When I started trying to cook the perfect steak a few years ago, I came across a LOT of conflicting
information online. And on the surface, that seems logical: I mean cooking is an art. BUT,
it's also a science and the great thing about science is *repeatability*—this video will cover
what's true, what's BS, and how to ACTUALLY get that perfectly cooked steak every time.
So, there's this book—Modernist Cuisine—written by the near-billionaire ex-CTO of Microsoft Nathan
Myhrvold and Chris Young—a former chef at The Fat Duck and protege of the famed Heston Blumenthal.
In it, these scientist chefs address HOW meat cooks—and spoiler alert: it has everything to
with water. While basically everything we eat has some moisture content, proteins like beef
muscle consist of nearly 75% water. And the thing about water is that it's water until its not.
As your steak hits a hot pan, that satisfying sizzle comes resulting from water on the surface
of the protein vaporizing as steam; and rather quickly, the meat starts to brown in
what Modernist Cuisine calls a desiccation zone. This browning is the consequence of the Maillard
reaction where amino acids and reducing sugars break down the protein and create
a caramelization layer. This is the same process that gives fried onions their savory umami taste,
french fries their golden brown color, and yes, a good steak its delicious, signature crust.
Right next to the crust where water has evaporated already is the boiling
zone—meat right at 212 degrees—where the water content is bursting through the top
and bottom of the meat as high-pressure steam. But despite this boiling zone,
the temperature falls off quickly and the center of the meat remains cold because most of the
joules from your pan go towards facilitating evaporation—evaporation which somewhat
counterintuitively COOLS the pan as it condenses and insulates the meat from the pans heat.
So logic would dictate we crank the crap out of our pan's heat forcing more energy inside
the protein, right? Wrong. And that's the biggest misconception about cooking steak. The center of
the meat slowly warms via conduction via the BOILING and DESSICATION zones. No matter how
hot your pan—and subsequently—how hot your crust, you cannot conductively cook meat
any faster BECAUSE you're limited by the boiling point of water inside the muscle
tissue. Increasing the temperature of your pan too high only does two very bad things:
(1) it makes that boiling zone larger which when cooled will just be overdone, dry meat,
and (2) it will burn your crust and fry off any spices you've covered the steak in.
Let me prove that with an experiment. [throw steak in b-roll] You'll see that we're up here
in the mountains, but despite that, we're powering our 1600W induction cooktop, our studio lights,
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I'm cooking two steaks of the same thickness and weight to exactly the same internal temperature
with a flip halfway through the cook. This experiment is controlled using these amazing
thermometers from Combustion Inc and this induction stovetop from Breville. This isn't
sponsored—I just love both of these things—the Combustion probes have 8 thermistors along their
length and so you just jam it in there and it automatically finds the true core temperature
of your meat by whichever probe reads lowest. You can also see every other temperature from
center to crust to ambient. They're low-energy Bluetooth, can be used with a little controller
or via a phone app that collects no data and doesn't even have a login. I love them. The
cooktop is induction but involves the use of a temperature probe right at the center to take
a constant reading of the pan's temperature applying or removing energy as needed. One
steak will be cooked to medium-rare on a 350 degrees Fahrenheit pan temperature,
and the other at almost 500 degrees. And what we find out is that despite the drastically different
temperatures, total cook time... isn't. If any difference can be identified at all,
it's that our meat cooked at a higher temperature weighs slightly less because
it lost more water due to heat resulting in a larger ring of well-done meat. No thanks.
So we've learned lower temperatures yield better results. But is that true for all
meats? This is only a 1" thick strip. What if I have a 2.5" thick filet mignon? I definitely
want to use a higher temperature there, right? Wrong again. The thicker your steak,
the LOWER you want your temperature to avoid burning your crust and that boiling-zone creep.
I pan-fry filets as low as 325 degrees or "medium" as so scientifically indicated by most stovetops.
But by this logic, why not go even lower you're thinking? And smart you are—because that
alludes to a method preferred by many—the reverse sear. As the name suggests, you subject the meat
to high temperature: last. The 30-45 minute method (popularized by Kenji Lopez) involves
tossing a steak onto a wire rack and cooking it in a 200-250 degree oven until it comes about
10 degrees shy of its desired final temperature. Why? You know the answer: because conduction will
continue to heat the center of the meat by several degrees after we remove it from heat. The longer,
1-2 hour method is one you've certainly heard of: sous vide. By placing our meat in a water
bath that's the temperature we'd like the meat cooked to—say 130 degrees which is medium rare,
the meat will slowly heat up to medium rare but never even a single degree past
that because it can't get warmer than the water its surrounded by. Regardless of method used,
you'll find yourself with a steak that's fully cooked and safe to eat, but one that
looks like this: ugly and grey and sad. What are we missing? The Maillard reaction—that delicious
desiccation zone. This is where we sear, in reverse. Exposing our steak to high heat,
we can quickly encourage rendering of fat and formation of a crust, but not permit enough time
to elapse that we further cook our steak's core. 30 seconds per side is plenty. The end result is
a steak that's delicious and tender, but requires a lot of time and doesn't work well for every cut.
So what's the ultimate way scientifically cook the perfect steak without wasting hours of your
day? Let me show you. Grab your steaks from the fridge and put them on the counter for
1-4 hours or if you have a life like me, put 'em in a ziploc bag in a pot of room
temperature water for 10-15 minutes to let them temper—that's a fancy way to say "make the steaks
closer to the warmth of our pan." Chris Young himself has an excellent video on this subject,
but to summarize... if you've ever cooked sous vide, you'll notice the temperature
of your meat rapidly rises in the beginning, but the final 2-5 degrees take the majority of
the cooking time. Throwing a bone-cold steak on a smoldering-hot pan will cause the temperature of
the steak's exterior to cook much quicker than the steak's interior—increasing that boiling zone and
overcooking most of our meat. After your meat is tempered, put your pan on the hob, set it medium
to medium-high and add an oil with a high smoke point—not olive oil. Gordon Ramsay uses olive oil
when cooking steak but you're watching this video so you're clearly not Gordon Ramsay. Olive oil
has a very low smoke point and can burn and taste terrible and ruin your steak if you're not super
careful—and frankly, it doesn't add basically anything to the flavor anyways so it's not worth
the risk. I recommend grapeseed oil as a pleasant neutral oil that doesn't have much flavor,
but if you want to avoid seed oil you can use refined coconut oil. In a pinch, avocado oil is
mild and will work too. Let the pan and your oil heat up for several minutes but don't let it get
so hot it smokes. The reason for this whole song and dance is to eliminate cold spots in our pan.
As the pan is toastin' up, dab your steaks with paper towels to remove surface moisture—oil
and water ain't friends—and then generously season with salt, pepper, and if you're cool,
a little garlic powder. Take your steaks and lay them into the pan away from you in case any hot
oil tries to splash out and then throw in some fresh thyme or rosemary and a little garlic if
you'd like. Flip your steak frequently—every minute to begin with and every couple minutes
following the first few. Why..? Because you'll often hear people—even some celebrity chefs—say
you should only flip the steak once during the cook because it helps create a thicker crust and
locks in moisture. This is demonstrably false and you probably know why this is the case by
now. Look at the top of my steak when I flipped it just once earlier in the video... there's a ton of
steam coming out the top and if there's steam that means moisture is leaving the meat—this
steam is under such immense pressure, a thicker crust isn't going to prevent it from escaping.
Flipping the steak frequently reduces the temperature differential between the pan
and the surface of the meat each time you flip it—helping the exterior of the meat
convect towards the inside more quickly while simultaneously not overcooking. It's the best
of both worlds and if you don't believe me, here's proof: the left is a steak flipped
every minute and the right is only flipped once. Not only does the right steak take
significantly longer to come to temperature, but it also has a much larger boil zone.
Once your frequently-flipped steak comes within about 15 degrees of your desired doneness as
identified by a probe or instant-read thermometer, pull it off the pan and let it rest on a wire
rack. Carryover convection will continue to cook the inside as the exterior cools down and while
you can always pop it back on for another minute if it's too rare, you can't undo that which is
overdone. Last, a lot of people—Gordon Ramsay included—place a pad of butter in with the
steak near the end of the cook and baste the steak by spooning the juices atop which theoretically
encourages the Maillard reaction, but it's also really easy to burn the butter if you're
not watching your temperature closely (which is yucky). Instead, while the steak is resting and
my pan begins to cool, I chuck a pad of unsalted butter in with the herbs and then pour the liquid
gold atop the steak when I'm ready to serve. It helps heat the steak back up slightly, never
burns, and in blind tests with multiple people I've had over, nobody has been able to tell the
difference between basting while cooking and not so save yourself the time, the stress and skip it.
And that's it. That's how you cook the perfect steak. With science. Thank you
so much for watching, and as always: stay snazzy.