Cooking Steak Attempt #1 – Flavorful Medium Well

My first attempt at experimenting with cooking steak resulted in a very flavorful medium-well.

Steak Recipe

Prep

• Remove from fridge for ~20 min
• Salt & Pepper on both sides

Cooking

• Heat Level to 7
• Add Oil
• Wait until oil starts to smoke
• Add steak, cook for 1:30
• Flip, cook for 2:45
• Plate, drizzle pan sauce + garlic onto steak
• Cover and let it rest for a few minutes (don’t know how long it rested for)

Result

It came out as a very tasty & flavorful, medium-well steak. It was mostly cooked all the way through except for some small pink patches in the thicker areas. The garlic and margarine were delicious. However, because it was so thin, it came out to be very chewy.

Issues

I tried following the recipe from someone else, but I think there were a few issues with this first attempt:

• Thin Steak. The cut of steak I cooked with was very thin in comparison to the tutorial videos I watched. A lot of them had steaks that were a thumbs width or more, mine was 1/2 a thumb and wide. The author in one of the tutorials mentioned that a thinner cut is harder to cook. Your goal is to sear the outside to keep the juices in. However, a thin cut cooks quickly so searing results in a steak that’s medium well to well done.
• Too Long. After I flipped the meat, I didn’t pay attention to the time for a bit and I went slightly over my 2 min goal. 15-45 seconds doesn’t sound like much, but I think it was too long. I think the extra time meant it cooked even more, which led it to be medium-well, which was over cooked for me.
• Cheap Cut. Because we bought it at a Food Basics, I think we got a cheaper cut of meat. I’ve never heard of an “Outside Round Steak“, and that could be because no one features it because its cheap.

Notes for Next Steak

• Better Quality Meat – Thicker, more marbling, and a better cut. Next time, I’ll look for a steak that is thicker, and has more marbling. But also look for cuts that are known to be more tender.
• Tenderizing. Try tenderizing the steak using a mallet, or sauces.
• No-contact thermometer. To better understand the environment that creates a given steak, I think ill get a no-contact thermometer. Because cooking a steak involves a lot of temperature management, knowing the temps used would result in more accurate reproductions. I would measure:
  • Steak temp before it goes into the pan
  • Oil temp as the steak is about to go in
  • Flip temperatures so I know how much heat the steak has absorbed at given times
  • Post cooking steak temp
  • Final steak temp after it had rested.
• Photos. To help see the differences, I should take a before and after photo of the steak.

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