Please help me make a good steak!

Cafe Society
1

I have never ever cooked a steak, other than thin crappy ones to add to salad, which I grilled on the Forman Grill.

So, of course, I decided to make a fancy steak dinner for my husband on Christmas Eve. Tonight. And I’m panicking a little. I’m not really sure what I’m doing and I don’t want to serve him a charred hockey puck. He’d try to eat it, bless him, but I’d like tonight to be fancy and special. Can you tell I’m still new at this wife thing??

I have a Lodge cast iron skillet, given to me as a gift and not yet used. It says it’s pre-seasoned. Do I still need to do anything special before I can use it? Reading up on these skillets, it looks like the seasoning thing is really important - do I trust the pre-seasoning or do I need to do more? Do I need more butter/oil than normal in this kind of pan to keep the steak from completely sticking? I also have regular frying pan / skillets, with nonstick coating… from what I gather, cooking steak in these is a sort of culinary abomination? Also, I want to make a little sauce - I can deglaze a cast iron skillet to get all the tasty charred steak bits and make a sauce, right?

I have it in my head that I’m supposed to fry the steaks a little on each side and then finish the steaks in the oven. I think Food Network said so. Is that a good idea? They’re tenderloin steaks, a little over an inch thick.

Talented Doper chefs - help!

2

What temp are you trying to cook them to? Rare, medium, well?

3

I’m aiming for medium.

4

One thing about Tenderloin,It great meat, but It’s a less fatty meat and can dry out more than fattier cuts. Unless you have a personal objection to it you might want to aim more for rare/medium-rare.

5

You’ll be fine!

You’re right on the money as far as starting the steaks on the stove and finishing in the oven.

Here’s what to do:

An hour or so before you want to cook, take the steaks out of the fridge, remove from the packaging, and let them get to room temperature. This will make them a little easier to cook - a cold steak take a bit longer, and is harder to judge when it’s done.

When you’re ready to cook, pat the steaks dry on all sides with a paper towel. Why? Because a dry steak gets a better crust than a wet one. Next, season all over with salt & pepper.

Turn your oven on to about 375 degrees.

Get a pan nice and hot. Don’t use nonstick - either the Lodge or a standard frying pan is the way you want to go, because the whole reason you’re even doing this step is to get a nice crispy crust on the steak, and that won’t happen with a nonstick. You want a good heavy frying pan.

Heat the pan for a few minutes on medium high, until it feels hot. Don’t heat it TOO much, or your fat will burn and the steaks won’t get a super nice crust. Just maybe 2 or 3 minutes.

Put a little fat in the pan. Olive oil is good, as is bacon fat. If you use butter, add a little oil as well, otherwise the butter will burn. Give the fat a few seconds to heat up, now add the steaks. They should sizzle when they hit the pan.

Let them cook for 3 or 4 minutes, then see if they come off the pan. If they stick, don’t worry. Once they develop a crust, all the stick will go away. Once you can pick 'em up, check the bottoms. If they look nice & brown, it’s time to turn 'em over. Do the same on the other side.

Now, it’s time for the oven. Put them on a baking pan with a rack, if you have one. If you don’t, no worries, just put 'em on a pan. For 1" steaks, it’ll be about 7 minutes to get to medium rare, a couple more minutes for medium.

How do you tell if it’s done? You start learning how to judge based on feel. There’s a really good video here that shows you how to do it. It’s not gonna be super easy the first time, but you can take a whack at it.

You can always cut into the meat to test as well, but you’re going to lose some of the juices.

Once you take the steaks out, let them sit for about 5 minutes before serving. Sitting allows the cells of the meat to relax, and they pull the juices back in. A properly done steak does not leak juice when you cut into it - you want all that juice in the steak, not on the plate.

Good luck! It’s really not a hard technique to master, and the worst you risk is that you overcook the steaks a little bit. Do it a few times, and you’ll be a pro.

6

May I suggest steak au poivre? It’s very good. Serve with asparagus. Use cognac. Trust me on this.

7

Agree. Tenderloin should be medium rare at most.

Plus, if you aim for medium rare and overcook, it’ll still be at least medium, which is edible. If you aim for medium and overcook, you get well done, which means that you order pizza instead.

8

Add a touch of oil to each steak, as in a barely there film.

Sear the steak, it’s thin enough to cook in the pan. When the first side is seared, it will release on it’s own. Flip and cook the other side. You won’t need more than a few minutes on each side.
Meat thermometer to test.

Finishing in the oven is for a roast.

9

For a basic steak, I season with garlic salt and pepper. I pierce it all over on both sides with a fork. Heat up the cast iron skillet. If it’s new, you may want to wipe it with a little oil. Sear the steak on both sides. I like my steak rare to medium-rare, so I use higher heat. Use medium heat if you want a medium steak, so as not to burn the outside. Be sure to use a good piece of meat.

You can deglaze the pan and make a sauce. Cleanup is a cinch. Just boil some water in it and clean it with a brush. (No soap.) Wipe with a bit of Crisco and heat it up. Allow to cool.

10

Very tempting, but since I don’t have any cognac handy, and my man loves mushrooms, I’m making a red wine & mushroom sauce, looks very tasty. But if I get this right I will be trying that for his birthday in February!

Ok, so I’m aiming for medium rare in case I overshoot it, but there seems to be disagreement over whether to do the oven thing.
**
Athena** - 3 or 4 minutes per side in the pan, or total?

The pizza place is open tonight, just in case. I checked.

11

For a 1 inch steak, 2-3 min per side should be enough. You want the pan smoking hot and get a good brown sear on each side.

12

Just be warned: steak au poivre is like crack.

13

I wish I was there so I could show you how easy it is to cook a good chunk of beef to medium-rare (I don’t even bother with bad chunks of beef any longer - we don’t have steak often, so it’s a good cut or nothing). You basically start by ignoring what all the foodies tell you about how to cook a steak - I use a non-stick pan (I don’t care for cast iron), a little non-stick spray, medium-high heat, flip it a couple of times for a couple of minutes on each side, and cut into it at the edge to see what’s going on inside. Cook till it’s a smidge bloodier than you want, then let the meat rest.

You don’t need fancy tools or fancy technique, but you do need to stand there and watch it - the difference between “nicely seared” and “burnt” isn’t too long. Also, have the fan on or windows open - searing meat tends to smoke.

14

Must be the cracked pepper.

15

I like a marinade of beef broth and red wine, plus a little Liquid Smoke and minced dried onions. You may add half a bay leaf, crushed, and salt and pepper, if you like. Let the steaks sit for a couple of hours in this bath, flipping them after about half an hour. They won’t go bad in that short time frame, but they will come up to room temperature, which is good.

Some people will leave out the Liquid Smoke. However, my husband and I love it.

I usually slice up some mushrooms and onions and fry them up in the skillet before cooking the steak, put them on a plate with a paper towel on it (so they can drain) and then put them to the side of the steak. Sometimes I add some sliced celery and bell peppers as well. This flavors the butter or oil, and it makes the steaks look bigger.

16

Per side, but it’s not an exact science. Totally depends on your pan. Basically, you want to cook them until they have enough of a sear on them that if they were plopped on your plate RIGHT NOW you’d go “mmmm that looks yummmy!”

In other words, the outside won’t cook much more once you put it in the oven, so you want it to look right when you get it out of the pan. The oven part just cooks the middle of the steak.

17

So… Did it turn out?

18

Well, I managed to overcook it a little despite my best efforts, but it was still tasty and I’d count it as a success. One of the steaks ended up being nothing but fat on the bottom side (couldn’t tell that from the packaging), so I was a little bummed about that. Next time I’ll go to the counter and get meat from the butcher, not from the shrink-wrapped packages, so I can be sure I’m getting the good stuff. Luckily, the potatoes (Pioneer Woman’s “Crash Hot Potatoes”, SO good) and the mushroom wine sauce made up for any deficiencies in the steak part of the meal.

Thanks for the help - I’ll keep practicing! Steak au poivre next, I think.