Steak is pretty great. Of course it depends enitrely on the cut of meat and quality thereof. The cut used in this recipe was a ribeye from whole foods and cost about $26. Totally worth it for 1.5lbs of amazing steak. I suggest whole foods or some kind of butcher for your meat (I’m looking forward to kangaroo from a local butcher… but that’ll be another post). Anyway, I learned to pan sear/oven cook it from an Alton Brown video on youtube where he cooks it for about 5mins total. Basically this method involves searing it and then putting it in the oven to actually cook the inside. I have a cast iron pan that I’ve used a few times for this method and it works brilliantly. First you have to preheat the oven to 500F, and put the cast iron in there to heat up as well. My oven takes about 30-45mins to get to this temp (and even then I’m not sure it really is 500F). While this all is going on, salt and pepper your steak and add some oil to it. Don’t be shy with the salt.
This steak is a ribeye and was 1.5lb on the dot. Also pretty thick, about 2inches. Next, after the oven (and pan) is (are) preheated stick it on a burner on high for about 5mins.
The skillet will probably start smoking at this point, that’s ok. Also, don’t touch it unless you want to get branded. A note on the oil you use to lightly coat the steak – make sure it isn’t olive oil, and make sure it has a high smoke point (unless you like a smokey kitchen). The smoke point of an oil is the temperature when it will start to smoke, olive oil is around 375F which is way too cool for searing steak (I mean we want the pan to be >500F). I’ve used safflower oil to semi success, still very smokey but less so than other oils I’ve used. This time I used sesame oil which was labeled as refined and high heat, but right after I tossed it on the skillet and bam:
When I flipped it, the same deal. Our apartment quickly filled with smoke, even though we propped open the “balcony” door and front door before cooking (I learned long ago to unplug the fire alarm before even considering pan seared steak). Even the hallway outside our apartment was pretty smokey, we were kind of worried about neighbors seeing all that smoke and calling the fire department. Anyway, lesson of the night: use a high smoke point oil and have good ventilation in your kitchen (we have none). For all that smoke you would think the steak got burnt, but no, it was a great sear:
I use a digital thermometer to check temperature and we were aiming for 130F, which is medium rare. For some reason my thermometer was acting up when I was cooking this steak, it would read the room temp at 75, then hit the steak and peak at 110, then go down to 70. Ok, more time in the oven, then it would read 120 and go down to 90. Ok, just a little more time, now it read 120 and went down to 80. Errr, something might be off with the thermometer…. Feel the steak, still feels rare. More oven time, take it out after a minute or two, and what! 150F?! Well another part reads 135F so maybe ok? Anyway, faulty thermometers aside, the other important thing about steak is to let it rest for 3-5mins after cooking. So I let it rest for 4mins (leaving the oven on, just in case I needed to cook some more) and then make the first cut, and voila! Slightly rare, I’ll take it.
I’d rather eat a rare steak than medium, or well done, so this was cooked alright. In fact, because it was so thick in the center and tapered off towards the edges, I actually had a well done slice of meat from the end, but no worries most of the steak was med rare.
Yeah, you can’t really go wrong with steak, potatoes and broccoli. Well, I suppose you could drop the broccoli and just have steak and potatoes, but eventually you would develop some sort of vitamin deficiency… Anyway, even with all that smoke from the sesame oil, this was a great steak (thanks whole foods). And thanks to the smoke, it’s 2 days later and my apartment still smells like steak 🙂
Recipe:
-1.5lb ribeye steak
-coarse salt
-pepper
-high heat oil
Preheat oven and cast iron skillet to 500F. Turn burner to high and place skillet on there for 5mins. Coat steak in generous portion of salt and some pepper. Lightly coat with oil. Place steak in skillet for 30seconds and flip, leave for another 30seconds. Then place skillet (and steak) in oven for 3mins, at which time you should take the steak out and flip. Another 3mins in the oven. Take temperature and finish until desired doneness (rare: 120F, med rare: 130F, anything else: don’t bother with a nice piece of steak).