Friday, March 22, 2013

Egression #36
 butter pan-fried steak

what's the best way to cook a steak

36. What's the best way to cook a steak? Via The Paupered Chef.

OMG you guys, I never say "This." But. THIS.

I think I know best and I'm pretty terrible at following recipes, and this time I was turning up my nose at cooking a piece of garlic next to something. I guess I have a go big or go home attitude about garlic, which is kind of dumb. And I said to myself, self, I said, I always want steak and am always disappointed by steak, so why don't I actually follow the instructions for the best way to cook a steak and see what happen. See what happen is from my favorite book of all time, Mating. No wait, my favorite book is Howards End. Or maybe it's Watership Down. Or maybe the Iliad. I think maybe technically the Iliad is not a book, though.

It turns out if you gently cook a garlic next to a piece of steak in a lot of butter, and constantly baste the steak with the garlic butter, it doesn't taste garlicky, it just tastes... it's hard to say, it doesn't really taste like anything. It just tastes like delicious.

I followed the instructions pretty exactly, except my steak was not quite as thick so I took it off the heat a bit sooner than instructed. When I could feel it was getting more cooked than I generally order, definitely much closer to medium well. And I let the steak rest, which I usually wave my hands impatiently at. And oh man even though this was more cooked, this—THIS—was the texture that I'm always trying to get at with steak.

Do you know, Friday nights we were eating Little Caesar's $5 pepperoni pizzas for probably four years. I think I needed that much time to get the basics down, the meals I'm going to eat four or five times a week. So eighty percent of what I eat is pretty much on autopilot, and solid. So now I can finally rehab Friday nights, actually I do this trout but pan-fried and now this steak.