So when you order a steak in a restaurant, it is always this nice brown color all over. However at home, if you pan fry a steak (say a shell/strip steak) it often comes out browned only on the parts where it contacted the pan, and this kind of gross-looking grey color over the rest of it. Is the difference because restaurants sear it first, then finish it in the oven to brown it all over? Would anyone like to share their technique?
I think you’d find very few restaurants pan frying any type of steak. Most use a high temp flame broiler or grill.
If you are stuck with the fry pan being you only available option, you might try getting the skillet at high temp prior to adding your steak for a quick sear on each side and then finishing it off with a little over time. Only thing about this process is you’ll have a lot of smoke during the searing.
Grill that steak!
Yes, that is the reason.
I read somewhere of first putting the steak under the broiler. Give it a few minutes per side (depending on how you like it). Then bring it out and put it into a hot pan to brown. Completely avoids that unattractive gray color inside and out, and that ugly gray line inside that happens when you brown first and then finish under the broiler.
You need to use a HOT pan. I prefer cast iron. Don’t lift up the steak once you’ve plopped it down except once, when you flip it. Remember to let the steak sit for a good 5 minutes or more after removing from the pan before cutting it.
I don’t understand this part of your question though:
Doesn’t the whole steak touch the pan? Do you mean it’s curling up? Most if not all of it will touch, unless maybe it’s pretty thin and is curling.
Your pan isn’t hot enough, which probably means it isn’t heavy enough. If you use a light pan, it cools down when you put the cold-to-room-temp meat in it, which causes uneven cooking. You need to simulate the high heat of a restaurant grill, which means a heavy pan that you can heat up and that will retain most of that heat after the meat goes into it.
Here’s how I make a steak (when I don’t have a grill available):
Take it out of the fridge an hour before cooking. You want it approaching room temperature; futzing with a cold piece of meat is more trouble than it’s worth.
Lightly salt and pepper it (top only) at the beginning of the hour. The salt will draw moisture out of the steak, which will mix with the seasoning, and then get re-absorbed. This produces moister, more flavorful meat.
Put the steak on a cooking sheet, insert a probe thermometer, and put it into the oven. Set the oven as low as it will go (around 200 degrees for the typical home oven). If your probe thermometer has an alarm, set it for your desired degree of doneness: 100 degrees for rare, or 135-140 for medium, or 160 for well done. If the thermometer doesn’t have an alarm, just keep an eye on it.
Immediately put your heaviest, best-seasoned cast iron skillet on the burner and heat it just to the point of smoking.
As soon as the steak in the oven reaches the desired temperature, take it out and throw it into the hot skillet. Sear it on each side for maybe a minute, plus or minus. If the skillet is big enough, sear one face of the steak off to one side of the skillet, and then flip it onto an unused part of the skillet. (This ensures the hottest available surface.)
Take the steak out of the skillet and rest it on a plate for seven or eight minutes.
Enjoy.
It seems like a lot more work than you’re probably used to, but it isn’t, really; it just reorganizes the conventional steps into an unfamiliar order. And the results are absolutely worth it.
Here’s a method I like whne I’m not grilling. Sort of ripped from a mark bittman video. . .
Get the steak to room temperature. I’ll leave a steak out for 6+ hours before I cook it a lot of time.
Get the broiler going in the oven, and position a rack close to it.
Get a cast iron pan at hot as you can. I have a “powerburner” on my stove.
I put the steak in the pan for about a minute, then put it under the broiler for maybe 5 minutes, until seared. It continues to sear on the pan, while the broiler sears the top.
Lots of smoke and splatter, but whatever.
I got my technique from one of Mark Bittman’s books. Let the steak come to room temperature and season. Turn on the broiler, or the highest setting on the oven. Heat an oven-safe pan on the stove top until it’s almost smoking. (I don’t have cast iron, but an aluminum-core stainless steel skillet has worked well so far.) Put the steak in the skillet and immmediately move it to the oven. After 3-4 minutes (depending on thickness and how you like it cooked), turn it over. Another 3-4 minutes and it’s done.
Never seen a gray line inside.
The results are good enough to live with until I have a proper grill.
Thanks for the replies, hopefully one or more of these methods will work for me.
Well it doesn’t curl up but for whatever reason, the surface tends to get browned in a sort of uneven pattern even tho the whole side appears to be touching the pan. I guess it has to do with the heat level, as some of the replies have suggested.
Wow, that’s almost the exact method I came up with myself, after much experimentation. The timing only varies per thickness.
Sinful variation: start with some bacon fat, smoking hot of course: this improves the browning surface just enough to be worth the few hours it will take off your life.
I use Julia Child’s method for pan-seared steak, which has always worked beautifully for me. It works really well for steak au poivre.
Season the steak (with cracked peppercorns, or not) and sear it on one side in a hot cast iron skillet for about three minutes. Just put it in the pan and don’t mess with it. Flip the steak over, and let it cook until the juices just start to pearl up on top. At that point, it’s a perfect medium rare. (I’m sure someone will now chime in to tell me that “perfect” and “medium rare” do not belong together in the same sentence! 
)
Consider yourself chimed. 
I am absolutely trying this this weekend when I get home. I am a blood red rare steak person, and my wife is a well done steak person. Using the broiler is difficult, because I’ve got to cook hers for 6 minutes or so before I can put mine in and turn hers, then 3 minutes later I have to turn mine, then 3 minutes later they’re both done, except that all the opening and closing the oven door screws up the temperature, and mine is done but I have to put hers back in, and what a nuisance. So I’ll put hers in the 200 degree oven, when hers hits 140 I put mine in, when hers hits 160 I take them both out, sear them in the skillet, and Bob’s your uncle.
This is the way I do it most of the time, I hate to hear the sound of my oven being splattered. I would add that I try to make sure that the pan is as hot and dry as possible, the meat is room temp and has been patted down with a paper towel, and put only pepper, no salt before you pan broil so that the surface of the meat stays dry. If any liquidy stuff gets in there, it will steam the meat and make it gray instead of brown. I kinda cheat and pick a “presentation side” of my steak and put that down first- it always comes out better. You have to work to keep your pan dry for the second side.
My method is simple but seems to produce perfect steak each time for me:
Let steak come to room temperature and pat dry all over with a paper towel then drizzle olive oil (not too much) on the steak and rub it all over then salt and pepper all over.
Heat a heavy based, ridged griddle pan on the highest heat until it is smoking hot then place the steak in the centre of the pan and press lightly down on top with a spatula, cook for 1 minute then turn 45 degrees and cook for another minute then turn the steak over and repeat the process then let the steak rest for at least 5 minutes before serving.
This technique is based on a sirloin steak about 1.5 - 2" thick and was the way I was taught to cook steaks when I worked in a kitchen