Here's everything I wish I had known when I first starting trying to cook steak. This
is a basic primer on how to choose and cook a steak in a pan, to medium rare or thereabouts,
by using your senses, not a thermometer. Don't be expecting anything unusual — this is
the 100-level course.
There are three cuts that I would consider the best entry-level steaks: the ribeye, the
strip, and the tenderloin. Yes, these are American butchery terms — that's where I
am, that's what I know, that's what I can get at the store, but other countries do cut
their meat differently.
All three of these cuts come from the back of the cow, which on a quadruped is the area
of the body that does the least work, therefore these are the most tender cuts.
Here is my favorite of the tender cuts — the ribeye. It comes from the section of the cow
we call the rib in the U.S., and it actually has at least two muscles in it: the longissimus
dorsi — that's that main body of meat there, also called the "eye"; and around the edge
is the spinalis dorsi, also called the cap — that is my favorite of my favorite. Some
people are are put-off by that big line of fat that runs between the two muscles, but
I'll show you a way of dealing with that.
Beginners are often drawn to this one — the strip steak. "New York strip," it's sometimes
called. Brits call it a sirloin. It's also the longissimus muscle but it comes from farther
down in what American butchers call the short loin. It's appealing because it's mostly all
one muscle, it doesn't seem to have any big bands of fat or connective tissue running
through it, and it's an even size and shape. Cook it if you want to, but it is not my favorite.
It's a little boring, and it often has some connective tissue hiding inside.
Underneath the strip steak on the cow is a T-shaped bone and underneath that is this
muscle — the tenderloin, also called the fillet.
It's the psoas major muscle. There, you can see it running right underneath the strip
steaks and the thing that we call sirloin in the U.S. Brits call that the rump. That's
a good steak, too. Not as tender, but nothing is as tender as the tenderloin. This muscle
does almost nothing on a quadruped, so it's insanely soft. It's also, therefore, generally
the most expensive cut on the cow.
These are all pretty pricey cuts, but they're expensive for a reason — they're from the
middle of the animal's back, which means they're very tender, which means they're very easy
to cook successfully. That's as opposed to, say, this flank steak, which comes from the
belly of the cow. Arguably, it's not even a steak at all.
Look back at the ribeye. See those lines running up and down the side? That is the "grain"
of the meat, the actual muscle fibers running parallel to each other. The narrow definition
of steak is a relatively thin piece of meat cut across the grain, so that you have very
short muscle fibers running up and down instead of long ones running across.
Cutting the fibers short is one way to tenderize meat.
This is what makes a salmon steak different from a salmon fillet. See, on the latter there,
the muscle fibers are running across, instead of up and down, so they're longer. Not a big
deal with salmon because salmon is so tender, but on beef, it matters.
The flank is so thin that you can only cut it into a steak with the grain, so you have
these very long muscle fibers running side to side, not up and down. It's inedibly chewy
unless you slice it very thinly against the grain after it's cooked. That's just one example
of how things get more complicated once you graduate beyond the expensive tender cuts
that we're talking about today.
Now, say you choose ribeye — good choice. What kind of ribeye? There's a million options
— here's three. This is "choice" beef — probably the most common grade of beef sold as steaks
in U.S. grocery stores. It's fine, but much more rare and more expensive is "prime" beef
— beef that has a lot more marbling. Marbling is fat – not these big blubbery chunks of
fat sitting between the muscles. It's these little flecks of fat inside the muscles themselves.
This is the stuff that's gonna melt when cooked and fill the meat with moisture and flavor.
Here's a grass-fed ribeye. This cow grazed on grass instead of being fed corn. Grass
is a much lower-calorie food, so the beef usually won't have as much marbling. This
is probably healthier for you, and arguably better for the environment — that's a surprisingly
complicated issue, though and it's not quite clear.
But anyway, those are probably the three most common beef types here in the U.S. Dry-aged,
grass-finished, grain-finished — I'd consider those all distinctions to be discussed another
day.
Like I said, we're gonna cook this one in the house, on the stove, in a pan. What pan?
A lot of people consider a cast iron pan to be the ideal choice, and they might be right.
It's naturally somewhat nonstick and it's very heavy, so it's good at holding and evenly
conducting the very high heat that we generally use to cook steak. A thinner pan would be
more likely to swing up and down in temperature and have hot spots.
I would not advise a Teflon non-stick pan for steak. At the temperatures at which people
sear steak, it is possible for the non-stick coating to break down and release some harmful
gas.
This is a mid-priced stainless steel pan. It's not as heavy as the iron pan, but it's
got a solid base on it, I think it'll do fine. Time to get it heating. Fun story: When I
was first learning to cook from chefs on TV, they told me to crank my burner to maximum
and let the pan heat for like 20 minutes. I did that, then I put in a little oil and
it immediately burst into flames.
Fact is, professional chefs generally work on gas stoves, but the electric stoves like
a lot of Americans have at home can often put out more heat than a gas stove. I think
that's an example of how chefs aren't necessarily the best people to teach home cooking. With
my pan and my stove I've found the high side of medium-high is best, but you'll simply
have to experiment. I'll let that heat for a few minutes.
Here's one of the strip steaks — right out of the fridge. Blotting it dry can help a
little with getting a better a better crust on it. Some of the world's greatest chefs
say you gotta take it out like 20-30 minutes in advance and let it come up to room temperature
before cooking. There's a lot of reason to doubt doubt the efficacy of that, but I'm
gonna side-step the whole debate and simply say you absolutely can cook a great steak
straight out of the fridge and it's the easier thing to do, so we're doing it.
I'm seasoning conventionally right before cooking. Dry-brining is a topic for another
day. Salt and pepper on both sides. If you don't know how much you like, be conservative.
You can add more at the table. And it works either way, but I actually like to oil the
steak, rather than the pan. Just a little, and smoosh everything around. I think this
results in less oil burning and smoking on the uncovered surface of the pan.
Yes, I'm using extra virgin olive oil. Contrary to popular belief, you absolutely can use
it at very high heat — I have a whole video explaining why linked in the description,
but use whatever oil you want. Avocado oil is good for steak.
Hey, why do you have to cook steaks at very high heat? What would happen if you just did
it on like medium? Well, let me show you. Lay her in there, and wait until the first
side is browned. Decent crust on that. Crust formation is absolutely a function of both
temperature and time — you can get nice browning on a lower heat for a longer time.
But now I can tell this is already almost done inside, and the bottom crust is — yikes.
Pallid.
Take that out, look inside — and yeah, that's actually overcooked for my taste. That's medium.
And when you taste it — it tastes like beef, but it doesn't taste like steak. You have
to blast steak with very intense heat to get those crusty-brown flavors on the outside
before the inside gets overcooked.
That's in contrast to, say, a chicken breast. You've got lots of time to brown the outside,
because you want chicken cooked all the way through. If you want your steak still pink
on the inside, you gotta brown the crust fast, so in this goes on the high side of medium-high.
It's good to pat it down, to make sure the whole surface is making contact. Now pretty
soon, this is gonna make some smoke. Does that mean you can't cook a good steak in a
pan if you live in an apartment building with poor ventilation and a sensitive smoke detector?
Yeah, maybe not — honestly.
Though if you do see a ton of smoke, you really might be burning it, so you can take it off
the heat for a sec. The conventional route now would be to wait until the first side
has a good crust on it, and if it does, it should pretty easily release from the surface
of the pan when you flip. You can see I actually did burn it just a little bit there on the
edge. Not a big deal, but better avoided.
Now we'll wait until we get a crust on the other side and test for internal doneness
by poking it. People swear by this nonsense where if you want medium rare it should feel
like poking your hand here, and if you want it medium, it should feel like here or something.
I'm sorry, but that's crazy talk, because everybody's hand is different, and every steak
is different. The more tender cuts will feel softer. The fattier cuts will feel softer.
Dry-aged beef would feel firmer.
Every steak is different, so I think the better thing is to compare the steak to itself. Poke
it when you know it's still raw on the inside. That's your baseline reading for that particular
steak. Then you wait until you can feel the inside going a little firmer. When it's raw
inside, it'll feel squishy. When it's going on medium rare, it'll start to feel bouncier.
A good visual clue is to look for pink juice pushing up to the surface of the steak, on
the top or on the sides. That's not blood. It's just protein-rich water from inside the
steak, and it generally doesn't start pushing out like that until you're at least at rare.
This feels bouncier to me over here, but over here it's still a little squishy. Steaks aren't
evenly shaped, and it's not always possible to cook them evenly throughout using conventional
techniques. I'd much rather have a slightly underdone spot than an overdone spot, so for
me, this is done. That took six minutes.
We'll let this rest on the cutting board for a few minutes, because it is still cooking.
If we cut into it immediately it might still be raw in the center. But carryover cooking
is when heat from the still very-hot surface continues to conduct into the center. It'll
also spill less juice if it's rested a bit.
Now I'll cut into this right at the thickest part, and you can see it's actually more like
rare, in there. But if I cut elsewhere on the steak, it's medium rare. That's the situation
I'd much rather have.
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Now, let me season one of these ribeyes. By the way, I like to season the first side of
the steak, and then season the area of the plate next to the steak, put on a little oil,
rub it in, then lift the steak onto the seasoned plate to season the other side. This way I
only have to wash my hands once in the processes, instead of twice.
Hot pan, and this time I'm going to do the more new-fangled thing of flipping the steak
every 30 seconds or so. If you have the time to mother your steak, I really believe in
this method. Might not look like it now, but it does result in a great crust — you'll
see it build. I think flipping frequently is better for beginners because you can see
exactly what's going on. You're not gonna be surprised by any burned spots. You'll see
them coming.
Gotta poke now while I know the inside is still raw to get my baseline reading. Feels
squishy.
Flipping every 30 seconds generally cooks the interior a bit more evenly, and it cooks
the whole thing faster. This one took less than five minutes. I see pink juice starting
to push out. When I poke it, it feels noticeably bouncier than before. It's in the vicinity
of medium rare.
Why don't I just use a thermometer? In general I prefer cooking with my senses — it's like
playing music from memory instead of off the page. I think it's also hard to take the temperature
of something as thin as a steak, especially if you have a cheap thermometer. You can get
some crazy inconsistent readings depending on exactly where you position the thermometer.
I really think going by eye and feel is easier and more enjoyable, even if it's not perfect.
That's a hair more rare than what I was shooting for, but I honestly think a secret to home
cooking is to relax your expectations a bit. You don't have a paying customer to please,
you don't have to nail it. Steak is good at many levels of doneness.
You might have this idea in your head that you need to cut this "against the grain."
But here the thing — it was already cut against the grain, because this is a steak
in the narrow definition of the term. The only way to get the meat fibers any shorter
would be to slice on and extreme bias, or at an angle. Doing this, we could, at most,
cut the muscle fibers in half, which isn't gonna do much for tenderness, so that's not
a thing I worry about when I'm cooking one of these tender cuts. They're already cut
against the grain.
If you don't like those big fat globs between the eye and the cap, what I often do is cut
the cap off and then shave off the fat. I love fat, but marbled fat, not blobs of unrendered
blubber. Plus there's connective tissue in there, too — white, hard bands of tissue
that do not soften with cooking. Man, those bites of the cap are so good.
OK, now let's talk about the fillet. Notice how it's cut twice as thick as the other steaks.
That's traditional for tenderloin, probably because they're so narrow. You could simply
cut it into two thinner steaks, and I do that sometimes, because here's a counterintuitive
truth of cooking steak — the thicker the steak is, the lower the temperature you have
to use.
These approximately one-inch or 2 cm steaks are the perfect thickness, I think, because
you can easily brown the outside without over- or under-cooking the inside. If you had a
much thinner steak, you'd have to hit it with the highest heat you've got in order to have
a prayer of browning the outside before the inside got overcooked.
With a very thick steak like this, the opposite is true. You have to go slowly, or else the
outside will be toast before the inside is done.
And for that reason, thick steaks might be more viable in a poorly ventilated apartment.
I'm just putting this on medium heat, and I'm gonna flip it every 30 second or so until
I like the crust. Take my baseline poke. That is so soft.
After a good 4 minutes of flipping, my crust is almost done, but the inside is still clearly
raw. Some people would finish the steak in the oven at this point — I think that's
a great option if your oven is already hot.
But I'm gonna turn the heat down a little more, put a big knob of butter in there and
use it to baste the steak. This tastes amazing, and it'll help me keep all sides cooking,
as if it was in the oven.
About 8 minutes after I put in the butter, I can feel it's bouncier than it started.
Still very soft though, because it's tenderloin. That's why we're comparing its feel to itself
from before, as opposed to something fixed, like my hand.
My wife is gonna eat this one, and she likes it closer to medium, so I'll let it cook a
minute or two longer after I feel the inside starting to firm. Let it rest, and that doesn't
have a ton of beef flavor, but it is super soft. Very appealing texture.
For our last example, I will say that I think steak cooked in a pan is best when you use
the following flavorings. A few garlic cloves, crushed with the side of the knife to open
up their structure. If if the skin doesn't have any mold or anything on it, you don't
even have to bother taking it off.
A woody herb, like thyme or rosemary. And some butter — ideally cultured butter. Slightly
fermented butter. That tastes great on steak.
I've got my prime ribeye here and I'm deliberately under-seasoning it a little bit so that I
can put some finishing salt on it at the end. Put that in the pan, flip every 30 seconds
or so, and when I feel like I'm a minute away from being done, I'll put in my garlic, herbs
and butter. The garlic and thyme flavor the butter which then flavors the steak. Rather
than basting with a spoon, you can just keep flipping the steak, that'll coat it nicely.
You do this at the end because the butter would burn if you put in earlier, and if things
seem like they're gonna burn nonetheless, turn off the heat and let the steak coast
for the last mile. It feels bouncy instead of squishy, I see juice pushing to the surface,
I'll pull that out and pour some of that flavored butter on top. So good.
Why is medium rare often considered the "best" doneness? Well, at that temperature, the marbling
inside has melted, but it has not yet all left the steak. It's still in there, in liquid
form. Rare steak can still feel a little slimy on the inside, in part because the fat hasn't
rendered. Done steak tends to be dry, and cooking meat beyond pink really changes its
flavor. But it's your steak and you should cook it however you like it.
I like to put some super crunchy finishing salt on at the end. This is volcanic sea salt
— I just think it looks awesome. And yes, unless company is over, I like to eat right
off the cutting board. The pieces just sit there soaking up all that delicious juice
and butter, and it'll stay warm there longer. You transfer it to a cold plate, it'll go
cold immediately, though can warm plates — I have whole video about that in the description.
But anyway, good luck. If you want to do this, I suggest looking out for a sale on some steaks,
buy a bunch and just cook them, one after the other for yourself and no one else. As
soon as you've had a bit of tactile experience cooking steak, it simply becomes one of the
easiest and quickest meals to make.
Oh, and if you're wondering, "Why didn't he cover reverse searing," and all kinds of other
things, remember this is just the 101 class. I'll see you in the 201.