How to cook a steak indoors

Lots of people screw this up in a number of ways. Usually, by not using enough heat, or a heavy enough pan. Here's how to do it right.

You need:

- A steak [1].

- Salt and pepper [2].

- Neutral oil with a high smoke point [3].

- Good butter [4].

Optional, but highly recommended:

- Fresh thyme.

- Fresh rosemary.

- Garlic.

Directions:

- Get your steak out of the fridge so it can come up to room temperature. When it's not frigid, pat it dry and season it with salt and pepper.

- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

- Get out your grandma's old well-seasoned cast-iron skillet, and put it on high.

- Put a good coating of oil in your pan. You don't want a little dinky pool, but you don't want to deep-fry the steak either.

- When the oil is *almost* smoking hot, gently lay the steak into the pan. Don't fuck with it; just leave it be and occasionally lift it up a tiny bit to peek under to check on the progress.

- Smash a couple cloves of garlic with the side of a knife, and slip them out of their skin. Plop them into the pan, off to the side somewhere. Toss in a sprig each of thyme and rosemary.

- When the steak is nice and brown on the bottom, flip it over. Pile the garlic, thyme, and rosemary on top. Put a nice big pat of butter on top, too.

- Shove the whole thing into the oven.

- After a couple minutes, the butter should be melted. Pull the pan out of the oven, tuck the herbs under the steak, and spoon the butter/oil/juices over the steak. Shove it back in the oven.

- Pull it out and poke it now and then.

- When it feels like the flesh between your thumb and index finger when your hand is in a loose fist, it's done (should take about five minutes in the oven, but it depends on the thickness). Pull it out of the pan and put it on a cutting board to rest for ten minutes tented with foil.

- Eat.

If you want to make a fancy sauce, while the steak is resting, do this:

- Set the hot pan over high heat.

- Pull out the bits of garlic, herbs, etc. with tongs.

- When the meat juices have browned a bit and stuck to the pan, pour off the fat.

- De-glaze with a splash of red wine.

- Drop in a cube of frozen super-concentrated beef broth [5]. Pour in any juices from the resting steak.

- Off the heat, stir in a pat of butter.

- Season with salt and pepper.

[1] The steak should be reasonably thick, but nothing crazy. If you're trying to do this with a really damn thick steak, like one of those two-inch filet mignon things that seem to be popular, this method won't work. If it's over an inch thick, don't bother trying to do this; it will be raw and cold in the middle. Maybe you like that, but I don't. I like ribeyes about an inch thick.

[2] Don't use table salt. It has sodium silicoaluminate in it. Do you know what that is? I sure as shit don't. Kosher salt is readily available and reasonably priced. The frog-eaters make a decent sea salt that comes in blue (fine) and red (coarse) cardboard tubes with a whale on them. There's also fancy fleur de sel stuff that's great for finishing, but totally over-the-top unless it's a special occasion.

[3] I keep two oils around for cooking---a cheap, Lebanese extra virgin olive oil for lower-heat stuff, that I buy in vast quantities, and a smaller bottle of safflower oil that I use for stuff like this and for stir-fries when I want a high smoke point.

[4] I don't use much butter. When I use butter, it's for the flavor of the butter, so I get good butter. Plugra is good and reasonably available. There are much pricier boutique butters out there, but they're a waste for cooking. Use them for spreading on good bread. And buy unsalted butter for cooking, especially baking, so you can control the seasoning.

[5] Keep this around. I'll explain it in a future post and put the link here.