Steak Recipe #
This is my recipe for steak. Enjoy.
Time #
A few days of prep where the steak sits in the fridge.
Then a few hours where it sits on the counter.
Then like 5-10 minutes of actual cooking.
Ingredients #
- A very thick extremely marbled ribeye. This technique can be adapted to other highly-marbled/medium-toughness cuts of meat, such as certain porkchops, but if it's not very marbled (like filet mignon), high-toughness (like flank steak or chuck) then it will be a Bad Time. The thing to look for is lots of small veins of fat throughout the meat, not a small number of big blobs of fat in individual places.
- Lots of salt (big chonk kosh salt is good, but smol gran table salt also works)
- Butter. (If you wanna be fancy, you can use some herbed butter, or chop up mushrooms and make a mushroom butter, or caramelize some onions into a butter-onion spread and use that. But plain old butter is extremely good.)
- If using oil for any reason, should be a high-clarity/high-heat oil with a high smoke point, such as grape seed, avocado oil, or canola oil.
If you don't have perfect marbling, you can sometimes sort of fake it by stabbing holes in the steak with a fork, and rubbing it with oil or butter before the air dry phase.
Tools #
- Paper towels
- A warmed plate ready when it's time to take off the heat
- Aluminum foil (optional, but if you need to do other things between plating and eating, not optional)
- A good pan (ie, not cast iron)
The ideal pan is high conductivity (vertically and laterally). Contrary to popular belief, cast iron is not best for searing, in fact, it's one of the worst, because its lateral heat conductivity is absolute shit. Delusional cast iron stans will insist that it "holds a lot of heat" and that's why it takes a long time to preheat; in fact, it's just very hard to get plain old iron atoms excited (compared with basically any other metal frying pans are made of, including extremely cheap flimsy stainless steel) and iron is so conductive that it loses heat almost immediately. So you get like 15 seconds of intense searing, and then it's lukewarm.
The best pan is either a thin carbon steel pan, or an aluminum core stainless steel or anodized pan. (Or if you want to spend $1200 on a frying pan, silver, which in several studies is actually the ideal steak-searing metal.) The Hestan NanoBond pan is very nice, if you're comfortable with stainless steel; it's basically an aluminum core stainless pan, but with a perfect ceramicized titanium coating that creates a mirror-like finish that is nearly scratch-proof and indestructible.
Induction heating is a good choice, because it heats the pan very evenly and very quickly.
Dry #
Don't need to do this if it's a "dry aged" steak. But in that case, you're basically paying double for the privilege of not having to air it out yourself. (Technically "dry aged" is aged for much longer, like 45 to 90 days, suspended in air, until it develops a fully rotten hard outer crust, which is then cut off, and it does taste amazing, but like, worth the price? Imo, no.)
Loosely wrap the steak in paper towel and leave it in the refrigerator on a plate for at least 1 day per pound of meat, no more than 3 days per pound. So, if it's a 1lb cut, that means leave it loosely wrapped in paper towel in the fridge for 1-3 days.
When the outside is just slightly leathery, but still red, that's perfect. It should smell just slightly gamey/cheesy, but not "off".
Salt #
Start this about 1-2 hours before cooking.
Salt it like the sidewalk in winter.
Seriously, cover it in an absolutely idiotic amount of salt, then flip it over, and do the same on the other side.
Leave it covered in a literal pile of salt on the counter for a few hours. This dries it out further, turns some of the free glutamates into MSG, absorbs a bit of salt into the fluids still in the meat, and lets it come up to room temp.
Rinse #
The salt around the steak will get kind of damp as it dehydrates the steak.
Rinse all of this off, then pat it dry with paper towel. Don't worry, meat is not a sponge, it won't re-absorb the water back in, it'll just get a little damp. That's what the patting dry is for.
Sear #
Get the pan very hot.
If the steak has a thick rim of fat around the outside, I like to hold it upright to sear the shit out of that edge first. This creates a bit of a crust around that edge, and also has the effect of greasing up the pan slightly to sear the faces of the steak. You'll know it's done when it looks a little like bacon, and a significant amount of grease will be released. (This is also a good way to test the heat of the pan, because pressing the edge of the steak to the pan should be LOUD.)
If there's no thick fat-rim, and you're using stainless, a drop of oil will help the steak release more easily and get a better sear. Anodized aluminum/titanium or well-seasoned carbon steel (or cast iron, if it is literally the only option, it is really the wrong tool for steak, but it is naturally non-stick when well seasoned) doesn't need it. You can also sometimes get a better sear by massaging a drop or two of oil into the steak itself, especially if the marbling isn't top notch.
Sear the first side for about 30 seconds to 1 minute. If you've gotten the pan hot enough, it should be loud and smokey, and the face should get a little bit of a brown crust.
Flip the steak, cut the heat, and sear the second side for about 30 seconds to 1 minute. This will sear the second side, and use up a lot of the remaining heat, so that the pan comes down to "won't immediately burn butter" temperature.
Finish #
Flip the steak again, add a huge pat of butter on top of it. For the remaining time, spoon melted butter over it, and flip the steak occasionally so the sides cook evenly.
At this point, it's down to how done you want it. For a black-and-blue rare, you're done as soon as the butter is fully melted. For well-done, go until it's about the squishiness of the meat between your thumb and index finger, maybe 4 minutes per side or so. Personally, I go for medium-rare, and believe this is correct, because it's the cooked level which is the optimal amount of "melting the fat into the muscle tissue without making it tough and grainy", and that is about 2 minutes per side if it's a thick cut.
Plate #
Do not cut into it to see how done it is. Just pay attention. If you overcook it, then do a little less next time. Undercook, do a little more next time. Eat your mistakes, it's how you learn.
Have a warmed plate ready. (Either pour some hot water on it, or microwave it for a little while with a bit of water on it.) Hot steak on a cold plate is not ideal.
You can let it rest under a piece of aluminum foil for a bit, but tbh, I think this step is largely overrated. But, a good thing to do is to throw some vegetables or par-cooked potatoes in the butter-and-tallow-filled pan, so make sure the steak has a foil blanket so it doesn't get cold while you do that.