilla. It's simple. It's easy. However, the technique is where we really find maximizing our flavor. We really find ourselves making a fantastic quesadilla instead of just an okay quesadilla. Let's take a bite of this. Oh, so many things going on here. So much. I don't know if you can see on this side, Ethan, how saucy, juicy, wonderful. Little yellow. Wrong shell. Different. Wrong shell. Can you hear the crunch? So, first thing, whoa on the flavor. And the pepper. That was a hot jalapeno. Jalapeno. Is that Italian? Yeah. It's an Italian jalapeno. When you do your steak that way, it stays so juicy. And Ethan, look, it doesn't look like it's medium, right? But so tender, so beautiful. So maybe actually if you do it that way, people that are afraid of eating like a medium steak, they'll eat it this way. Let's go over our tips real quick. Scream in high heat. Just salt and pepper. Fast and furious. Then pull it off, let it rest. Cut it. That's when we add our seasoning. Little basting and citrus juice. It's glorious. Glorious. So, so good. Thank you guys for hanging out. Let me know in the comments down below, or if you like this one, if you're gonna give this one a try, or what else you would like to see on the show. This is Cook, Eat, Repeat, where we like to help you become a better cook one recipe at a time. I'm your host, Chef Nathan Lippe, and I'll see you all in the next episode.