To be honest, though, when browning, it’s not really necessary or even desirable much of the time to add any salt and pepper, since salt draws out water from the meat and inhibits browning. That said, do it long enough in advance (at the order of a day or so) and the salting has a sort of curing effect.
Serious Eats says, for steaks, either salt immediately or salt and wait at least 40 minutes. Even salting and waiting as little as 3 minutes before searing inhibits the sear.
Personally, for a large hunk of meat, I always sear without adding salt or pepper. It’s all gonna get flavored and adjusted for later.
Keep your filthy mitts off Lillian Gish. I wrote her a fan letter when I was 17, and she ANSWERED it, on personal, non-standard stationary, that had a typo corrected with Wite-Out, and it was signed with a ball-point pen, so it was real, and not mass-produced. I am therefore her favorite fan ever.
I have been desperately in love with Lillian since I was 13 and saw Broken Blossoms on the Sunday night PBS hours devoted to silent cinema. But I was too askeert of her awesomeness to ever write her a fan letter.
I DID summon the gumption to write Zita Johann a fan letter back in the late 1980s, along with an old studio glamor photo I paid cash money for and for which I requested an autograph. Never heard back from her, the old bag.