How to cook steak

• 2 steaksboneless ribeye or New York strip · about 12 oz each and a full 1 1/2 inches thick, which matters more than the cut
• 2 tspkosher salt · about 1 tsp per steak, applied at least 45 minutes ahead and ideally the night before
• 1 tspblack pepper · coarsely cracked, applied just before the steak goes in the pan
• 1 tbspneutral high-smoke-point oil · refined avocado, grapeseed or rice bran, not extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tbspunsalted butter · added in the last two minutes only, for basting
• 4 sprigsthyme · or rosemary, added with the butter
• 3 clovesgarlic · smashed but left whole so they do not burn in the butter
• 1 pinchflaky sea salt · for the sliced steak at the board, after resting
• 1 tspred wine vinegar or lemon juice · optional, over the sliced meat, to cut the fat

Methode

1. 1

   Thickness decides everything, so buy for thickness first

   A one-and-a-half-inch steak gives you a window of about ninety seconds between rare and medium and enough mass to build a hard crust before the centre overcooks. A three-quarter-inch supermarket steak has no window at all: by the time the surface browns, the middle is grey. If the counter only has thin steaks, buy one thick steak and share it rather than two thin ones. Cut, grade and price all matter less than this single measurement.

2. 2

   Ribeye, strip, sirloin, and what each one is for

   Ribeye has the most intramuscular fat, so it is the most forgiving and the richest, and it wants to go slightly further than the others because that fat needs to render. New York strip is leaner, firmer and beefier, with a fat cap you should render deliberately. Top sirloin is the value option and needs to be cut thick and served rare to medium rare. Filet has almost no fat and very little flavour of its own, which is why it is nearly always served with a sauce.

3. 3

   Salt forty-five minutes ahead, or the night before, and never in between

   Salt immediately draws moisture to the surface. At five to thirty minutes in, that moisture is sitting on the meat and will steam in the pan, which is the worst possible moment to cook. By forty-five minutes it has been reabsorbed as brine and the surface has begun to dry. Overnight on a rack in the fridge, uncovered, is better still: the salt penetrates, and the surface dries to a tacky film that browns in half the time. Either salt right before it goes in the pan, or salt properly early.

4. 4

   Dry the surface like you mean it

   Water on the surface has to boil off before the pan can climb past 212F, and boiling off water is what makes a steak grey. Press paper towel onto both faces and both edges until it comes away dry. If the steak has been in the fridge uncovered overnight it will already feel slightly tacky, which is the state you want. This is the single cheapest improvement available and it takes fifteen seconds.

5. 5

   Pepper goes on late, not with the salt

   Cracked pepper sitting on a steak for an hour draws no benefit, and pepper in a screaming-hot dry pan scorches and turns acrid in under a minute. Apply it just before the steak goes in, or, if you are searing very hard, apply it during the butter-basting stage when the pan temperature has come down. Coarse cracked pepper burns less than fine ground, because less surface area is exposed.

6. 6

   Cast iron or carbon steel, and get it hotter than feels sensible

   You want a pan with enough thermal mass that a cold steak does not crash its temperature. Cast iron and carbon steel both qualify; thin stainless and most nonstick do not, and nonstick coatings are not rated for the heat this needs. Preheat over medium-high for four to five minutes until a drop of water skitters and evaporates instantly. Add a tablespoon of neutral oil and wait for the first wisp of smoke. Extra virgin olive oil smokes too low for this job.

7. 7

   Flip every thirty seconds, which is the opposite of the folk rule

   The instruction to flip once exists to protect grill marks, not the meat. Frequent flipping keeps each face from soaking up heat for long enough to overcook a band under the surface, so the interior cooks more evenly and the whole thing finishes faster. In side-by-side tests a steak flipped every thirty seconds cooks about a third quicker with a thinner grey band, and the crust is no worse. Total time for a one-and-a-half-inch steak is roughly eight to ten minutes.

8. 8

   Render the fat cap on its edge

   A strip steak has a band of hard fat along one side that will not render lying flat. Hold the steak on that edge with tongs, or lean two steaks against each other, and give it two to three minutes until the fat is golden and has released a pool into the pan. That rendered beef fat then cooks the rest of the steak. Skipping this leaves a rubbery white strip that everyone at the table cuts off and leaves.

9. 9

   Butter, thyme and garlic go in at the end, not the start

   Butter contains milk solids that burn at around 300F, well below searing temperature, so butter added at the beginning is black by minute three. Add it in the last two minutes with smashed garlic and thyme, tip the pan towards you, and spoon the foaming butter over the steak continuously. This does two things: it browns the surface further through the milk solids, and it moves heat into the top face while the bottom is not in contact with the pan.

10. 10

    Cook to a temperature, and buy the thermometer

    An instant-read thermometer probed into the thickest part from the side, not the top, is the only reliable method. Pull at 120F for rare, 125F for medium rare, 135F for medium, 145F for medium well. Those are pull temperatures, because carryover cooking adds five to ten degrees while the steak rests. The finger-poke test is a party trick that fails across cuts, thicknesses and starting temperatures, and cutting in to look releases the juice you spent an hour trying to keep.

11. 11

    The food-safety number, stated plainly

    USDA guidance for whole cuts of beef is 145F internal followed by a three-minute rest, which lands at medium well. Steakhouses and most cooks serve rare to medium rare, at 125F to 135F, and accept a small residual risk on the reasoning that contamination on a whole muscle is a surface phenomenon and searing addresses the surface. That reasoning does not hold for mechanically tenderised, blade-tenderised or needle-injected steak, or for anything minced, and it is not the right risk for pregnancy, young children, older adults or anyone immunocompromised.

12. 12

    Reverse sear for anything over two inches

    For a thick steak, a tomahawk or a whole roast, invert the order. Put the salted steak on a rack in a 250F oven until the centre reads 15F below your target, roughly thirty to forty-five minutes, then sear it in a ripping-hot pan for sixty to ninety seconds a side. The slow phase brings the whole interior to an even temperature with almost no grey band, and the dry oven air desiccates the surface so the sear happens faster. It is more precise than pan-only and it needs no rest afterwards.

13. 13

    Rest it, but not as long as people say

    Five to ten minutes on a warm plate or a board, loosely tented so steam can escape rather than sealed under foil, which softens the crust you just built. Resting lets the muscle fibres relax and reabsorb liquid that pressure has pushed towards the centre, so less of it runs out on the first cut. Beyond about ten minutes for a steak this size you are simply serving it cold. If you reverse-seared, the rest already happened during the oven phase.

14. 14

    Slice against the grain, and look before you cut

    Find the direction the muscle fibres run and cut perpendicular to them, which shortens each fibre and makes the meat measurably more tender in the mouth. On a ribeye the grain changes direction between the eye and the cap, so separate those two muscles first and cut each on its own axis. Slice half an inch thick, fan it on a warm board, scatter flaky salt over the cut faces, and pour the resting juices back over the top.

15. 15

    Deglaze the pan, because the best part is still in it

    Tip out the excess fat, put the pan back on medium heat, add a splash of red wine, stock or even water, and scrape the brown residue up with a wooden spoon. Reduce for two minutes, swirl in a knob of cold butter off the heat, and you have a pan sauce in the time the steak is resting. A teaspoon of vinegar or lemon over the sliced meat does the same job with no pan at all, and cutting the fat with acid is what makes a second slice appealing.