How to cook steaks at home

You don't have to go to a restaurant to eat a delicious juicy steak. You can buy properly aged meat at a butcher's shop, and the main thing is to know how to cook it.

The FoodOboz editorial team tells you how to cook the right steak at home, and also gives a little tutorial on the degrees of meat doneness.

How to choose meat

The key to a good steak is the right meat. To make the steak soft, you need to use aged beef. If you cook a steak from fresh meat immediately after slaughter, the steak will turn out tough because the muscles in the piece of meat will not be relaxed yet.

Therefore, when you buy meat in the supermarket, look not at the date of packaging, but at the date of slaughter – it is also indicated on the package. Of course, we're talking about meat in vacuum packages, such as a piece of marbled beef. So, we look at the date of slaughter, count 20-25 days from it, and get the optimal date from which to grill the steak.

How to grill a steak

Before grilling a steak, keep the meat at room temperature for two hours. This will make it much easier for you to control the process and degree of roasting. As for the thickness of the piece, the steak should be no thinner than 2.5 cm. If you are cooking steaks from tenderloin (for example, filet mignon), cut the meat into pieces at least 5 cm thick.

Do not wash the steaks. The surface of the meat should be perfectly dry. Wipe it with paper towels, and just before you start grilling the steaks, season them with salt and pepper on both sides. And immediately put them in a hot skillet. To fry steaks, use a cast-iron ribbed grill pan, which should be heated until a light smoke appears.

Do not add oil to the pan. Firstly, this will make the steak "dry", and secondly, it will prevent the kitchen from smoking.

Do not put more than two steaks in one pan. This will cause the temperature inside the pan to drop sharply, and the meat will begin to stew in its juices instead of frying, forming a golden brown crust that retains all the juices inside the steak.

Fry the steaks for 1.5-2.5 minutes on each side. Turn them over only with cooking tongs. Never use a fork to turn the steaks: it pierces the meat, causing the juice to leak out. Before turning the steak over to the other side, make sure that the first side is sufficiently cooked and the steak has a nice color. If the meat does not easily come off the pan, it means that there is no crust yet and you need to give the steak a little more time.

When the meat is fried on both sides, put it in a baking dish, cover it with foil, and put it in a preheated 190-degree oven for 10-12 minutes if it is a 5 cm thick filet mignon, or 7-8 minutes if you have a ribeye or striploin. If you want a more pronounced roast, leave the meat in the oven for 15 and 10 minutes, respectively. Then take the steaks out of the oven and let them rest for a minute without removing the foil, then serve.

Degree of roasting steaks

It's important to understand that different cuts of meat require different approaches: it's recommended to cook lean steaks just a little bit, while fattier cuts of meat need to be cooked longer.

There are five main degrees of meat roasting. They differ in what temperature the meat is brought to in the middle of the piece.

• Rare (with blood) is unseasoned meat (roasted on the outside, red on the inside) with red juice, heated to 49-55°C. This steak is cooked for 2-3 minutes at 200°C.
• Medium rare (lightly roasted) – unroasted meat with a pronounced pink juice and heated to 55-60°C. This steak is cooked for 4-5 minutes at 190-200°C.

• Medium. It is medium-rare meat with light pink juice inside and is heated to 60-65°C. It is cooked for 6-7 minutes at 180°C.
• Medium well (almost roasted) – meat with a clear juice and heating to 65-69°C. Cooked for 8-9 minutes at 180°C.
• Well done – fully roasted meat with almost no juice, heated to 71-100°C (cooked for 8-9 minutes at 180°C with finishing).