But what's the best medium to sear in? Butter, or oil? Some claim that a mixture of both is best, often using the excuse that butter alone has too low a smoke point—it begins to burn and turn black at temperature too low to properly sear meat in. Somehow, cutting the butter with a bit of oil is supposed to raise this smoke point. Unfortunately, that's not true. It's because when we say that "butter is burnt," we're not really talking about the butter as a whole—we're talking specifically about the milk proteins in butter.
The little white specks you see when you melt it. It's these milk proteins that burn when you get them too hot, and believe me—they couldn't care less whether they're being cooked in butterfat or in oil.
Either way, they burn. What all this means is that the best cooking medium for a steak is actually plain old oil. At least to start. Adding butter to the pan just a minute or two before you finish cooking is not a bad idea. This is just enough time to allow the buttery flavor and texture butter is creamier tasting than oil because it has a higher percentage of saturated fat to coat the meat, but not so long that it will burn excessively, producing acrid undertones.
So for searing, let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up: Get oil smoking hot in a heavy pan. Add salted and peppered steak and cook, flipping every 15 to 30 seconds until the desired internal temperature is almost reached. Add butter to the pan and continue to cook until the steak is done. Remove from pan. Follow that summary, and what you've got is a steak that's nearly perfect.
What's missing, you ask? Well, assuming you like your steaks as thick as I do, there's a significant edge that sees little to no direct action during the entire searing process, and that edge is often the fattiest, most delicious part of the steak. It deserves love just as much as the next guy. Watch a Johsonville Brat commercial, and you'll be told that poking with a fork is one of the cardinal sins of sausage cookery, and they're right—a sausage has an impermeable casing for a reason: to keep all of those rendered fats and juices right in there with the meat.
Pierce it, create a hole, and you'll see a fountain of golden juices spring forth like out of a kid after a long car ride. A steak, on the other hand, has no such casing to protect it, so is it ok to poke or not? I cooked two steaks of known weight side by side. It takes at least 40 minutes until all the meat juices have been expelled and then reabsorbed by the meat.
However, because every cut of steak is different, a safe approach to take is to salt approximately one hour before cooking it per inch of thickness so if you have a two-inch steak, you would salt 2 hours before cooking it. This will allow the excess moisture on the steak to seep out while it is sitting. On the flip side, if you leave your salting too late, there is a chance that the salt will draw all the moisture out and leave the steak dry. You can get away with seasoning your steak just before grilling if you season generously JUST before putting it on the grill.
Healthy Eating Nutrition Sodium. By Melodie Anne Updated December 27, Related Articles. Healthy Ways to Season Tilapia. References U. Department of Agriculture and U. Not super-fine table salt. Not the iodized stuff. We use kosher salt Diamond Crystal in our test kitchen for seasoning steaks, because its crystal size allows for prime absorption into the outer layer of the steak.
Now, you make it rain kosher crystals on that meat.
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