The Ultimate Guide To Cooking Steak

Every food-oriented website out there has their own version of “The Ultimate Guide To Cooking A Steak,” or whatever it may be. Many of them do offer good information, but they’re almost all incomplete. They set you up with one method for one cut of meat. This piece will serve as a place where you can get instructions for cooking several different cuts of steak via several methods, from grilling hanger steaks and pan searing filet mignon to roasting brisket and broiling ribeye.

Let’s get right to it.

Grilling

Grilling is perfect for outdoor cooking in the warm months, and especially for large groups of people. You don’t get any lingering smells in your home, and you can enjoy the day like a good American, beer in hand as you cook.

Preferred cuts: skirt, flank or hanger

Grilling Pros

• Easily accessible
• Familiar and comfortable to most home cooks
• No smells or smoke indoors
• Can easily cook many steaks at once

Grilling Cons

• Fat, flavor and juices fall through the grill bars
• Can be difficult to control heat levels
• Lowered ability to sear evenly

Grilling Instructions

1. Get your steak up to room temperature and pat it dry.
2. Crank up your grill to as high as it will possibly get.
3. Season the skirt or flank generously with salt and pepper.
4. Grill the meat with the grill top open. Do not poke, prod, press or move the meat once it is set down on the grill bars. Allow the bars to create nice markings on your meat.
5. After a few minutes, flip once and repeat the previous step.
6. Use a meat thermometer or the “hand test” to ensure that your steak is properly cooked to medium rare. Remove it from the grill at 135 degrees Fahrenheit.
7. Let the steak rest for a few minutes on an elevated and porous surface, like a metal baking rack. During this time the meat will continue to cook a bit more while off the flames, and it will retain more juices during the next step.
8. Slice against the grain of the meat, or “against the bias,” and serve.

Note: Charcoal is a tough medium to master. Some people are experts at creating and maintaining even heat levels for a cooking session. Others use propane. This is easier, cleaner, and more convenient, but you lose some of that desired charcoal and smoke flavor.

See more Johnny Prime steak recipes here.

Pan Searing

This is probably my favorite method for cooking steak. I always try to use a cast iron skillet, as they just work better for creating that crusty sear that we have all come to know as steak lovers. If you can’t get your hands on one, then a standard pan will do.

Preferred cuts: filet mignon, strip, ribeye or porterhouse

Pan Searing Pros

• Even sear across entire steak
• Juices stay put
• Easy to execute

Pan Searing Cons

• Smoke smell can permeate the home and set off smoke detectors
• Pan cleanup can be annoying
• Large pan needed for big or multiple cuts
• Cast iron not ideal for glass electric cook tops

Pan Searing Instructions

1. Get your steak up to room temperature and pat it dry.
2. Crank up your burner to as high as it will possibly get, and heat up the pan with a small amount of butter.
3. Season the steak generously with salt and pepper.
4. Sear your steak thoroughly, and add a wad of butter to melt in the pan. Throw in some rosemary and garlic too, if you like. Do not poke, prod, press or move the meat once it is set down. Allow the meat to stick to the pan a bit, with as much of the bottom surface touching the pan as possible.
5. Spoon the melted butter over the top as the meat cooks, basting it in flavor.
6. After a few minutes, flip the cut with tongs and do the same thing of the other side of the steak.
7. Once both sides are seared, then you should also sear the edges if you are working with a thick-cut steak. Anything over an inch and a half should get a little side sear if possible.
8. Use a meat thermometer or the “hand test” to ensure that your steak is properly cooked to medium rare. Remove it from the pan at 135 degrees Fahrenheit.
9. Let the steak rest for a few minutes on an elevated and porous surface like a metal baking rack. During this time the meat will continue to cook a bit more while out of the pan, and it will retain more juices.

Alternative Instructions From Step 8 Onward

This secondary step is helpful if you have a very thick cut of steak, and a good, hard sear is all you can really get from the pan without overcooking. You want your meat to be pink from top to bottom, with no “grey band” in sight. To achieve this on thick cuts, lots of people will put the steak into the oven at a low temperature, like 250 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, to allow the internal temperature to come up to medium rare once the pan-searing steps (steps 1 through 7) are complete. Here, a meat thermometer is key to ensure that your meat is cooked to the proper temperature inside.

Reverse Searing

This is very similar to searing with an oven finish, like above, only done in the reverse order.

Preferred cuts: thick cuts of filet mignon, strip, porterhouse or ribeye

Reverse Searing Pros

• Even sear across entire steak
• Juices stay put

Reverse Searing Cons

• Slightly more difficult to execute than a simple sear
• Multiple cooking steps and waiting

Instructions

Here, the first step is to cook your steak in the oven at a low temperature (250 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit) to allow the internal temperature to come up to rare or medium rare. Again, use a meat thermometer to ensure accuracy.

Once that step is done, the steak gets finished in the hot searing pan with butter. This will form the desired crust on your steak. You just have to be careful not to overcook your steak in the pan as you are trying to get that crust to form. I recommend allowing your steak to cool down to room temperature before searing it off, and/or getting that pan screaming hot before you put the steak in.

See more Johnny Prime steak recipes here.

Broiling

Generally speaking, broiling means that the heat source is coming from above the meat and is close to the meat. Contrast that with baking, which means that the heat source is below and more diffused or distant from the meat.

Preferred cuts: thick cut bone-in porterhouse, thick cut bone-in ribeye, bone-in tenderloin, bone-in strip, large T-bone

Broiling Pros

• Cleaner, with less smoke and permeating odors
• Relatively easy to execute
• Easier to get an evenly-cooked center of your meat

Broiling Cons

• Easy to overcook if not careful
• Requires a meat thermometer (puncturing meat is never good)
• Harder to get the desired crust than other methods

Broiling Instructions

1. Get your steak up to room temperature and pat it dry.
2. Set your oven to broil.
3. Season the steak generously with salt and pepper.
4. Bring your oven rack close to the heat source (near the top) and place steak in the oven in a shallow roasting pan that can catch any drippings.
5. Once the top crisps up a bit, flip the meat in the roasting pan to get the crust on the other side as well.
6. Use a meat thermometer to ensure that your steak is properly cooked to medium rare. Remove it from the oven at 135 degrees Fahrenheit.
7. Let the steak rest for a few minutes in the roasting pan. During this time the meat will continue to cook a bit more, and it will retain more juices.
8. Slice the major muscles off the bone, slice the muscle against the bias and arrange the meat on a platter for serving.

Note: Why the bone for this method, you ask? When cooking with “surrounding” heat, like roasting or broiling in an enclosed oven, bones are very effective at radiating heat into the center of the meat tissue. This method, therefore, also makes large, thick cuts easier to work with.

See more Johnny Prime steak recipes here.

Roasting

Roasting is synonymous with low and slow diffused heat from a bottom source, or all around the meat, from all sides. This method is best suited for large hunks of meat that take a long time to cook down to the center and are generally made for serving many people.

Preferred cuts: standing rib rack roast, Chateaubriand, large brisket

Roasting Pros

• Great for large format dining
• Easy to execute
• Result is very juicy, tender and delicious

Roasting Cons

• Takes a long time to finish
• May require extensive carving
• Generally lacks outer crust like a standard cut of steak

Roasting Instructions

1. Many people like to brine their meats before roasting. While this is generally more common with pork roasts or fowl, some steps can be taken with beef to increase flavors. You can crush up some garlic and stuff it into your roast using flavor injectors, or rub it on the outside of the meat — you can rub it with rosemary or roast it on a bed of herbs, and you should season it generously with a multitude of spices. You want all those flavors to permeate deep into the meat, so massaging, rubbing and pushing into the meat is all recommended. If you use a flavor injector, I suggest getting a lot into one or a few injections, that way you don’t pierce the meat too many times.
2. Set your oven to a low bake temperature, like 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Place your meat on a roasting pan to catch any drippings, and set it in the middle rack of your oven.
4. Place your meat thermometer into the center of the roast.
5. As the meat cooks, use a turkey baster to suck up liquids from the bottom of the roasting pan and squirt it over the top of the roast occasionally. This will add some flavor to the outside and help to create a flavorful edge to the roast.
6. Remove it from the oven at 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Let the meat rest for a few minutes in the roasting pan. During this time the meat will continue to cook a bit more, but the resting phase will help the meat retain more juices for the next step.
7. Slice and carve for serving. Sliced roast beef pairs perfectly with both hot gravy and cold horseradish sauces (either cream-based or tomato-based).

Sous Vide

Sous Vide means “under vacuum” in French. In this method of cooking, you are cooking your steaks in vacuum sealed bags by submerging them in a hot water bath to precisely the desired temperature, and then finishing them in a pan as a secondary step. This may sound like high tech restaurant science only kind of stuff, but there are items available in the consumer market to do this with great results at home.

Preferred cuts: thick cuts of filet mignon, boneless strip, boneless ribeye, bavette or Denver cut/blade steak

Sous Vide Pros

• Perfect internal temperature every time
• No monitoring necessary
• Easy to achieve success

Sous Vide Cons

• Requires a special unit or item, a vacuum sealer and bags
• Wait time can be lengthy
• Still need to use a pan (or torch) to sear the outside

Sous Vide Instructions

Luckily for you all, I’ve got a nice discussion of the sous vide cooking method here, with pretty pics and everything. In any case, here is the gist of it:

1. Season the steak however the you want. I use salt, pepper, garlic powder, garlic oil and crushed red pepper.
2. Place steak into vacuum seal bag and seal it up with some butter and herbs inside (rosemary is always nice).
3. If you can’t afford a vacuum sealer, you can use ziplock bags. Place your meat into the bag and begin to submerge the bag into the water bath. Once you are all the way close to the zipper, zip it shut. The water surrounding the outside of the bag will push out all the air from inside. This is the poor man’s vacuum sealer. If you do this, you may want to put a smooth, clean rock in there too, just for good measure, to keep the meat from floating.
4. Set your temperature to however you like your steak cooked. I put mine at 135 degrees Fahrenheit for a nice medium rare.
5. Wait about an hour or two. Don’t panic! You can’t overcook your steak in a sous vide bath. That’s the whole point of it!
6. Remove your steak from the water bath and let it cool back down to room temperature.
7. Re-season it a bit, if so desired.
8. Sear it. I use a Searzall, because why not? But you can easily just toss this baby into a real hot cast iron pan with some more butter and herbs to get that brown and crispy coating.

For more specific steak recipes, check out my recipe page.

Read more Johnny Prime restaurant reviews:

• Lower East Side's Le Turtle
• Four Cuts Steakhouse In Sutton Place
• NoHo's Fish Cheeks

Carnivore connoisseur Johnny Prime is a New York City-based authority on steak, steakhouses and meats of all kinds. He’s eaten at more than 100 different steakhouses, has reviewed steaks at hundreds of other restaurants on his blog and enjoys explaining how best to enjoy various cuts of beef at home. Johnny recently began selling high end beef, which you can get through his online butcher shop.

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First Photo: Courtesy of Johnny Prime