What Google Can’t Tell Us About "the Best" Philly Cheese Steak Recipe

Before you even make it, there are clues this recipe—the first that comes up on Google when you search “best Philly cheese steak recipe"—won’t be a traditional Philly cheese steak:

• It takes two hours to make.
• You’re making Provolone sauce.
• There are 14 ingredients, give or take (the ingredient list is unconsolidated, so it makes it hard to count)
• It’s Bobby Flay, on an episode of "Throwdown." If you know the show, or Bobby, you know it’s not going to be the easy way. Watch the video and you'll hear Bobby say it's "jacked up."

So no matter how fail-proof the recipe, if you’re looking for a traditional cheese steak (you know: long hoagie roll, thin slices of seared steak, typically Cheez Whiz), you’ll likely be disappointed with this one.

As a commenter on Food Network put it:

it's a cheese steak for crying out loud. it falls in the realm of fast food. FAST FOOD!! 2+ hours is not fast.

But if you’re game for a souped-up cheese steak recipe, where will you end up with this one? Did the internet dish out the best cheese steak out there?

Freeze strip loin (for easy slicing), then slice and cook the loin. Construct the sandwich. Make provolone sauce. Sauté mushrooms, caramelize onions, sauté peppers. This is what the recipe says. Start moving through it without reading first and you’re layering steak on a roll but are yet without sauce, mushrooms, onions, and peppers. I’m confused! Uh oh. And by calculations, this means I’m dirtying four sauté pans and a saucepan in the process—of making a sandwich.

I opted out. But was still curious—for the sake of Easiest, Fastest, Best Week. This seemed like a challenge that wasn’t insurmountable for the sake of the best Philly cheese steak, so we asked two of our professional recipe testers to make the recipe and see if all these downsides were true hassles or worth it.

Anna found the recipe’s upsides to be the caramelized onions—you make a lot so you have plenty left over for omelets and burgers—the steak-freezing trick, and the provolone sauce: "It took the sandwich to the next level. So delicious and velvety."

She found it labor intensive, but worth it, which was not the case for our other tester, Kate.

"The sandwich reminded me more of a steak bomb than a Philly. And quite honestly, if you spend that much time and effort (not to mention the cost of 4 pounds of strip loin), it has to be a mind-blowing sandwich—but it really wasn't. You could have just sautéed onions with the peppers and saved time. The cheesy Béchamel was a nice touch, though, and I do prefer it to the traditional orange Cheez."

So while all of the steps did work—something you hope you can count on when the source of the recipe is a trained chef—it doesn’t mean it’s tailored for home kitchens. But Google can’t know that, can it?