Tastebud Chicago

steak on the grill

Camri and I like red meat, but it’s not a big part of our diet. We like a steak every couple of weeks though. Buying a steak at a restaurant is pretty expensive, especially if you want a really good cut of meat. Most steaks come out really well on the grill. Put a little bit of oil and seasoning on a sub-one -inch piece of beef, cook it for a few minutes over medium high heat on a grill, and you’re good to go. It gets trickier when you want to cook a thick restaurant style filet mignon. A $30 restaurant steak can be had at home for less than $8 per steak. We promise. We’ve done it. After a lot of experimenting, and some guidance from Cooks Illustrated, this is the formula that works best for us:

1. Pre heat your oven to 450 degrees. Your oven? Yeah, your oven. Don’t fret. It’ll all be clear in a minute.
2. Heat up a non-teflon pan on your stove top. It absolutely, positively, has to be a non-teflon, sticky metal pan. If possible, it would be great if it’s the sort of pan you can put in an oven without the handle melting off. We got a really nice set of cookware as a wedding present, which included this All-Clad skillet. We’ve used it a bunch of times, and have been really happy with it, until we discovered the joy of cooking with cast iron. Now we use this Lodge Logic cast iron skillet for all our steak cooking needs. It’s also great for eggs, bacon, sausage, corn bread…just about anything. It rules. We’ll write about it soon. Anyway, get your skillet really hot.
3. Season your meat. Make it really simple, a little olive oil on both sides, then some pepper and salt. Not hard. Don’t overthink it.
4. When your skillet is really really hot, drop the meat into it. Once it hits, it’s going to sizzle an awful lot. You’ll be scared. You’ll want to move the meat around. Don’t touch it. You have to let the crust form. Don’t move. Don’t. Let it sizzle for two minutes, then flip it over. If possible, grab it by both sides with tongs and pull it straight up. Don’t get a spatula in there to break that yummy crust. Let it sizzle for another two minutes on the other side (four minutes total).
5. Turn off your burner. Plug a Polder thermometer into your meat. Not just any meat thermometer, get one with a digital readout and a long cord that lets you put your meat in the oven, or on the grill, and monitor the temperature from afar. They’re usually around $30. We’ve had ours for over five years. If you have a oven-worthy skillet, take the whole contraption off the burner and pop it into the oven. Set your thermometer to beep at 145 degrees (medium rare). If you’re not into a little blood, then check out this USDA meat temperature chart. Keep in mind, the meat will continue to cook when you take it out of the oven, so set your alarm five degrees lower than your target temperature.
6. Drink a beer.
7. When the temperature is right, take the skillet out of the oven, take the meat off the skillet (leave the thermometer in for now, if you pull it out lots of juices will leak out.) and let the meat rest on a warm plate with foil over top of it. Don’t eat it yet. Let the meat rest for at least five minutes.
8. While you’re waiting, you can ad a half stick of butter, some rough chopped garlic, some shallots, and a little more olive oil to your hot skillet, and work it over with a metal spatula. Scrape up all those fun little black bits and swirl it around with the melting butter. It’s better than A-1.

Once the meat is rested, plate it up, pour some sauce over the top of each steak, and enjoy. Although there’s a small investment up front ($25 cast iron, $30 thermometer) you make the money back after just two steaks. Plus, you can use both of those things for lots of other stuff.