If you’ve ever wondered how to cook a delicious steak, this is for you. This is not a recipe per se, but is more in the spirit of fatherly guidance. These are the fundamentals. Master these steps first. Then customize and add to them. Hint: marinating your steak ahead of time is an awesome customization as is adding caramelized onions or mushrooms to your pan sauce.
These steak cooking instructions are intentionally fuzzy and somewhat vague. Take notes about how it goes when you do it and customize these to your own preferences.
Equipment and ingredient list:
- Oven
- Baking sheet
- Pan capable of cooking with high heat.
- Butter: About 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons per steak
- (Olive) Oil: Enough to coat the bottom of your pan twice plus a little more
- Steak: about an inch tall
- Coarse salt and any other seasoning you’d like to use
- Paper towels or napkins
- Clock to measure time
- Bring your steak up to room temperature. For a steak that is fresh or has already been thawed and refrigerated, this will take about 1/2 hour on your countertop.
- Preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Place your steak on a baking pan or baking dish of some kind. Your steak needs to be able to lay flat.
- Pat your steak dry all over on every side with a paper towel or something similar. Moisture will inhibit searing. There is no way around this step. Leaving your steak to sit out on the counter all day will not achieve this level of dryness.
- Once your steak’s surface is dry, drizzle some tasty oil onto its top. Olive oil is a good choice, but it can be any fat that does well in high heat. So, not butter, but ghee would work as would avocado oil. Drizzle don’t drench.
- Then sprinkle a nice coarse salt on your steak’s top from about a foot above it. You want to achieve an effect that resembles snowflakes. Coarse salts like kosher salt or chunky sea salts are good for this.
- Once your oven reaches 325 degrees, slide your steak into the oven. For medium, bake it for 10 minutes. For medium-rare, bake it for 8 minutes. For medium-well, bake it for 12 minutes. Yes, multiple steaks can be done at the same time. Leave space between them on the baking sheet. These times are per inch of steak depth. If you have a two-inch tall steak, roughly double these times. This is the step where you want to cook your steak to your desired level of doneness and not during the searing stage.
- A couple of minutes before your steak is due to come out of the oven, generously coat (but don’t drown) the bottom of a cast iron, carbon steel or other skillet that you can cook your steak in at high temperatures on your stove top with the same fat that you used before. You want to heat that pan until it is almost but not smoking. The oil should run like water but not smoke on its own. You could also use a grill for this part. You would want to oil the grill grates and get the grill to a hot temperature that almost smokes the oil.
- Remove your steak from the oven when it’s reached the appropriate time. Gently pat its top dry again without burning yourself. Then immediately transfer it to the hot skillet or hot grill.
- This is where you develop your steak’s sear. Leave it on your hot skillet or grill for 1 minute initially. Then for the next 4 minutes, flip the steak over every 30 seconds. If you’re using a grill, flipping it over and turning it 90 degrees to the side will give you diamond shaped grill marks. You want to maintain that high temperature that does not start the oil smoking. You will produce smoky air from this sizzling process as well as greasy spatters. Don’t under heat but be careful with the spatters!
- Your steak should now be placed back on the baking pan to rest for the next 10 minutes. 10 minutes is a good time whether you have 1 steak or 10, and it is the same time no matter how thick your steak is.
- Resting is the time to season your steak with any garlic, steak seasoning, pepper, vinegar, etc that you want to use. Your steak is hot and will absorb things very easily at this point. At first, consider using simple ingredients like pepper or chives. Then, while making sure that your steak doesn’t fall, after 5 minutes of resting tilt that baking pan so that the “juices” accumulating on it drain into your skillet or pan. Use the same one as before. If you are grilling, use any pan for your stove top. Over medium heat, add to those steak juices about 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter per steak. Stir it all around until it mixes and the butter turns brown. Ideally, your butter sauce should begin to froth a bit.
- Just before you’re ready to eat, spoon your pan sauce (that combination of steak juices and browned butter) on top of your steak. Let it soak in for a minute. Serve and enjoy!