Does Basting Work? | TESTED 

Since this wasn't made clear enough in the video: Although it takes about an extra 90 seconds to cook the unbasted steak to a temperature (105°F) where it will end up reaching 128 °F after resting, this doesn't make it slower. The extra cooking time shortens the required resting time compared to the basted steak, and so both steaks end up at ~128 °F within ~47 seconds of each other on average. This is why I argue that basting doesn't appreciably speed cooking.

"I didn't want that to be true." Which is exactly the reason we need you to do tests like this one. Thank you.

Thanks for not turning this into a 20 minute video. Straight forward and to the point!

One thing to bear in mind: Almost *all* of the cooking knowledge we commonly employ in our kitchens is from the late 18th and early 19th centuries -- well before electricity. People were still cooking over fires and coals -- often in homes that were heated by the very same fire. Cooking in those conditions, notably, would have had 2 effects: 1) Fire dries out air. Like, *a lot*. Drier air means that things sitting _in_ that air will more readily give up whatever moisture is inside of them - e.g. evaporation; 2) Fire and coals are notoriously difficult to properly gauge the temperature of. Wood coals, when glowing, can be anywhere between about 550F to about 1150F; The hotter coals are, the more brightly (and 'white') they'll glow, but even _that_ is a poor indicator to determine temperature, since ambient light will have an addative effect to coal glow -- so the same coals, at the same temperature, will look "hotter" on a rainy, overcast day than they would on a bright, sunny day, when under natural light. These two facts together means that it's very likely that people were simply cooking their food for much longer than it needed to be cooked, in a lot of cases -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing, considering that was also the primary means of ensuring you didn't get parasites from what you ate; sometimes overcooking was necessary to ensure that the food you were eating was, in fact, safe to eat. But, with meat, that could lead to dryness, etc. So... there may have _once_ been a much more practical need for basting, when considering that history.

I like the fact you took 6 minutes to make a 6 minutes videos. You tubers nowadays would tell the history of meat just to turn 6 minutes into 25. Great work! 👊👊

The reason why I enjoy basting is because I can strain out the leftover butter into a container and use it to make fried rice that tastes like a steak.

I just subscribed, your content is exceptional! RU-vid is lucky to have you taking the time to do it right!!! Keep up the great work!

Great video! Super cool to see a deep dive on this

This is very informative. I always enjoy watching your videos. Thank you for making great contents, Chris.

I like that the answers are NO NO NO NO so a final outcome of YES! Shows that cooking is not just the process of making food better to eat. And eating isn't just about consuming calories.

Your content is so succinct and comprehensive, you really respect the viewer's time and deliver exceptional videos. Straight to the top with you!

Always wondered about this! Thanks for diving in on this topic!

Another video that answers a question and justifies my subscription to this channel. Excellent work, Chris.

Fun video, keep it up Chris! Love the insight on techniques and home cooking gadgets.

every single one of your videos leaves me with a question answered that i have always had. good stuff. thanks for your insights and scientific approach.

Spoken like a true iconclast. Love your stuff. Well done! The Myth Busters of Cooking. I smell a new TV series.

Wow! First time watching and the production value is amazing. The editing, graphics, tools, the tempo

The convergence of science and the esoteric in cooking is always so interesting to see.

man, I love your videos. so informative, and entirely factual and unbiased. I go into your videos thinking I want you to answer a question for me (I'm subscribed, but often I end up on your channel because I have something I want answered), and leave well enough informed to comfortably make a decision on my own. Thank you.

This is so clear and informative in just 6mins. Love it.

Straight to the point while being very technical, subscribed!

Great info, well said, thoughtfully designed experiments, absolute banger

I love when people break things down so neatly it adds clarity to a concept and serves as a jumping off point for more experimentation; since you demonstrate everything I don’t have to just take your word for it either. Hope your channel has a nice long life of making experiments like this to come!

"Geez this bird is dry. Haven't you people ever heard about basting?"

Chris, I really appreciate the scientific approach to this. Very precise and extremely detailed. Thank you

Interesting as always. Honestly with the price of butter now days, I´ll skip the basting!

First video I saw from this channel and I subbed! Love the no bs right to the point content

Wow, what a wonderful video. Short but very informational. First time in this channel, definitely not the last!

Killing it as always! Appreciate the myth busting!

Mind blown. Subbed is great content. Quick and to the point but super educational!

Great content! Informative, straight to the point, objective and with a personal touch at the end. Couldnt ask for more! Earned yourself another sub, keep up the good work and thank you very much :)

Well done! Triangle test plus the anointing test *chef’s kiss*

I did this experiment a long time ago and it does waste lots of butter. Now I cook dry-brined steaks in a convection oven to everyone's desired doneness, rest the steaks, dry the outside, and then pan seer them with 1-2 tablespoons of butter. You get good crust and all the flavor of the butter, and the steak is still hot when served without getting overcooked inside.

One thing that I really enjoy about basting is the end product of the pan sauce. While the steaks rest, I like to toss in some onions to the oil and butter and fry them up as well, then once they're out and plated up, i spoon out the butter and serve it as an extra flavor bomb for the steak.

Thanks for the deep dive on this. Not everyone would put the effort you did to get to the bottom of something as simplistic as basting. Though the reality is, I'm sure a lot of folks (including myself) have wondered if it was worth the butter when the results felt minimal. I'm glad to hear they basically aren't and I can HAPPILY remove it from my thought process whenever I cook a quality steak.

This is a great test. Thanks for sharing this test result with us. I really appreciate how you conducted the experiment.

I love the simplicity of these videos. Also nice to finally hear people saying you don't need a ripping hot pan to cook steaks. Had to work my way through that not-so-great advice by trial and error.

Chris, your incorporation of a true scientific method.. combined with real world sensory perception is welcome within the culinary landscape. Rock on brother.

Thanks for the video: short, clear, substantiated review and conclusions. Enjoyed and appreciated. 😀👍

Huge respect for how scientific you've kept this entire process. Never seen this channel before so came in assuming this would just be cooking 2 steaks, eating then and saying which one's better. Very plesantly suprused earned you a sub

Thanks for making this. I always see chefs doing this using industrial quantities of butter like it's totally normal. When I've basted it adds a nice colour but the flavour difference is so minimal that to me it's simply not worth the waste of ingredients. It's always felt like a 'cheffy' pretension. It's nice to have these suspicions validated to some degree. I'll probably not bother with it from now on.

Good information and it makes a lot of sense. I personally don't waste any of the butter. I just add them to the steak after cutting and in my mashed potatoes, veggies or mushroom sauce

The conclusion 😂❤. That was very insightful. Thank you so much.

Exceptionel content. Subscribed Right away.. love your conclusion. This video needs to spread more.

I love the scientific precision you used in your experiments! Something to note here: using an induction burner will absolutely have an effect here. You have to at least tilt your pan in order to baste, in which case the burner is no longer heating the pan. I saw that in your trials, you made sure to very minimally tilt. For those looking to repeat at home, using cast iron or a similar metal that retains heat well is an absolute MUST here. In most professional kitchens, industrial gas stoves are still used, which means that the pan is still being heated even as the steak is being basted.

As a humble professional chef, I am so grateful to you to have bring this topic on the dining table 👍🏻 My personal taste… no obscene amount of burnt butter of my filets

great video; detailed and thorough, leaving nothing to question. oh, and concise! subscribed

Well done! I really enjoyed watching this. I'd say I'll keep doing it just to do it too then, it really is so satisfying.

You're going to go a long way in this game! The quality of your concepts and the execution and production are all incredibly high. Keep it coming!

Great testing method. One additional upside to basting, I like to cook mushrooms in the pan with the leftover butter while my steaks are resting, reduces waste, plenty of similar things you can do too.

No nonsense, straight to the point, and no fart jokes like a certain few other cooking channels. Thanks for the upload Chris

Fabulous analysis and overall excellent video. Thanks!

Love the content. Thanks for the honesty!

Love these kinds of videos, and I appreciate this one especially. I used to always baste my steaks since that's what everyone else does in videos etc. But as I got more experienced, I started to feel like it's not really doing anything meaningful, and I'm just introducing another element that could go wrong and makes the process more complicated and less controlled. So I started cooking my butter with herbs separately. That way the steak can cook can be cooked ideally for a steak, and the infused butter cooked ideally for infused butter, and then just combine them at the end. It may not have that same flash, but it can produce good results consistently. I've wanted to do some side by side tests but yeno, I'm just a lazy normal joe lol, so it's nice to a see a pro do it better than I ever could have and give us the results. Keep em comin!

I really like the scientific approach to discover the thruth of myths. And I like the conclusion to do something unnecessary just because of the fun of doing it. When I cook I don't mind to do an extra step to improve the result -- it is eaten in a couple of minutes with or without it. Then I decide if it was worth the effort. By the way, I usually cook for my own benefit and let others participate consuming the result. Most times they like my cooking. For those who don't? Tough luck! 🙂

Great video. Thank you for a concise video and that the video does what it says its going to do. Looking forward to more

Great video! Thanks for the comprehensive experimentation

So Chris this gives us a natural followup - say you want to impart the flavor of brown butter, herbs, and garlic to your steak, the step you should take is to either sous vide the steak with your aromatics in the bag or to cook your aromatics alongside the steak in the pan and remove from heat before they get too brown/burnt. I always thought basting is marginally effective - only the surface of the meat is flavored so the flavor comes and goes quickly as you bite into the steak. And shoutout to Fallow, they really do post great POV and instructional videos.

Great video, like your straightforward style, editing, and scientific approach. I honestly think a lot of popular cooking habits are bullshit. Like, we still have people actually adding oil while boiling pasta.

This was great, very concise and entertaining!

Fascinating experiment. Great work.

Perhaps the hot butter could be better viewed as an effective way to infuse flavor from the herbs. I love the flavor of rosemary on a steak. I like to use Irish Cream butter and can definitely taste both the butter and rosemary in the finished product vs an unbuttered/non-herbed steak. Great video man. You definitely earned a like and subscribe from me.

subscribed!!! thank you for being straight forward and informative

Excellent! Thanks for this video. I always wondered about this.

It would be quite interesting to know if you would get the benefits (less cooling while resting, taste, and maybe even side color) with just adding a modest amount of butter and herbs at the end and quick basting / rolling the steak on it? (Like 30sec to 1min)

@ChrisYoungCooks This answered a lot of questions about basting steak, but what about vegetables? At my old restaurant we used to base large specialty cauliflowers and rapinis, and I felt like that made a huge difference in terms of flavors because it sort of "penetrates" the vegetable as opposed to butter not doing that to meat.

Nicely done. I stopped basting steaks years ago when I just couldn't afford to use enough butter and just put a teaspoon of good butter (herbed or plain, both good) into the hot pan when I take the steaks out and pour it on top as the steak rests. No-one asked me what I did different so that's what I now do, uses a fraction of the amount of butter and still give that brown butter taste and mouth-feel.

I think a lot of people think basting is better because they use salted butter. People usually inadvertently underseason their steak because they underestimate the amount of salt lost to the pan in the cooking process. The salted butter adds back some saltiness. I always dry brine my steak which means all the salt get absorbed into the meat and if I baste it with salted butter, the steak will end up too salty. What I end up doing is just prepare garlic herb butter (unsalted) and put it on top the steak while it's resting. I get more or less the same result, but without actually having to do the basting and end up with a messy pan (butter basted cast iron pan are usually too greasy to just rinse off).

Let's also not forget you can strain the butter from the pan afterwards to use for a bearnaise sauce or add extra flavour to potatopuré etc!

Wow amazing content. Love it. Thanks for this

Wow great content and production I just subscribed 👍

I never baste, I just add a pat of garlic butter on top of the steak when it's resting. I feel validated.

I got unreasonably upset at the question posed by Chris' friend, but then I realized you were talking about steak. Basting eggs is night and day obviously and the technique is especially useful for fish since it goes between the layers. You will cook vegetables much faster in a pan with basting, depending on how you want them. Adding spices to your fat such as thyme here is a very good way of evenly seasoning. But yeah, I was surprised with the end result and now I have to check it for myself. This is soul crushing for cooks all around the world

Well presented, clear and concise. Thanks for the information

Great Video! Intelligent analysis!

If basting causes more carryover cooking, doesn't that mean you can cook the steak to a lower temperature to reach the same final doneness and thus it indirectly speeds cooking?

It just comes down to whether you want your steak to have a buttery component to it, and if so, how much. I think a tablespoon to a steak is a enough to keep it subtle, and just makes for a way to round out the flavour, help bind it all, and definitely brings the sumptuousness. When steaks have been swimming for their lives in butter, to me it screams “I don’t know how to actually cook or enjoy meat”

Great video! I've wondered the answer to this question for years.

What a great and useful content for traditional restaurants. They can save a lot of time and money!

it would be very interesting to see whether you would reach the same conclusions if you conducted the same testing on different cuts of steak, like a nice ribeye! I suspect that basting has a much more pronounced effect on steaks with more marbling than it does on filets/tenderloins.

Conclusion: It doesn't work as we thought, but I like to do it. So I'll keep doing it. 😂

Your channel makes my inner geek and foodie smile. subbed!

So all of your videos are this good? Subscribed!

What about basting fish? The texture of fish is much softer than a beef filet so its arguable that the basting flavor enters into the filet of fish easier. Would be interesting to find that out too!

This suggests you can produce the same effect with a small pool of butter+aromatics at the bottom of your pan that you just flip the steak in to coat. Avoids the obscene two tablespoons of butter that is usually left in the pan.

Great explanation, good methodology.

Insta subbed, really loved the scientific approach

It is a strange conclusion that it doesn't speed cooking time. Because if you wanted the basted steak to be medium-rare too, then you actually need pull it off the pan earlier. And thus saving time.

It seems like your fourth criteria was met because there was a significant difference of flavor between basted vs unbasted steak. You can achieve the same result by independently browning the butter and adding it afterward, but that doesn't change the fact that it significantly affected the final flavor, right?

I like how you are honest enough to say you've disproved much of its utility but your still going to do it anyway.

I subscribed!! Great technique instruction!! I have always added a couple of pats of butter when I’m at a restaurant having a Rib Eye. It really adds to the flavor.

I am quite impressed with this video and my suspicions were confirmed. Love how you look at cooking scientifically and enjoy your A b c testing idea.

I appreciate the honesty. Thank you.

gotta say, this is an outstanding video. cant imagine someone answering this question better. the rationalization sentence at the end was really strong doe

You’re the myth buster of cooking! Keep it up

BRO i havent finish your video, i am at 2:11 but I LOVE this Scientific Methodology you are already using! Thanks for that!... so now, to enjoy it!

Bro you're wild. This was a supreme treat to watch. Sincerely, someone that wanted to be a chef since 4 and has minor science background too

first time watching your videos. wow they're beautifully done. one of the fastest subs i've ever done. and i almost never watch food channels. algorithm selling to the caveman in me. thank you!

love the methodology, instant sub

What a great channel Discovery!!!!!