Generic chain steakhouse.

I just tried out this method using a less than 1 inch thick sirloin top cap steak (clearly not ideal). I didn't really want to try searing it due to the thinness but it turned out amazingly well regardless. I would love to try the method again with a slightly more expensive and thicker steak.

EMc,

OK, so adding garlic and butter to steak is expert practice, but adding ketchup to steak is friendship ending?

I personally don't prefer ketchup on my steak, but tons of discriminating steak connoisseurs like blue cheese butter, red wine sauce, bearnaise sauce, chimichurri, or a variety of other steak/pan sauces with their steaks. I find the whole "ZOMG KETCHUP WITH STEAK?" reaction to be a bit overblown a lot of the time.

Prime thick cut bone-in rib eye. Little olive oil on each side, rub made of kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, little garlic powder, little onion powder, little chili powder. Let it sit for 20-25 minutes after removing from fridge and applying rub. Grill on super high heat - as hot as you can get your grill - 3-4 minutes on each side or to desired doneness. Learn how to consistently judge doneness with a finger poke. Let stand 5-10 minutes before eating.

Testing doneness with the poke test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixBlOfiyVrc

To get the steak an even amount of doneness you must flip it about half way through. BUT CAUTION. DO NOT FLIP IT WITH YOUR FINGERS. This could result in serious burns, as the steak or metal pan/grill could be very hot. I recommend using a spatula instead of your fingers.

Steak with ketchup is very similar to eating a quality burger with ketchup. The whole point of it is to taste the quality of the meat, and ketchup just destroys it. I might as well serve you some well done, rubber-like, cheap cut slice of steak if you are going to use ketchup. I'd guess the people who use ketchup are also the people who have no idea how to cook a steak properly either.

El D,

"A bit overblown" is about as mild as you can put it. I think there's a big enough difference between Heinz ketchup and a steak house chimichurri that the former should elicit negative reaction while the latter wouldn't raise much of an eyebrow, if any.

I dropped like $200 there for my wife and I like 5 years ago. It was okay. I wouldn't call it generic, that's more Outback style. The service was excellent. Nothing special about the food and not really worth the $$.

More wannabe snobbery. (see every OOT thread ever)

I would love to own a restaurant so that I could serve a steak with, oh, "a fire-roasted-tomato-and-white-wine-vinegar reduction-with-sea-salt-and-fresh-peppercorns" or something like that.

Read the whole thread and I've got a question. It seems like everyone espouses the sear in cast iron pan, finish in oven method. But what I don't understand is how does this method compare to cooking a steak on a (propane) grill. Is this method considered better, worse, or the same.

Also, more tips on exactly how to cook a steak on a grill would be welcome. I grill my steaks and I still can't get them to come out as well as I would like. Here's what I do:

-Add salt and pepper to outside of steak (this gets added right after it comes out of the fridge)
-Sit on counter until steak is at room temp
-Get grill as hot as I can and then do 2-4 minutes per side depending on thickness of cut
-Stick meat thermometer in to make sure temp is around 140 (I'm shooting for something slightly under medium
-Rest it for a few minutes and then eat.

This method yields steaks that are pretty good, but never great (or as good as pan on stove + oven method). I always get very high quality meat from a reputable butcher shop, so I'm pretty sure the problem is in my technique. Any ideas on what I could do better with the grill.

I'd like to figure this out because while I do get a better result with the pan on stove+oven method, it's easier to cook multiple (i.e., 3-4) steaks simultaneously on a grill.

Lots of propane grills just don't put out enough heat

A good recipe for leftover steak:

http://www.chow.com/recipes/11461-ti...hai-beef-salad

There's just a little part of some of us that dies when you put gelatinous high-fructose corn syrup on a ribeye.

i tried the liberal salt method today. of course i ran out of salt though so i finished with garlic salt. i let it sit for 30 minutes and then rinsed off the salt and put steak in the pan with a little olive oil.

it was very good. i had a rib-eye though so it would have been good regardless.

i bought a cheaper cut today and will try the same method tomorrow. we'll see if the salt makes it nice and tender.

But if the grill can get hot enough would the grill be better than pan on stove, followed by finishing in oven.

I use a Weber genesis which has a lot of very good reviews online. It also has an attached thermometer that measures the temp when the top is down. It gets to over 500 degrees before I start, but it obviously cools down significantly when I open it to place the steaks in and then open it again to flip. I've never actually checked to see how hot it gets during the 2-4 minutes per side. I'll check next time.

I prefer to grill steaks uncovered fwiw

El D,

Ill call that the last straw in a long line of things that just lead to us not really talking anymore. Might have been a bit of embellishment, so to speak. Would I seriously not talk to someone over that? No ****ing way.

Just made the story a little better.

Searing a steak in a pan is just a good way to get a really good crust on the steak quickly. I think your grill would have to be 700F+ to do the same kind of job.

Finishing in the over after searing lets it slowly cook and relax.

RC is unique in that they broil the meat at a super high heat with special equipment IIRC, plus they serve the steak on a hot plate in a small pool of clarified butter. Their sides are also really solid, esp the bisque and the whipped potatoes (RC is the only place I can recall where mashed potatoes cost more than baked ones).

Can't go wrong with RC.

really hot broilers are pretty standard for steakhouses

How do you guys cook multiple steaks if you only have one pan? i.e how do you handle 'keeping everything at the right temperature without over/under cooking'?

To the ketchup haters: I'm guesisng you've never had homemade ketchup? Pretty damn tasty on a burger and fries, but if I'm saucing a steak it's gonna be bernaise or compound butter or herbed cognac sauce or some such.

...except for the ones who char grill the steaks, or griddle them, or cook over wood, or roast them.

But yeah, really hot broilers are otherwise pretty standard. Unless "really hot" means 1800*F broilers like they use at RC. Well, maybe you can come up with some other places that broil that hot - I'd like to see it because I thought they were semi-unique.

I would list a bunch but I won't because I find you dumb