How To Make The Perfect Philly Cheesesteak At Home

Today we're going to make one of my family's, definitely my son's favorite things, a Philly cheese steak. Coming up right now. All right, so there's not a lot of ingredients here. I have enough steak for probably a couple large ones, but we'll do one in the pan. I have a two pound. This is just a choice ribeye that I got from the store. It's nice that it's thick. It makes it a little bit easier to slice. And I put this in the freezer for about 45 minutes, though it's been sitting out a bit. I salted it overnight. I don't have to worry about salting it now, though it doesn't really matter because you're going to chop it all up anyway and you can salt and pepper, season it good as is. But I always like to salt things overnight. It dries it out a little bit more too. I have American cheese, white American. So cheese is definitely a thing that people will be very particular about. I did some research on Reddit. There's like whole entire threads devoted to a Philly cheese steak. And from my research, a lot of people are partial to white American. A lot of people are partial to provolone and a lot of people are partial to whiz. So I'm not making whiz here though. I would assume it's going to be very similar to the cheese that I made in the stovetop mac and cheese that uses sodium citrate, something that will just be a gooey, ooey mess of cheese. That will be yellow, okay? But this white American seemed to be one of probably the most loved, I would say, on Reddit there. Again, I've been to Philly once. I went to Philly when I was six years old on a school trip. That's it. It's the first and last time I ever been to Philly. And then another thing that they're very particular about is the bread. So in New York, a lot of bread is crusty and not probably the best type of bread for it. I would say like a hoagie roll, which is what it's called in Philly, is more on the soft side. But these ones I found from the bakery were great. Now, these are nice and soft. So it's like an enriched baked product that will stay really soft like that. And I would say probably if you put two of these together, that would equal the size of something you would get in Philly. This is another one that is like a smaller version of theirs, nice and soft too. And then this one, this is from a deli around the street. So this one's pretty soft too, though it has seeds. So I actually think this one is probably going to be the best to use today. Most of the hero rolls in New York are on the softer side. If you go into like an Italian place, bakery, whatever, or a pizzeria, the stuff might be a little bit more crusty. I wouldn't use those. I would use something that is softer. Two medium onions that I just kind of chopped up. That would be enough for all this steak, but we'll use about half of that for about half of this steak for one sandwich. And then these are long hots that I got from my garden. So these are offered a lot of times in Philly also, and people will put them on the sandwich. We'll fry them up. I'll show you how to do it. And then I also found out that they also offer cherry peppers. So that's definitely something that I use a lot in my recipes, but I'm going to do these. And if the taste tester doesn't want them, we won't even, you know, we won't even put them on, but I will show you how to make them. A little hard to find in a store, but they will be available obviously in Philly. They'll be available in New Jersey supermarkets and New York supermarkets. Other parts of the country, not so much, but you can just grow them as I did this year. They're very easy to grow and they're very prolific. They, you get a lot of them from one plant. I put the meat back in the freezer for a little bit. It's going to allow me to slice it better. By the way, if you have a slicer or a meat slicer, use it. It's super easy. You can even ask sometimes your butcher. For this bread, I'm just going to cut it like not all the way through. So I could just open it up like this and then put everything in after. Okay, so I have a pan, just a 12 inch pan. Little less than medium heat. You can cut your stems off the longhots now. Like you can cut these edges off because you're not going to be able to eat this part when you put it on the sandwich. But you could also just do them like this and pluck them off at the end. Put some olive oil on them. Put some water in the pan, cover the pan and just cook them until they get soft. And once they get soft, remove the lid and then we're just going to let them cook until they brown on both sides. Simple as that. That's all you have to do for that. I'm going to pull these off and put them on my other stove while I slice the beef. So if you like main course recipes, which I'm sure you do because you're watching this video, I want to let you know about our new cookbook, Sip and Feast, Family Favorites. It has plenty of main courses in there. In addition to that, it has all the other sections you would expect to find in a cookbook. It is a beautiful cookbook, 256 pages, over 100 recipes, beautiful photo, nice instructions, good story in every single recipe. It has US customary and metric measurements. So everybody will be able to follow along with these easy recipes. Right above you is the link where you can buy it. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and all other sellers. QR code if you're watching on TV, which I'm increasingly aware that the majority of you are watching on TV. It's also pinned in the comments and in the description. If you don't like cookbooks, you just like watching our videos, buy it for a friend or family who does. Thanks. Probably should have got it a little bit harder than that, but we will see. Let's just try to get as thin as strips as we can. It goes without saying, if you have a very sharp knife, it will be easier. So sharpen your knife before you do this. You know, take the time to get it thin because it's gonna make it better, a lot better than if you have like really thick chunks. Okay, so I'm gonna cut right now what I need for one cheesesteak. So if I'm using the larger hero roll that I got from the deli, it's going to be, I would say safe for safe, like you would go at least three quarter pound of meat because all you have on this sandwich is just meat and the cheese and the onions. A lot of delis, like local delis, they'll typically go like a half pound. Well, the cheaper ones and the better delis will often, some delis will just pack it in so much it's over a pound of just meat. Are you gonna weigh it or do you know approximately? I'll start weighing as I get closer because I'm not anywhere near there yet. Could you use a mandolin for this? No, and I'm glad you asked that question. Do not use a mandolin, okay? It's not gonna work, it's just not. And you're gonna risk like really hurting yourself. And if you pop it back in the freezer, that could make it easier too, right? Yes, so any like really large chunks of fat like this, I would remove them. This ribeye has plenty of fat. Now, if you're using a leaner cut of meat, I would just keep whatever fat that you have or just you might have to use more oil. It's getting cooler in the side there, so I'm just gonna move over here and see. Would flank steak be a good cut? Yeah, flank would work. From my research, most of the places now are not saying what meat they use, which means that they're not using ribeye because ribeye is very expensive and they probably wanna try to get the Philly cheesesteak below a certain price point for people. This side's more frozen, so it just, it cuts a lot easier. So that's a little thick for my liking there, that piece, but it'll be all right. How many pounds was the ribeye when you started? It was like a two pound ribeye. Yeah. All right, that's 12 ounces, I need more. I'm gonna do a pound for this big one, for the roll. It's not, I don't think that's enough. Okay, Tara, how long was it for me to do that one pound? It was six minutes and 50 seconds. Okay, and I was talking and stuff, so probably if I wasn't doing that, probably would have been about three minutes, right? Maybe a minute. Yeah. Like maybe only 30 seconds it would have taken if I wasn't talking. That's what I think, that's what I'm gonna say. All right, there's, I'm joking. She's looking at me like, yeah, of course I'm joking. All right, that's the meat. Okay, one pound, I don't know. It probably, I think it's gonna be good for that hero. Hoagie, excuse me, hoagie. Peppers, this is how they look after about 10 minutes, okay? So you want them nice and soft, and now I'm just leaving them on pretty low heat, maybe like a three, four out of 10 just to evaporate that water, to season them up with a touch of salt and then cut off the ends if you want these on your sandwich. I just wanted to give you a little heads up. These peppers are much spicier than a cherry pepper, so just keep that in mind. These are hot, they're very hot. I always pick them when they're green. Whenever they turn red, they're like the birds get to them in my yard, so they will turn red if you just let them keep going. All right, so we're gonna make a cheesesteak. I have a 14-inch cast-iron pan, but you can use stainless too. If you got a Blackstone, you know, this is much better to do outside. You can make a bunch of them at one time. All right, so I'm gonna heat this up to medium high, and I want you to heat it up for a good five minutes. Cast-iron takes a long time to heat. It's not like an aluminum pan that will heat up very quickly. Again, don't know if the taste testers are gonna want these, but I wanted to show you how to do them. Just a sprinkle of salt. All right, we're gonna let this heat up. Okay, so it's already smoking, it's heated up. So the inside of my pan right here with a laser gun is 600. It's about 300 off to the side. So, you know, with one of these cast irons, you're gonna have to cook mostly in the middle. And then the tools of the trade here, I got a spatula, okay, that I can just put everything in the sandwich when I'm done, don't laugh, Tara. And then I have my putty knife that I can chop up everything, okay? Make sure you have a clean one. Just use a neutral oil here. Okay, you're not gonna need too much because you're gonna have a lot of fat from that ribeye. Okay, and it's gonna start smoking right away. Okay, and I'm gonna use about that much onion. And then I'm gonna put my beef, just sprinkle it all around. Gonna try to move it, everything like into a flat area. Try to get contact everywhere in your pan. And then just leave it alone for like five to seven minutes so everything gets nice and brown, then we'll flip it. Okay, so it's been about five minutes. I'm gonna flip it and then break up some of this meat that I didn't spread out enough. Okay, just spread it out again. I'm actually gonna turn up the heat even more right now. Let it go for another two minutes. So it's been another two minutes there. This is a big sandwich. I'm gonna put in four pieces of cheese right now to start. All right, so now you can see how brown that is on the other side. All right, so now what I'm gonna do is just start chopping this thing up and getting everything combined. That's why I like this tool. You can do double duty with it. Lower the heat even more back to about medium. That looks really nice. Everything looks good. Now listen, if you didn't salt, you can be salting now. I already salted the steak. You can put a little pepper on here if you want. So those four pieces of cheese are just melted, melted right in there now. Okay, turn it off, put on cheese, the whole entire length of your bread. So whatever your bread is, you know, just try to like eyeball it. This is not a low-fat sandwich. No. This is, right. Okay, and just open up your bread. Now you could try to do like all of it at one time, which I'm gonna try to do. Let's get that under there. Okay, everything in like that. And then I'm gonna pick up some scraps to make it even a little bit more for him. And I almost estimated correctly how much I was gonna need for a sandwich that size. Okay. Looks like really big. Okay, I know they were a little spicy for you last time. Yeah, can you put one on like one of the sandwiches? Mm, that's so good. All right. Put the pepper on. All right. See how spicy that is. And you put the seeds in all with them. It's about seven or eight slices of white American on there. Is there enough cheese for you or did you want even more cheese? Honestly, probably even more cheese. More cheese? Yeah. And I know you're a Philly expert. You go there all like every weekend. You wanted the whiz, right? Yeah. I know. What do you think about that pepper? Want to pull it right off? No, it's fine. They are hot. These peppers are hot. This is a really spicy bite because it had all the seeds. They are hot peppers. They're probably about 10,000 on Scoville, but probably more. That bite tasted good. It's just the first bite had all the seeds in it. So listen, don't do the pepper unless you're like really like spicy stuff. It's so good. My only criticism is that it's not cheesy enough. It's not cheesy enough. So even more cheese. Yeah. I mean, that could have easily been remedied. The cheese is all melted in there. That's the thing. Yeah. If you want the whiz, you got to go for it. I think you could buy it, but you can also make it. I don't think the whiz matters. It's just like amount of cheese you put on. I think it could be like a little more cheesy, but it's really good. Probably about a third of a pound of cheese went on there and one pound of almost about 0.8 pounds of ribeye are on there. Yeah. So I do think three quarter pound for a regular size like New York hero roll would be appropriate. I don't know if, you know, in Philly, if everybody's using the exact same size roll and how much they use, but I think three quarter pound is pretty good for like a big sandwich like this. So good. One medium onion, I would say for three quarter pound. And I would say, yeah, about a third of a pound of cheese. It is very healthy, super healthy meal. Probably about 2,800 calories right here. I'm going to give this a 9.5 out of 10. All right. I will take it. Not enough cheese. Okay. I will take it. Listen, I hope you see how easy this is to make. I mean, like, you know, people tend to romanticize things like, oh, like this place has the best. This place is the best. Like you can't make one. You can easily make one. You just need a hot pan and you just need thin beef. You don't even need to go as expensive as ribeye. You can use something less expensive to do it. You really can. And then, you know, peppers, no peppers, whiz, whatever. Those are going to be personal preferences. I wanted to do provolone for him. I had it in the fridge. He didn't want it. I thought that would give a little bit more of a sharp. I asked you, I asked you before I made this one. Yeah. I said provolone or white American. Oh, no, you asked me. I asked mama, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think provolone would be, would probably be better. I'm going to eat this. Okay. All right. Thanks for watching. We will see you next time.