Steak - Mark Schatzker [143]
Step 4. Examine the steak.
Prod it. Poke it. Pick it up in your hands, or with tongs, and waggle it. Try to memorize the suppleness of the flesh. You’ll understand why when you reach Step 12.
Step 5. Choose a cooking surface.
It can be a grill or it can be a pan. Both are fine. That’s right, both are fine. If you’re cooking with a grill, you might prefer wood or charcoal, because they impart a subtle but enjoyable flavor to the meat, to gas. But gas is fine, too, so long as you follow Step 1.
Step 6. Let the steak warm to room temperature.
Don’t cook a cold steak on a hot grill or pan. And never cook a frozen steak.
Step 7. Wipe the steak dry.
Pat both sides of the meat dry with a paper towel. A dry piece of meat will form a better crust. A wet steak, no matter how it’s cooked, may end up tasting like it was boiled, and that would be terrible, especially if you’ve followed Step 1.
Step 8. Salt the steak.
Take a pinch of whatever salt is currently trendy—anything other than standard iodized salt is fine, although even it is acceptable in a pinch—and sprinkle both sides of the steak. You’ll need one to two pinches per side, possibly more if it’s a thick steak. Only experience will tell you how much is enough, and it’s always better to err on the not-enough side, because too much salt is a disaster. Salt five minutes before cooking, unless your steak is less than a quarter of an inch thick, in which case don’t salt it until it’s cooked, because the salt will draw out moisture.
Step 9. Figure out how you want it cooked.
Step 10. Cook the steak.
Make sure your pan or grill is hot. You want to brown the exterior of the steak, but you don’t want to burn it. Browning happens when heat causes chemical reactions to take place on the surface of the meat. This starts at 70°C (158°F). Burning happens at much higher temperatures. A charred crosshatching from the grill is nice—a bitter hint of the fire the steak cooked over. But a black steak will taste bitter. A black steak is what happens when rich men with big barbecues—loudmouth types, usually—cook thick steaks on a torrid grill for too long.
Don’t be one of those people who run around uttering bombastic statements like “I have no respect for anyone who eats a steak over medium rare.” Roughly three quarters of all Argentines eat steak well done, and they probably eat more steak than you do. My own preference is for medium rare, although on certain days I demand rare. But that doesn’t matter to anyone but me. What matters is your preference. Figure it out. Stand by it.
Step 11. Flip the steak.
After the first side has browned, which could take anywhere from one minute to eight minutes, flip. If you’re cooking a very thick steak and the first side browned quickly, turn down the heat—after you flip it—because you’re well on your way to a burned piece of meat.
Step 12. Assess doneness.
Examine the steak again. Poke the surface with your index finger. (It’s not that hot.) As a steak cooks, it becomes firmer, so you should start to feel some resistance. Pick up the steak with your tongs and waggle it. It should show signs of beginning to stiffen. When little droplets of red liquid start to form on the surface of the steak—I call this beading—the steak is approaching medium rare.
If you poke your steak and find that it feels like a cutting board, you’ve overcooked it, in which case you might try moistening it with the tears dripping off your cheek. But that probably won’t help, so revert to Step 1 and begin again.
Incidentally, don’t expect this method to work the first time you try it. But by the tenth time, you should have the hang of it. I hope.
Step 13. Rest the steak (optional).
If you’ve cooked a steak any thicker than an inch, you can rest it for a minute or two, or longer for very thick steaks. Resting allows heat from the exterior to radiate inward and cook the meat in the center, which releases the all-important steak juice. But resting is overrated. It is acceptable and often quite enjoyable to cut into a