What’s for Dinner: Steak
January 19th, 2011 · 1 Comment · Posted in dinner
How do you cook your steak?
It was daughter’s birthday this weekend and she requested her favorite food: steak. Normally I would seek out grassfed steak. It’s not only the most flavorful–depending on the cow, of course–but also the healthiest. Perusing the meat counter at Whole Foods, however, my eyes landed on these bone-in beauties. I can’t hardly count they number of different varieties of steak our local Whole Foods sells. There’s the regular steak, the “dry aged” steak, the “local steak” and the grassfed variety, which in our part of the country comes from a farm in Georgia. Sometimes there’s even steak from Australia.
I chose the bone-in ribeyes because they were on sale: $9.99 per pound. Sitting right next to them were some lovely rib roasts as well. Our steaks were probably two inches thick. We like our steaks thick.
Usually I will remove the meat from the fridge several hours before dinner to allow it to come up to room temperature. Some cooks prefer to start their steaks cold, which allows you to char the outside while keeping the interior blood red. We like ours “medium-rare.” About an hour before cooking, I season the meat aggressively all over with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. I don’t use any other seasonings.
My cooking method this time of year (winter: too cold for grilling outside) consists of marking the steaks hard on both sides in this cast-iron pan with ridges at the bottom. The grill marks are really just an affectation. I have no problem eating a steak cooked in a regular pan with no ridges. Once the outside is well-browned, I move the pan into a 350-degree oven and continue roasting the meat until an instant-read thermometer reads 120 degrees. How do you do that? Lift the steak out of the pan with a pair of tongs, turn it sideways and insert the thermometer. This is another reason to choose thick steaks over thin ones.
On this particular evening, we had a guest who likes her steak more “well done,” so I cooked them to 130 degrees. They came out close to “medium.” If you like, slather them with melted butter. That’s almost the best sauce there is for a well-cooked steak. Or you could go all-out and make yourself a pot of Hollandaise.
These steaks have one other nice feature: after you eat the meat, you get to gnaw on the bone.
same as you. salt and pepper only, cast iron skillet on the stove, finish in the oven. don’t have meat thermometer so i guess time based on size of steak. if they are thin enough i just put a lid on the pan on the stove and let them finish stove top.
i hit it with extra virgin olive oil once i plate it and let it rest 15 minutes. i serve it on the resting plate and we all dip in the au jus. one of our favorite meals.