12 May 2020
Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, March 2020
I have had mixed success cooking steak and have written about my trials and tribulations here several times. There have been enough challenges that I have shied away from cooking steak, either because the end result was poor or the mess and alarm, as in smoke alarm, didn't seem to justify the experience. A new technique in a recent Cook's Illustrated seemed to promise to solve these problems. Does it live up to its promise?
This new school method for cooking steak breaks with much conventional steak-searing convention. I started with a one-pound strip steak that was about 1¼-inches thick. The steak was patted dry, seasoned with pepper, and placed in a cold nonstick skillet, with no oil. The burner was turned on high. After two minutes the steak was flipped and cooked for another two minutes then flipped again. The heat was reduced to medium and the steak cooked, flipping every two minutes. A total of five flips was needed before the temperature of the steak reached 120°. After resting the steak was seasoned with salt and served. Total time was 15 minutes.
You're probably wondering, is that all there is to it? This method led to perfectly cooked steak with a good crust and medium-rare interior from edge to edge. Clean up was easy with the non-stick skillet and there was no splatter and no blaring smoke alarm. This technique removes any reasons I might have to not cook steaks, other than the cost of a quality cut of steak. As an option, the recipe suggests seasoning the steaks with salt and letting them rest for 45 minutes to 24 hours in advance and I might try that next time I have a hankering for a strip or rib-eye steak.
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