Share
20th December 2016
12:18am GMT
Nothing tastes better than a steak in a restaurant.
You probably think that the chefs there have access to better meat, and that's something you could never replicate at home. Well, the good news is that you are completely wrong.
So I wanted to give you a complete step-by-step guide on cooking the perfect steak. Follow these simple tips and you will have restaurant standard steak in the comfort of your home at the fraction of the price of what you'd pay eating out...
The key is getting a good piece of meat. It should be an inch thick and as even in size as possible to ensure good even cooking. I'm using fillet in this example but you can do the exact same with ribeye or sirloin.Take the meat out of the fridge and leave it out to come up to room temperature 20 minutes before you start cooking.
Season the meat up on both sides with a generous amount of black pepper.
Do the same with salt. A coarse ground salt will give you the best results.
Drizzle some regular sunflower oil onto the steak. Coat it on both sides and ensure the salt and pepper is rubbed into the meat
Heat up a frying pan. This is the crucial bit. You want to put it on full blast and let it heat up for a good three to five minutes. It should be smoking hot. Pop the extraction fan on as this is about to get smokey.
You don't need any additional oil in the pan so just pop the steak in using a pair of tongs.
Most home cooks will feel the need to play around with the steak at this stage and move it around the pan. You don't need to do a thing with it. Just leave it sitting there searing for about 90 seconds.
You'll want to flip it when it gets golden brown and seared on the outside. We want a dark brown so as the lovely juices get seared into the meat.
Now same thing on this side. Don't even think about tossing the pan or moving it around. Leave it cook in the same place without touching it for about 60 seconds on this side. (Bonus marks for our steak looking like the island of Ireland.)
Finishing the steak off by searing in the sides. You'll do this using tongs. Just a quick sear on each side to close all the juices
Now you'll want to rest the steak. If you have a wire rack at home do that but if you don't just pop two forks onto a plate.
Whip the steak off the heat and place it onto the forks. This is an absolutely essential stage. We are resting the steak here and allow the meat to "relax". That will be what makes it so tender. Popping it on the forks or wire rack means the meat won't wallow in its own juices.
After about three to four minutes of resting, you'll see the juices running out of it. You are now ready to carve it up.
Place it onto a chopping board and cut it into even sized pieces. You could cook it more well done but this is the way to eat steak. Seared on the outside and nice and medium rare in the middle.
Serve it up immediately. If the meat is of a good quality and you've followed these simple steps, it should be like cutting through butter and you'll have the most tender and tasty steak imaginable.
You only have to look at the pictures to see how tasty that meat is going to be.
You could cook it a little more but once you get used to eating medium rare beef there really is no other way to do it – this works for other cuts of steak as well so get into the kitchen and get cooking. You'll be blown away by the results.
