Pan-Seared Beef Steak

Choosing the meat

1. Choosing meat for a steak is a tricky business. To paraphrase Captain Vrungel, as you choose your meat, so shall your steak be.

2. Choose thick pieces of meat (up to 50 mm), what we usually call “bitki”. No bones, gristle, membranes or connective tissue, and no strip of fat along the edge (or just a little).

   For obvious reasons, where we live it’s hard to know how the steers were fed. And of course our stores don’t sell Certified Angus Beef. I won’t even mention marbled beef.

   

   Professional kitchens clearly distinguish the cuts for steaks depending on which part of the carcass they come from. Rib steak is from the rib section, club steak from the short loin, T-bone from the start of the loin, porterhouse from the thick end, and so on.

   The “decent” steak meat we usually find is most like club steak, that is, cut from the back, and sometimes a rib steak turns up. Lately at the local supermarket either the butcher has seen the light or they’ve learned: the meat is cut quite decently, and the beef steak comes out excellent.

3. Buy chilled meat. It shouldn’t be freshly slaughtered: you can buy it at the market, but then you’ll have to keep it in the fridge for quite a while to let it age. Steaks aren’t made from thawed meat either. By the way, most supermarket meat is exactly that, chilled.

Marinating

1. Don’t pound or lard the meat; in fact, you don’t need to do anything complicated with it. Just rinse it and pat it very dry with a paper towel.

2. Pepper the beef steak and let it rest for 30 minutes.

   

3. Peel the garlic clove and crush it thoroughly to a paste. Squeeze the juice from half a lemon and mix it with the garlic in a small bowl.

   

4. After 30 minutes, brush the steak with the lemon juice and garlic mixture. Leave it for another 30 minutes. Let it rest.

   

Frying

1. Meanwhile, put a skillet on the heat and pour in 1 tbsp of olive (!) oil. The skillet must be very hot.

   All that’s left is the hardest part: frying the meat. American steak has six degrees of doneness:

   • Blue (very rare): warmed through, almost raw.
   • Rare: undercooked and bloody inside, seared outside.
   • Medium rare: pink juices, no blood.
   • Medium: light pink juices.
   • Medium well: clear juices.
   • Well done: meat cooked all the way through, no juices.

   You choose the doneness you like. My favorite is medium rare: pink juices, no blood. As my American friend says, anything cooked past “pink juices” is like a rubber boot.

2. The half hour of marinating is up, and the skillet is hot. Wipe the rest of the lemon and garlic marinade off the steak and salt it.

3. Put the meat in the very hot skillet and press it down lightly with a spatula.

   

   Then, without getting distracted and keeping an eye on the clock, fry the meat! A steak is usually cooked for 2–3 minutes per side, 3–5 minutes at most. Cook it longer and you end up with that same inedible rubber boot.

   If for some reason you want it more done, don’t cover the skillet with a lid, as we tend to do to let it braise a bit. Just turn down the heat after searing, or move the meat to a cooler part of the pan.

   

4. It’s crucial not to overcook it. If you’re not quite sure of your skills, or you’re still learning, make a careful cut in the side of the steak and check the doneness through it. But it cuts both ways: the precious meat juices so highly prized in a steak will run out through the cut. Or use a meat thermometer that you stick into the meat to check the temperature inside.

Serving

1. Take the steak off the heat and put it on a plate. Even on the plate it keeps cooking: the seared outside (the crust) is much hotter than the meat in the middle of the steak.

   I remember that in a restaurant in South Lake Tahoe, up in the mountains, where we had dinner, the waiter cut my steak in half right in front of me as soon as he brought it. That stops the heat of the crust from cooking the inside.

   Serve the steak. I’m not sure a steak needs a side. At most some herbs and a tomato, and that’s more for looks. And, since we’re used to shashlik, a little hot sauce. But a glass of wine with the meat isn’t just welcome, it’s practically a must!