- Today in the Test Kitchen, our number one recipe
on our website, the classic pan-seared ribeye.
What makes it so special?
It's the crust on the outside.
It's all technique folks, and we're gonna do it right now.
(upbeat country music)
And we think this recipe is popular for a number of reasons.
It uses the ribeye, my favorite cut which is incredibly
marbled, robust, perfect cut.
Another reason is people are looking for options
of how to cook inside and have great steak experience
inside on the stove top.
This recipe we're going to put a little oil on,
and some salt and pepper, very traditional technique,
but in a cast iron on the stove top.
For other recipes and videos, make sure you subscribe!
To get started I've got a cast iron pan that I'm preheating
in the oven.
It's important that we gently bring up the heat
on a cast iron pan, so I put it in the oven,
put it to 450 degrees.
And then when it's hot I'll pull it out
and we'll put it on the stove top so it's ready to rock.
So let's get our cast iron pan and then we'll make sure
that we put it over medium heat while we're getting
our steak ready.
Be sure not to touch that handle.
Now we'll get our steak ready
to put on the cast iron preheated pan.
I brush a little bit of oil on it so that it can accept
a good amount of salt and pepper.
This is a one pound steak, so a 16 ounce ribeye,
take a look at that incredible marbling in that steak.
Mm, that's gonna eat so well.
Let's brush it with some oil and put salt and pepper
on it and we'll get this thing fired up.
While that's oiled on that side I'm gonna put
salt and pepper on it now on this side.
I put a good amount of seasoning on because that's a thick
steak and I want that seasoning to be in every bite.
Coarse, kosher salt, fresh cracked pepper, classic.
Now the reason you put oil on it is so you can help
the salt and pepper stick,
but you also have a concentration of that oil
right where the steak is instead of oiling the pan.
In this case I forgot, as you saw,
to put the oil on this side, so I'm gonna put a little bit
on the outside now.
And then make sure I've got my seasoning where I want
it to be.
And again, this is that medium heat.
And I know that my pan was raging hot
because of the sizzle, right?
Now if you haven't done this recipe before,
just know that you're gonna create a good amount
of smoke in the house, so hopefully you've got a good
hood vent or you've got the window open at least.
Your smoke detectors might be going off.
Two to three minutes on the first side,
I flip, oh, take a look at that crust.
That's perfect, that's what you want.
And then I add some aromatics.
In this case, I've got fresh thyme and a couple cloves
of garlic that I just take and smash.
Just so they open up the garlic cloves.
Just throw those in the pan, and then we're gonna put it
in the oven.
And then it's gonna get the crispiness on the other side
in the oven.
Okay, we're back out the oven after six or seven minutes.
The reason we put this steak in the oven
is because it's so thick.
If you were to just do this on the stove top,
you'd really have a burned steak on both sides
and it be undercooked in the middle.
So that's why we take advantage of the cast iron pan
and the heat that it can hold and the oven.
You just really wanna put your stove top at low
at this point and then we're gonna add some butter to it,
so those aromatics are just out for the ride
and they're gonna be part of that flavor
that becomes of this steak.
Flip it back over and then we're gonna add butter
and create a liquid that gets poured over this steak.
Including those herbs, right?
You've got herbs and garlic, tremendous amount of butter
and we just keep spooning on top of this beautiful steak.
You can just do this for about 30 seconds or so,
it foams up and that brown butter and the nuttiness
of that is just ideal with this robust steak.
Ooh.
It's gonna be delicious.
I'm guessing the internal temperature of this right now
is about 110, but it's gonna keep rising right now
pretty rapidly to the done-ness that I'm looking for,
which is medium rare.
But you can take it further to medium, medium well or well,
using an internal read thermometer
you can check that done-ness.
I'd say if you like your steak well done,
spend a couple more minutes in the oven.
So to find your degree of done-ness,
take a look at the chart right there.
All right, so once it's, kind of the foam has subsided
off the butter, take it off the heat.
And we'll get this thing right into a plate.
And then make sure you take advantage by just putting
all those wonderful herbs, and garlic, right on top
and that brown butter you can add it,
and this pan, this cast iron has a nice port style
so you can add that.
Now a steak this large, it's ideal for a couple,
so perfect Valentine's day steak,
but some of us could eat this all alone,
you know who I'm talking about.
Now that the steak has come off that high heat,
we're gonna make sure we give it enough time to rest.
So, for this steak we're only looking at about a minimum
of five minutes, gives you a chance to get everything
else ready at the table, light the candles et cetera.
Now that it's rested, let's go ahead and slice it.
Oh.
This looks so good.
I'm gonna slice the whole thing up and then just put
it right back on the plate.
Oh, this looks really good.
Now this is my favorite way to do a ribeye,
and you can see the crust all on the outside,
uniformly across the top and the bottom
is kinda the goal here.
I think we nailed it.
Again, my favorite way to do a ribeye,
on the cast iron inside that flavor,
you can smell these aromatics.
So, hit us up in the comments, tell us how you like
to do a ribeye.
See ya time in the Test Kitchen.