Cooking steak is brutally simple, what’s hard is resisting the urge to overthink it. I have the privilege of working in a great steakhouse, and I promise you, if you follow these instructions, you too can serve a kick-butt steak.
Season and Sear
Step 1: Season
Salt (course salt works best) & pepper (freshly ground tastes best) are your only essentials. Experiment with other herbs and spices according to your tastes (I love garlic).
Step 2. Sear.
A stainless steel pan wiped with some oil. High heat. 2-3 minutes on each side. Less for a thinner cut, more for a thicker one. Contrary to popular belief, you’re not ‘sealing in’ juices here. You’re simply making the magic happen between the salted crust and the sweet meat itself.
Cooking the Steak
Step 3. Finish in the Oven.
Place steak on an aluminum lined cooking tray, top with foil (ends sealed) and place in oven at 350 degrees. Broadly speaking, for a half inch thick steak five minutes will give you rare (cool red center), eight minutes medium rare (warm red center), ten minutes medium (warm pink), twelve medium well (little bit of pink), fifteen minutes well (no pink). Again, the thicker the steak, the longer the time. Rule of thumb: err on the side of caution. After the first five minutes, feel the steak. Super plump? Rare. Plump but with less give? Medium rare. Starting to firm up? Medium. And so on…
Let it Rest
Step 4. Rest
Remove the steak from the oven. At this point, it’s still cooking. A few extra minutes allows the temperature to dissipate evenly throughout the meat. If you’re shooting for a rare, you’ll want to shorten this time. Otherwise, let it breathe.
And…that’s it. Rarely does restraint ever taste so good 😉
For this Recipe, we used:
