How to Cook a Restaurant-Quality Steak at Home: Chef Tips

Choosing fresh meat is where it all begins. Ribeye, filet mignon, strip loin, flat iron, prime rib… We can easily get confused with all these names. Are you New? In this case, listen to the opinion of most chefs and try the rib-eye, considered the most famous steak in the world.

Ribeye is cut from the thick end of the bull’s ribcage – the sixth to the twelfth rib – and is guaranteed delicious. Ribeye steak is said to have the perfect ratio of meat to fat (marbling) and when cooked, the fat dissolves, making the meat juicy.

Choosing the right fat content is just the start; you also need to learn how to properly handle the steak before it hits the pan. All experts agree that the main rule should be kept in mind: beef should not be cold.

Chef Elias Iglesias, for example, likes to leave his steaks near the grill for an hour, or as long as food standards allow. Harold McGee, scientist, writer and author of books on food and cooking, does it differently: he wraps the piece in cling film and immerses it in lukewarm water for 40 minutes.

But whatever method chefs choose, they all believe in letting the steak warm up: This will relax the fibers, making the final product more tender. This type of preparation also increases the internal temperature of the meat – this is necessary so that the steak does not stay cold inside while its interior burns.

Chefs can argue for hours about issues like the correct cooking temperature and cooking time, but when it comes to the moisture content of a steak, they agree: It must first be dried. “A steak that is too moist will have difficulty developing a crust and will have an unpleasant cooked taste,” says celebrity chef and three-Michelin-star restaurant director Alain Ducasse.

One of the inventors of molecular gastronomy, chemist and chef Hervé Thys, who considers cooking a science, believes that this cannot be done, otherwise juices would begin to flow from the meat due to the osmosis.

However, most chefs have a different opinion: British chef April Bloomfield advises salting the meat before putting it in the pan, and chef, TV presenter and author Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall advises doing it halfway through cooking. .

American chef Andrew Whitney offers a third option: “Take out the steak a few hours before cooking, dry it and generously salt both sides. Wait an hour and put it back in the refrigerator. This will allow the meat to sweat slightly and then absorb liquid from the surface, allowing salt to penetrate, says Whitney.

Food writer and chef Nigel Slater recommends brushing meat with melted butter just before frying, Fearnley-Whittingstall rubs a hot pan with lard, Ducasse adds butter only when the steak is browned and bastes the meat with butter melted before transferring to a plate. .with crushed garlic. But all professionals agree on one thing: fat, both in the steak itself and added during cooking, is crucial for an excellent result.

Using a meat thermometer is not necessary: ​​chefs advise going by the thickness of the pieces, and it doesn’t matter whether you choose to use a grill or a frying pan. The “high temperature” theory works best with thick cuts of meat (three to four centimeters); for thin pieces, a moderate temperature is suitable.

You should focus on the steak itself – it should be browned. Some chefs swear by turning meat halfway through cooking, which allows it to cook faster and the outer layer to be less overcooked, according to McGee. Dukas and Bloomfield also favor switching from one side to the other, but for a different reason: in their view, it allows for “tracking progress.”

Cutting and serving steak is a matter of taste. Most chefs believe that the one who eats the dish should be the first to “pierce the golden crust”, but this is not a dogma. If you want to check if the meat is properly cooked, or if a fan-shaped presentation looks better to you, then cut the steak diagonally and arrange it on a plate.

Also read: 7 cases where frozen is better than fresh: you will be surprised to see this list!

Chef Heston Blumenthal flips the steak every 10 to 15 seconds, which he says speeds up the cooking process and minimizes the gray streak between the golden crust and pink center.

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