The edge of the bottom steak is pretty clearly discolored, and the top steak has discoloration throughout. This means it is not very fresh and has been overexposed to oxygen. basically:

The marbling is also less than stellar.

It's ok. Halve the time for the first part and have it on an actual medium heat. It looks like you had it on low for the first part. And again, make sure you have enough oil. This is presuming 1" steaks again, they really don't take very long to get to medium rare at all.

i have one of those infrared grills and while it is awesome, i get 95% of the results with a cast iron on a gas burner, so i haven't taken the cover off of it in 3 months

I had a New York strip that I salt + peppered, rested on the counter for an hour, patted dry, seared on the edges, and tossed on my heavy-bottomed stainless steel pan and cooked it for a bit before I thought to take a pic with my crummy ipod camera – so unfortunately, no raw meat pics. Sorry about that. Suffice it to say that the raw strip was about 1 lb. in size with a reasonable thickness of about 1 1/4" but with a bit of a taper to one side.

Usually, I flip every minute for a total of 3 minutes on each side, but I kinda forgot and wound up cooking each side for 3 minutes straight. Here's the steak after the first 3 minute flip:



After cooking each side for 3 minutes I gave it about 30 seconds more on each side and wound up with this:



I placed the steak on a plate that had been warmed in my oven at 200°F. Here it is before tenting with foil and popping into the 200°F oven for a 6 minute rest followed by a 2 minute rest on the counter:



I then seared each side in butter for about 45 seconds. Here is the first side at the flip:



Followed by the second side — dat crust!



After all that the steak deserved a 5 minute rest on the counter under some foil:



During which I cooked up some onions, garlic, peppers, and cherry tomatoes with a splash of balsamic vinegar:



Here's the sliced up result:



It went a bit medium on the side of the steak that was a bit thinner but that was okay cause I served it to my wife who likes her steak cooked a bit longer then I do.

Standard EMC's with my standard crummy ipod camera:





Plated with the peppers and a slice of potato/sweet potato galette:



I've got a potato-fed ribeye ready and waiting to go soon. Hopefully I'll remember to take pics through the whole preparation process.

99: if you say that's medium, then I'm sure it's medium, but man that's one hell of a juicy evenly cooked medium with an incredible crust, I'd love that steak any day.

Wallace: no worries, it happens, but your times were similar or maybe a little longer than what most here are doing for 1.5-2in steaks, so yeah that was gonna get a little overcooked. Now you know!

99- damn! What type of oil are you using for the initial 3 min/side?

99- Best steak I have seen in thread but I am a fish that likes a medium steak, looks amazing!

A few weeks ago I posted this:


... and this steak from the rib cap:


Here's what happened next.

Steak #1. Cooked in low oven, pulled @ 127, rose to 131, rested and then seared 45 sec/side.


Mystery layer of meat from outside the rib cap. Rolled up and roasted in low oven, this time going for medium. Pulled at 136, rose to 140. Rested for an hour due to oven logistics, then seared on stovetop like a normal steak for about 1 min/side.




Steak #2. Used my default "half ducasse / reverse sear" method. 2.5 min/side in lots of butter, rested 10 min, seared in peanut oil 1 min/side. Almost burnt crust in a couple of spots, but tasted great.

RC,

Yum.

yeah, if you like a crispy crust with near perfect inside...

These veggies look fantastic but imo are begging for the addition of some sliced "baby bella" mushrooms. Try it next time.


Best crust ever?? Looks delicious.

Dear God I love this thread.

99, amazing

Okay, it wasn't really medium but it also wasn't quite as pink as RC's. I think almost everyone itt knows what I mean when I say that there is that certain sweet spot of pink, juicy perfection that we are all trying to hit. It's like just being outside the bullseye wire in darts or leaving your ball on the edge of the cup in golf — it's almost perfect but not quite. That's what's so great about this thread — our joint search for a perfect steak.

Interesting question cause for the first time ever (thanks to this thread) I went out and purchased some grapeseed oil. I wouldn't be surprised if that helped with the crust cause believe me, when I did the final flip before the butter sear process I saw right away that some magical alchemy had happened to create the foundation for an amazing crust.

ty ty

Damn you are sure consistent with the pink. Very nice!

100% agree about the mushrooms but I had none in the house. I had cooked some a couple a weeks ago that I posted itt — mushrooms, onions, garlic... sooooooooooo savoury, they were amazing.

Couldn't agree more. It always inspires me to try harder. Gotta say that the roasts itt are making me seriously consider giving one a try.

ty ty

99,

What temp did you have it at for the 3 min/side? How much grapeseed oil did you use? Was the steak heavily marbled?

I'm curious because that pre-sear crust is better than quite a few finished steaks in this thread.

Agree want all details, was it fridge dry aged, salt timing, etc

El D,

I pretty much cook with a medium flame throughout the entire process. Since my heavy-bottom ss pan holds heat well I find that I don't have to ever use high heat. In fact, the final sear in butter is done at a slightly lower medium cause I don't want to burn the butter.

I found when I first started cooking steaks (by 'cooking steaks' I mean since I began reading this thread) that the general cry to use high heat just didn't seem to get a good result for me. It has been my observation that high heat with a pan can do more harm then good cause the oil and/or butter just burns. Of course, Durango's high heat grilling speaks for itself with the results he gets, but I'm not talking about grilling.

Your question inspires me to try to remember to take a shot of the flame I use next time I make a post. Would be great if others did too. Even a shot of where they set the knob for electric stoves might be worth a quick shot for all to see.

Given that it was a strip, the steak was pretty lean with a light marbling –nothing near what you would see in a ribeye.

I only used about a tablespoon of grapeseed oil and about the same for the butter. I add a dab of fresh butter at the flip.

For this steak the fat rendered off the edges was fairly minimal. All in all the quantity of oil/fat/butter in the pan was pretty minimal throughout the process — the pics give a pretty good representation. I'm definitely not a fan of having a lot of surplus oil in the pan. Frankly, I don't really see the point — as long as the steak is pretty flat on each side and that's pretty much always what I buy. I want there to be enough oil so I know the steak is cooking on a skim of the oil but I don't want it to be floating in oil.

I've mentioned in other posts that sometimes I use a paper towel held in tongs to wipe up excess oil (Didn't this time cause there didn't seem to be a need). I saw some chef do this in a video once and thought to do it myself as a means to lessen the amount of smoke. I have to say that since I started the progression of lowering the cooking heat, I have experienced a definite reduction of spatter and smoke — and I've been getting better results with my steaks. Kind of an interesting correlation there imo.

One thing I should add is that I wipe the pan clean with a paper towel after the fat/oil stage, including scraping off any blackened remains – I want to make sure that the final sear in butter is a clean one with no blackened residue from the previous stage. Also, I just use regular salted butter and make sure that the pan is not overly hot as the butter simply can not be allowed to burn for the final sear. It is kind of a feel thing, but I subconsciously make sure the pan has cooled down a bit to the right temperature while I am waiting for the steak to rest before doing the final sear.

I can't really describe this point any better as it is definitely a bit of a 'feel' thing. Suffice it to say that my objective is to make sure that the pan is hot enough to get maximum heat out of the butter without causing it to burn.

99,

I'm now curious to keep my technique exactly the same, but use my SS instead of cast iron and see if there's a difference.

Ya just discoloration and poor marbel, Canadian beef can be much better than that at reasonable prices.

The steak wasn't anything special. In fact, it was my default supermarket steak that I buy when I can't get to the butcher. Having said that, this particular supermarket offers thick-cut steaks in a variety of cuts in heavy, vacuum-sealed packaging that can be safely stored for up to 21 days in the fridge. Frankly, the quality is pretty amazing and I like the fact that I can have a non-frozen steak in the fridge that I can go to pretty much anytime I want without having to plan to thaw one or having to run out to the butcher. I tried to find pics of a packaged steak but had no success. The packaging process is incredible in that since oxygen has been eliminated the steak is in a kind of suspended state with a bit of a dark, purplish brown tinge to it. However, once it is unpackaged it reacts with the oxygen to become a pleasing red colour.

This pic is a fairly good representation as to the degree of marbling mine had – a little bit less though and not nearly as amazing looking from a general overall sense of quality perspective:



In terms of LOL-Canada meat pricing, the vacuum-sealed type goes for around $15/lb compared to the $24/lb PEI, butcher-bought, potato-fed, organic I typically purchase.

Just as an example of the convenience of the vacuum-sealed steak, the PEI ribeye I am going to be cooking sometime soon is in the freezer cause I didn't get around to cooking it within a couple of days of purchasing it and I had some social engagements coming up so I had to throw it in the freezer. Now I'm going to have to plan to have it a day ahead of time to take it out and thaw. This will be my first time cooking a previously frozen steak so we will see how it goes. I almost wept when I had to put that baby in the freezer.

Just did the usual one hour on the counter with coarse salt and black pepper.

LOL. From what I've seen of your steaks you don't have too much room for improvement. In fact, you are one of the guys whose steaks I've been trying to match! Good luck with the SS. I look forward to seeing the result.

Since I don't use super high heat to cook my steaks, it has crossed my mind to carry out an experiment by cooking one in a heavy-bottomed non-stick pan. Yes, sacrilegious I know, but I may actually give it a go sometime with a vacuum-sealed steak (my potato-fed organic isn't going anywhere near a non-stick pan) – just to rustle some jimmies itt if it turns out okay!

99,

Oh, and re: that juicy sweet spot of perfection - am I correct in interpreting what you said as you feeling like you just slightly overshot it with this steak?

Thanks for the compliment. I've def got my steak interiors nailed. And I always get a decent crust, but I haven't been able to get one that looks as good as what you got and some of the ducasse guys get without cooking the interior a little more than I prefer.

Like you said, we're all just aiming for that perfect combo here!

Exactly — ever so slightly. Also, since I wasn't using an exceptional quality of steak there were some shortcomings I was aware of that I simply know could be rectified with a better cut of meat.

You know how it is — there are some steaks itt where you can just literally sense/feel/taste the pleasing juiciness to the pinkness that is perfectly past the raw stage. Mine wasn't quite there imo.

The cool thing about this is that the perfect sweet spot varies depending on individual taste. There is really no single perfect sweet spot — but fans of medium rare are all in a pretty tightly defined zone. I think that's what makes the detailed discussion of the fine points so interesting for many of us.

It may have been the use of grapeseed oil that allowed the heat to go up a bit. I'm controlling the heat by what I see happening to the oil. Previously I've been using a splash of canola but the grapeseed prolly gave me another 50-75° of heat before it started smoking. I'm gonna have to keep my eye on this to see if I get similar results with the crust using grapeseed oil in the future.

Oh yeah, whenever I've posted steaks itt I've always made a point to mention that for the first rest I do it tented on a plate heated in a 200°F oven and rest it in the oven (which I have since turned off for the rest) for 6 minutes or so with another 2 minutes or so on the counter.

I've mentioned this in the past cause I've been curious if anyone would have anything to say about it (good, bad or indifferent) but no one ever has. The reason I started doing this was that I found when I rested my steaks only out on the counter they were turning out undercooked. This short, 200° rest technique seems to allow the inside to cook a bit better throughout without going medium — almost sous vide like imo!

For the final rest after the butter sear, I just rest it tented out on the counter.

I christened my new All Clad pan with a steak. It works great, although I didn't use enough clarified butter, so I missed a patch on the sear:

99: I've been using a little grapeseed oil in addition to rendered fat from the sides for quite a while now during the first cooking phase.

Wookie: rest that steak!