How To Cook The Perfect Steak

Once you learn how to cook the perfect steak at home, you’ll never look at a restaurant steak the same way.

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Because steaks come in so many different
shapes and sizes, I’m going to show you two different methods,
the first being for smaller and thinner steaks, and the second being for larger and
thicker ones. For the first method,
I’ll use this nice filet mignon. Although it’s a bit tall,
I still consider this a nice small steak, and it cooks quite fast. And for smaller or thinner steaks,
you’ll want to use the butter basting method. I’ll start by seasoning my filet all over
with a generous amount of salt, and then do the same thing with some fresh
cracked pepper. You’ve probably heard of people resting their
steak in the fridge overnight after seasoning it, but for a smaller or thinner steak,
I typically don’t recommend it since it could dry the steak out, but we’ll try that method
with our thicker steak later in the video. Once your steak is fully seasoned,
you’ll need a heavy bottomed pan of some kind. You’ll get the best results with a cast
iron or a nice heavy stainless steel pan. First, I’ll cover the bottom of the pan with
a nice layer of oil. I usually put a bit more oil than most chefs
to make sure it gets all up in the nooks and crannies of the steak and gives you an even
browning. Make sure you’re using an oil with a nice high smoke point so it doesn’t burn
while you’re cooking. Now is when we fire up the heat. The biggest difference between
getting a perfect steak that you might eat at a restaurant is heat. You need to make sure
you use high enough heat, and you can’t be scared of it. Just before searing, I’ll add a touch of oil
to the top of the steak again, making sure we get full coverage in all those
nooks and crannies. And once our pan is ripping hot and our oil begins to barely
smoke and shimmer, in we go with our steak pointing away from us
and immediately press down. Just hold it for a few moments to make sure
you fully press it down, and then turn your stove down to medium low. Now leave it. Let it slowly dry out the edge
of your steak and develop that crust. What you’ll do next is get nice and low and
look at the edges of your steak to look for that browning. To begin,
control the temperature of your stovetop to make sure nothing’s burning,
but don’t touch the steak. Watch that crust develop on the edges of your
steak, and once you feel like it’s that nice golden
brown level, we can begin to flip. It’s key that you keep
a timer in your head the whole time. Since we want to sear for the same amount of
time on both sides, when you feel like you’re ready to flip,
turn the heat back up temporarily. Make sure your steak is loose from the pan. It should release like this all by itself. And then you can flip. There’s our crust on one side. Now we just have to get the other. Leave it at a nice high heat for a few more
seconds. And once you feel like you’ve gotten that
initial super high contact on the steak, turn down the heat once more. Another thing
that I do to make sure I’m getting hot oil in all those nooks and crannies,
which gives us that nice crust, is lift up the steak and reposition it over
some new hot oil. At this point, once you’ve got that nice
golden brown crust on both sides, carefully and safely pour off that oil and
give your pan a quick wipe to get rid of all those bits that might burn. Once your pan is clean,
put that steak back in and then make sure you’re at a very low temp. And now is when the fun begins. Half a stick of butter or even a little more. If you love butter as much as I do one cut in
half, head of garlic straight into that butter,
a few sprigs of fresh rosemary, oftentimes just to let all that butter heat
up with those aromatics. I’ll cheat the pan up on the flame so that
the steak isn’t really being cooked so much from one side directly anymore. And I just give that butter a few good
moments to really infuse. Now to butter baste. I’ll push all the
aromatics to the top corner along with the steak. Then I’ll tilt the pan down towards me
so all the. Butter falls and everything else stays and
begins spooning the butter over the top of my steak. This is called butter basting. And what we’re doing right now is basically
cooking our steak. The rest of the way through, by coating it over and over again
with really hot, frothy, flavorful butter. It’s one of my favorite things to do in the
kitchen, not just because of the. Looks and feel of
it, but also because of the smell. Just remember to keep that flame on a nice
low temperature so your butter doesn’t burn, and you should be able to cook it the rest of
the way through with this nice brown butter the whole time. About halfway through the
butter basting, I’m going to flip my steak over just so it’s sitting on the other side
for the equal amount of time, and then I’ll keep going. Once you’ve done
this for just a bit longer, you want to start thinking about checking the temperature of
your steak. Since I like my steak medium, I’m going for about 140 to 145 Fahrenheit. I’ve been cooking steaks long enough now that
I can just poke and pinch it a few times to know when it’s done, and this one is ready to
rest. Oh, I can’t forget this little trick that
Gordon Ramsay taught me. Sit all those beautiful herbs and aromatics
over the top of the steak, then dump that brown butter over it so that
all that flavor continues to seep in as it rests. I know it’s tempting to dive right
into your steak, but resting allows those juices to really
lock in. This one now has rested for about ten
minutes. So this is what I call the moment of truth. Ta da! Perfect. Medium down the middle with a
nice thick and crispy crust that’ll give us amazing texture. Just the way I like it. Spoon over some of that extra brown butter
that we had from our pan, and then finish with a few of those really
nice crispy rosemary bits. I don’t even have to taste to know that.
That’s a perfect bite of steak I’m gonna taste anyway. Follow all those easy steps and
you can do the exact same thing right at home. But before I get ahead of myself,
in case you like to buy bigger and thicker steaks, let’s go through the best method for
that. The second technique is called the reverse sear method. This is better for
thicker steaks. We start by cooking the steak in the oven, where it will cook very evenly,
and then finish it with a quick sear at the end to get that nice golden brown crust on
both sides. I’m going to demonstrate this with one of my
favorite cuts of steak a nice thick ribeye. I’ll start by seasoning all over both sides
with a generous amount of salt. Also making sure to cover all the edges of my
steak from this point. Here you have two options. The first is place it in the fridge and sit
it overnight. What that’ll do is really season the steak
with all that salt and dry out the edges, which will give you a nicer crust. Alternatively, you can cook it right away,
but for that flavor and for that extra nice golden brown crust, I’m gonna place this in
the fridge overnight, luckily, so we don’t have to wait. I’ve
already prepped one of these ahead of time, and you’ll notice right away that almost all
of that salt has already dissolved into our steak. And if you listen,
a nice hard crust has formed since the reverse sear method will cook this steak from
the inside out, as opposed to that butter basting method
where we started cooking from the outside in. Our first step is to place this in the oven
at 300°F. Since I like my steak medium,
I’ll check constantly with a thermometer until my steak is about 140 to 145
Fahrenheit. Once our steak gets to about 7 to 10 degrees
away from where we want it to finish at, we can pull it out because now we have to get
the sear. You can see that this one doesn’t really look
all that nice on the outside, but as they say, it’s what’s on the inside
that counts. To sear, I’ll fire up my burner to the
highest temperature. We just need to finish it off and get that
nice crust on the outside. For this steak, I’m using a classic cast iron
skillet, which I’ll add plenty of oil to the bottom
of, just enough to make a nice layer at the base
of my pan, and once I see a few ripples in my oil and it
starts to shimmer and lightly smoke into our pan, we go. This time we’ll keep the oil temp
very high the whole time, because we only want to sear quickly on each
side to get that nice fast golden brown crust since the inside is already cooked. Once we have a nice crust on both sides,
it’s time to rest. I know you probably don’t want to rest it,
but just try to rest it for at least ten minutes to lock in all those juices. And once we’ve rested for about ten minutes,
I usually like to take out this outer ribeye cap and just cut that up and eat it
separately, because these by themselves are very special
fatty bites. And as for the steak itself,
I’ll trim it into a few nice thick pieces, then lay it down onto a nice plate. And then, just for fun,
I’ll finish it off with a nice flavored butter. Then finish it with a few chives for
color and a light dusting of fresh cracked pepper. Making the perfect steak is all about
technique. You don’t need any fancy equipment or a
professional kitchen, you just need a good steak with the right
technique. And that’s how you cook a steak.