How to cook a meat steak. How to fry steaks in a pan

One of the most popular orders in restaurants in the world is meat steak.

I wonder why?

And all because people simply do not know and do not know how to cook steaks at home.

At first glance, it seems a very non-trivial task to take a piece of meat, salt and pepper it. And then send it to a hot frying pan or oven. But for some reason, the meat almost always turns out to be dry, burnt or very hard.

Let's figure out why this happens and how to properly cook a steak at home.

What steaks are, what they are made of, what part they are made of, was discussed in the article.

Below are the basic tenets of how best to make a steak, and how to cook it properly.

About meat

To make the cow meat tasty and juicy, you need to choose it correctly. And you also need to be able to do this. By the way, in some European restaurants, the chefs do not trust anyone with the choice of meat for steaks, and they do it themselves.

First you need to know that for a real steak, the piece must be kept in a cool dry place for about a month. It depends on the origin of the cut. If you cook fresh meat, the steak will definitely turn out tough, even if it is beaten well. As the muscles inside the cut are not relaxed.

So feel free to count at least 20 days from the moment a cow or a bull was slaughtered.

Beefsteaks must be vacuum packed.

Basic moments

The piece must be of the correct thickness. Thin cuts will burn quickly or not cook properly. The thickness should be about 2.4 - 2.6 centimeters.

Immediately before frying the steak, he needs to lie down at room temperature for about two hours. If this is not done, it will be more difficult to control the degree of doneness of the steak.

If you cook in a pan, it is better to take a special cast iron grill pan. Heat it until haze appears and do not add oil.

Cuts are usually not washed, otherwise they will not cook properly. They should be as dry as possible. You can use special kitchen paper towels to dry the surface.

Never add any seasoning for meat or other spices. This will completely kill all the taste. The maximum that can be done is salt and pepper a little. Beefsteaks of some breeds of bulls are salted and pepper already during the meal.

It is advisable to cook one portion in one pan. The fewer chunks on the brazier, the better the temperature of the hot surface is maintained and the cut will be fried properly. If you put two or more pieces at once, the surface temperature of the pan will quickly drop, and the meat will be stewed, not fried. And you will not be able to get a steak with a crispy crust.

When flipping steaks to the other side, only use special cooking tongs or a spatula. Do not do this with a fork. Not only will you ruin the pan, but juice will start to flow out of the meat. Do not pierce it while cooking. The roast is checked exclusively by touch.

After basic cooking, the steaks should be allowed some time to rest. You cannot serve food immediately. This is due to the fact that the juice concentrates in the center of the piece during cooking. By letting the meat rest, we ensure that the juice is evenly distributed throughout the steak and it becomes much juicier. It's about 15-25 minutes.

How to cook beef steak in a pan

Beef cut needs to be prepared. Let it rest for about two hours, dry it and season with salt and pepper, if necessary.

We spread it on a hot frying pan (preferably cast iron) and fry on one side until a golden brown crust appears. We turn over to the other side.

After that, wrap the cut in foil, or put it on parchment. We spread it on a baking sheet and send it to a preheated oven, somewhere up to 200 degrees, for about 8 minutes. Depending on the thickness of a particular piece. If you want completely fried, without pink pulp, you can leave in the oven for 15 minutes.

We take it out of the oven, let the dish rest and serve.

Grilled steaks. Grilled pork steak

There is nothing better cooked in nature than grilled meat. In addition, it is great to bake pork steaks on charcoal. Pork cuts are usually not cooked in a pan as they are hard.

Steak cut from fresh pork is perfect. Unlike beef, it doesn't need to age for long. However, if you have it frozen, then you need to defrost it. No need to defrost pork in the microwave. Let her sit at room temperature, not in the sun.

Cut the pork into portions about 2 centimeters thick.

Dry with paper towels

To grill pork steak, you can season it with spices without spoiling the tenderloin. Its taste will only be emphasized by good spices.

After seasoning, leave the steak to marinate for a few hours. The longer it is marinated, the richer its taste will be.

Pork steak should be roasted over hard charcoal. First, cook over an open fire for about two minutes on each side, so as to fry properly and get a baked crust. Then we extinguish the fire and cook on hot coals for about 10-15 minutes, periodically turning the steak over.

During this time, the pork will be properly baked and saturated with the aroma of charcoal. Having cut a piece with a knife, you can make sure that the pulp is roasted. Can be served with a salad of herbs and cucumbers. Pork steak goes well with mashed potatoes or avocado.

How to make fish steaks

Fish steaks are a great alternative to meat steaks. Especially for vegetarians. In addition, the flesh of the fish is not as high-calorie and fatty compared to the same pork. Fish contains many nutrients, such as omega-3 (fish oil).

Cooking fish steak, at first glance, seems like an easy task for a culinary specialist. But to prepare a premium dish, you need to properly prepare your fish steak and not overdo it with seasonings.

You can cook different types of fish at home. But for a steak, it is necessary to choose species that have a dense pulp structure with a small amount of bones. To cook at home in a pan or oven, you can use salmon, chum salmon, trout, perch, and many other varieties. The size of the portion should be the same size as the person's palm or slightly smaller.

The fish loves pre-marinating. Spices and a sufficient amount of salt will enhance the taste incredibly. But here, as elsewhere, it is important not to overdo it. Of the salt, sea salt is the best choice. She will spill the piece as naturally as possible. If you choose regular or fine salt, then only the upper part will be salted. The inside of the fish will remain unsalted.

For the marinade, in addition to salt, you can use olive oil, rosemary, lemon juice. There is no need to marinate the fish for a long time. One hour is enough.

The grill pan is the best choice for preparing fish steak. It is necessary to heat it over medium heat until it is smoky. Put a piece in a skillet and fry on one side for about 2-3 minutes. Then gently turn over without damaging the delicate structure of the fish steak. Remember to use special kitchen tongs or a spatula when turning.

After frying until a crust appears on both sides, cover the pan with a lid and reduce the heat to minimum. We keep our steak for a couple of minutes in such an oven. Turn off the heat and leave the fish to rest for 10 minutes. Then you can serve it to the table. Red wine, lettuce and rice garnish go well with fish.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways how to cook a steak at home. But in order to get a truly culinary masterpiece, you need to observe all the subtleties of cooking and then the stomach will thank you.

In the world of culinary, there are several dishes, the ability to cook which is a kind of indicator of the professionalism of the chef. Today we will talk about how to fry a beef steak in a pan - a dish that is the brightest representative of haute cuisine. Let's figure it out together with all the intricacies of cooking this dish and learn how to make it no worse than the culinary masters.

First of all, you need to figure out what kind of meat is used to cook steaks. It is quite difficult to find meat varieties such as striploin or ribeye in ordinary butcher shops or supermarkets, so the easiest way is to purchase the so-called thick and thin rim.

Of course, they are somewhat different from the above-mentioned types of meat, but they are quite suitable for home cooking. If you wish, you can order original cuts in vacuum packaging, which are available in the assortment in specialized stores.

Main degrees of doneness of beef steaks

There are almost eight different dishes in one steak, because the taste, juiciness and texture of the meat depend on the degree of roasting of the beef tenderloin. Each degree of roast, according to the international standard, has its own name in English and indicates the degree of readiness of the dish. A certain type of steak has its own temperature inside the piece, as well as the time and method of roasting it.

In world cuisine, five basic degrees of roasting of steaks are used as standard. Although often the first degree of Raw is subdivided into 3 classifications.

As a result, the expanded card includes eight degrees of heat treatment of beef steak:

1. Raw- This is a completely raw piece of tenderloin, which would not have been included in the classification of steaks at all if it had not been used in traditional Italian cuisine for making carpacho.
2. Blue rare although it is considered the second stage of steak roasting, it is used very rarely and then only for lovers of raw meat. Fry a slice of beef for just a few seconds on both sides to give the surface of the dish a corrugated grill pattern.
3. Extra rare- another steak option for lovers of raw meat. The difference in this case is a two-minute frying in a highly heated frying pan, during which a piece of meat has time to be covered with a crust on top. On the inside, however, the beef remains cool and soggy, red and bloody.
4. Rare- This is one of the most popular types of steaks, which is also called "meat with blood". If a five-minute frying allows the outside to give the tenderloin an appetizing gray-brown crust, then the fillet remains raw inside, and when cut, you can watch blood juice oozing through the fibers. Rare steak has a temperature inside the piece not higher than 52 ° С.
5. Medium rare- the most popular restaurant version of the low-rarefied beef steak. It is generally accepted that it is the medium rer steak that fully reveals the taste of beef. At high temperature, the tenderloin is fried for 5 minutes on each side. So you will not see inside the blood, but there is a layer of uncooked meat, because the temperature inside the piece does not rise above 55 ° C.
6. Medium- a classic steak, medium rare. It takes 15 minutes to cook, during which the meat is constantly turned from side to side. You will definitely not find blood in such a steak. But you will get a juicy, tender pink fillet, very soft on the inside and ruddy crunchy on the outside. The temperature inside a piece of meat should rise to 63 ° C.
7. Medium Well. In such a steak, you will not find a drop of blood and only the very minimum of juice in the center of the piece, where the meat still retains its pinkish color. The frying time of the tenderloin takes 20 minutes, and the temperature inside the slice reaches 68 ° C.
8. Well done- "sole" - this is what this steak is called in cook's slang. This is the highest and driest degree of doneness. Meat, when cut inside, does not ooze juice, it is somewhat harsh, has a grayish brown color and a temperature of 73 ° C. Despite the fact that Well Done steak best saturates the body with energy due to well-heated proteins, many chefs do not like to cook it, considering it a spoilage of food. The cooking time for such a steak is 30 minutes.

Interesting fact. Many chefs do not use thermometers to fry steaks and rely on tactile sensations.

There is an unspoken technique for determining the degree of roasting of a steak by its softness, and the thumb pad on the hand is used for association in varying degrees of tension:

• Raw- the pad is soft when the hand is relaxed.
• Rare- the pad in slight tension when the thumb is connected to the forefinger.
• Medium rare- corresponds to the tension of the pad when connecting the thumb with the middle one.
• Medium- the pad is tight when the tip of the thumb is connected to the ring finger.
• Well Done. When the thumb is connected to the little finger, the pad is at maximum tension, which corresponds to the stiffness of a deep-cooked steak.

Classic beef steak in a pan

Ingredients

• - 1 kg + -
• - 3-4 tbsp. + -
• - 100 g + -
• - taste + -
• - taste + -

How and how much to fry beef steak

It should be said right away that in this and subsequent recipes we will fry the steak to a medium-fried state. This way, the meat will remain juicy and tender.

• We wash the meat well under running cool water. We set it aside for 20-30 minutes so that the piece warms up to room temperature.
• We blot it with paper towels and cut it into layers, about 2.5 centimeters thick.
• Rub each piece with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper and rub them a little.
• We put a frying pan (regular or grill) on fire, with a strength slightly above average. You need to warm it up properly.

To check the degree of incandescence, drop a little water on its surface: if the droplet begins to evaporate quickly and move along the bottom of the vessel, then the temperature is correct.

• Put the steaks in the pan. Make sure that the pieces do not touch each other and that there is a distance of at least 1-2 centimeters between them.
• Fry the meat for one minute, then turn it over to the other side with tongs or a spatula and fry the same amount.
• Reduce the heat to slightly less than average and put the piece back on the original side. Cook the steak for about 2 minutes, turn it over, wait another 2 minutes.

• Put a large sheet of foil on a warm plate. Put the finished steaks on top of it, put a little butter on them, cover with foil and let it brew for 4 minutes.

After the indicated time, take out the steaks and immediately serve them to the table. Such meat should be eaten especially hot. Fresh vegetables or grilled vegetables are suitable as a side dish.

A simple pan-fried steak recipe

Ingredients

• Beef (with a small amount of fat) - 500 g;
• Salt to taste;
• Dried rosemary - a pinch;
• Parsley - half a bunch;
• Lemon - ½ fruit;
• Garlic - 1 clove.

How to cook beef steak in a pan

1. We wash the meat and let it warm up to room temperature.
2. While the meat is at the right temperature, let's move on to the other ingredients. Wash the parsley under running water, chop and pour into a small container. Here we squeeze the juice from half a lemon, and also pass a clove of garlic through a press, mix and set the fragrant mass aside.
3. We blot a piece with paper towels or napkins. Be careful: you do not need to cut fat, because it is thanks to it that we will fry the meat.
4. We cut the piece into layers of 2-2.5 centimeters. Rub them with salt and dried rosemary on both sides.
5. We put a cast-iron pan on a strong fire and heat it until a characteristic haze appears.
6. We spread the pieces of meat on the surface of the pan and fry the beef on both sides for 1-2 minutes until a characteristic crust appears on it.
7. Reduce heat to medium and, turning the piece every 15-20 seconds, fry it for 5-6 minutes.
8. We spread the finished steak on a plate (or a wooden tray), on top we distribute a fragrant mixture of garlic, lemon and parsley.

The recipe does not imply simmering such a steak under foil, but you can easily wrap the meat in it and stand for a couple of minutes. During this time, the juices will saturate the whole steak - and its taste will only get better from this.

Pickled beef steak in a pan

If you have not been able to get a high quality beef cut, or the pure taste of the meat does not appeal to you, then you can use this recipe.

Here we will pre-marinate our steaks - which will make them even more aromatic, juicier and softer.

Ingredients

• Beef - 800 g;
• Soy sauce - ½ cup;
• Wine vinegar - 1 tablespoon;
• Honey - 2 tablespoons;
• Granulated garlic - ½ tsp;
• Ground ginger - ½ tsp;
• Sunflower oil - 6 tablespoons

How to fry a pickled beef steak

• We wash the meat, cut it into standard layers, 2 centimeters thick, let the excess liquid drain and put it in a deep container.
• Mix separately the soy sauce, vinegar, honey, garlic and ginger. Mix everything, pour in vegetable oil and bring the mixture to homogeneity.
• Pour the resulting marinade into a bowl containing the steaks, mix everything well. We close the container with a lid and send it to the refrigerator. The meat should be marinated for 10-12 hours.
• We put the grill pan on the maximum heat and heat it until a haze appears.
• We spread the pieces of meat on the surface of the pan, after allowing the excess marinade to drain down.

Fry the steaks for two minutes on each side, then reduce the heat to medium and fry for another three minutes on each side.

• We immediately serve the finished dish to the table, laying out pieces of meat on lettuce leaves.

As you can see, knowing how to fry a beef steak in a pan, you can delight your family and friends with a real restaurant dish, cooked at the same time at home.

There are different. Let's understand the nuances of cooking.

Varieties of steak

Before talking about how to cook beef steak in a pan, you need to understand what types of steaks are.

Steaks are distinguished by the degree of doneness. Let's name the most basic of them:

Of course, ideally, steak doneness should be measured with a cooking thermometer. However, in everyday life it is not very convenient and hardly anyone will do it. As a rule, the readiness of the dish is determined by eye.

When choosing which roast you want, remember that when cooked heavily, the meat loses its juices and becomes tough and dry. Very rare amateurs consume meat with blood, but the bulk of people prefer a stack with uniform roasting, when pressed, pink juice is released.

Side dishes are also served with the steak. As a rule, these are grilled vegetables, or salads with fresh vegetables.

Food preparation

Speaking about how to cook a beef steak in a pan, you first need to find out what kind of meat is suitable for a given dish. So, for a real steak, you need to take only beef pulp without bones and veins, ideally it should be paired, this is the only way to get a fragrant and juicy dish.

The meat is cut into pieces three centimeters thick. If you still cook meat from frozen, then it is better to defrost it in the main compartment, of course, it will take a long time, but the meat will retain its useful properties. To make the process go faster, you can put the packaged meat in cold water. In no case should you defrost it in a microwave oven, even when using a special mode, or in warm water.

And one more piece of advice. Never beat a steak before cooking, it will lose all of its juices and texture.

In addition to meat, we need a set of spices and vegetable oil (olive or sunflower). Remember that the steak is not salted before cooking; this is done before serving.

Preparing dishes

For cooking meat, we need a steak pan. This can be a regular cast iron cookware, but ideally a grill pan is a good idea. You will also need a special steak knife. This is what the masters use in this matter. If you do not have such a tool, then use an ordinary sharp knife that can cut meat well. The pieces should be nice and even. Beef steak is not that hard to make at home.

Butter steak

Let's cook a beef steak in a frying pan. There are many recipes, let's look at some of them. When you choose the right meat, cut it up and roast it well, you have the most delicious steak ever.

Ingredients:

1. Butter - ¼ pack.
2. Ground pepper.
3. Beef - 0.8 kg.
4. Salt.

The beef tenderloin should be rinsed, then towel-dried, and cut into three centimeters thick pieces. Next we need a steak pan. We put it on fire and melt the butter.

Pepper only one side of the meat and put a piece with it in the pan. Next, pepper the other side and turn the steak over. The cooking time is determined, first of all, by your preferences, what degree of roasting the meat you like.

If you only want the steak to brown a little, then frying it for three minutes on each side is sufficient. If you want to get a good crust on the outside and pink pulp on the inside, the time will have to be increased to four minutes on each side.

Well, if you want to eat well-done meat, then you need to cook it for five minutes on each side. And don't forget to salt before serving.

Cooking steak in the oven

If you want the beef to be soft, you can cook it in the oven. First, the meat is fried in a pan, since the resulting crust prevents the juice from flowing out of it. That is why such a steak turns out to be juicy, tender and aromatic, especially when using spicy mixtures.

Ingredients:

Marinate the chopped steak in herb oil for an hour. Next, we send the meat to a hot pan, frying for two minutes on each side. You should get a crust.

Then we put lightly fried steaks in the oven and cook for another fifteen minutes.

Steak with red sauce

If you are still undecided on how to cook a beef steak in a pan, then perhaps you will like the recipe for meat from This dish for true gourmets. It is served with grape juice, pepper, red wine. The result will exceed all your expectations.

Ingredients:

1. Meat (beef) - 1 kg.
2. Butter - 2 tbsp. l.
3. Flour - 3 tbsp. l.
4. Red wine - 70 g.
5. Broth - 300 g.
6. Currant juice - 70 g.

Rub the steaks thoroughly with pepper and lightly fry them for three minutes on each side. Then bake in the oven for another fifteen minutes.

In the meantime, we begin to prepare the sauce. In a frying pan, melt the butter. Then fry the flour on it until golden brown, add the broth, stirring constantly, bring to a boil and boil for ten minutes. Next, pour in the currant juice and red pepper and wine, bring it to a boil again and turn it off immediately. Such a delicious steak is served with potatoes and sauce.

While talking about how to cook a steak in a pan, I would like to mention the little nuances that will help you prepare an unforgettable dish.

So, the meat needs to be cut across the fibers, this makes it easier for heat to penetrate into the middle of the piece.

If you feel like experimenting, try grilling the steak over charcoal. To do this, first fry the meat to obtain a crust that will prevent the juice from flowing out, and then continue cooking on the charcoal, alternately turning the pieces over.

Before cooking, the pan is heated over high heat, but not allowing the oil to smoke. Otherwise, the steak may burn and not cook properly. Cooks assume a pan is ready to cook if it sizzles when meat is placed on top of it.

Once cooked, the steak should just sit for ten minutes. Then the meat will become softer.

To determine the readiness of the steak, press it with your finger. Meat with blood should be soft. Thoroughly fried steak has a firm texture. And medium-rare meat is somewhere in the golden mean between two borderline states.

What kind of meat should I take to cook a steak?

To make the right beef steak, you need to choose good meat.

We said earlier that steak is best prepared with fresh meat. You need to take only beef. Pieces are cut into pieces, the thickness of which is not less than two and a half centimeters, but not more than four.

The best is the marbled steak. It is prepared from Australian. You can search for domestic counterparts if you wish.

Japanese steak

Ingredients:

1. Beef - 0.6 kg.
2. A tablespoon of honey.
3. Onions - 2 pcs.
4. Wine (preferably dry white) - 90 ml.
5. Grated fresh ginger.
6. Two cloves of garlic.
7. Soy sauce.

Grate ginger, chop garlic and onion. Next, we make the marinade. Mix the following ingredients: onion, sauce, honey, garlic, ginger, wine. Place the prepared pieces of steak in the mixture and leave to marinate for several hours. Turn the meat periodically.

Next, preheat the oven to a temperature of one hundred and eighty degrees. If you have a grill function, then you can use it and fry each steak for five to seven minutes on each side, not forgetting to sprinkle with marinade.

Bring the rest of the mixture to a boil and then cook for ten minutes to make it thick enough. Finished steaks are laid out on a plate and poured over the prepared from the marinade.

In principle, you can cook a steak using a more traditional method. To do this, the meat is marinated for several hours in olive oil with a mixture of Provencal herbs. Then they are fried a little in a completely dry frying pan, and only then they are brought to readiness in the oven for another ten to fifteen minutes.

Why do you think, in almost all recipes, the meat is first fried over high heat, and only then brought to readiness? Everything is very simple. When heat-treating meat, the protein curls up immediately on the surface of the piece. Thus, it blocks the exit of the liquid. It is for this reason that the meat is first processed at a high temperature, and only then cooked at a more gentle one. This technique makes the steak very juicy.

As soon as the meat reaches a temperature of forty degrees, proteins are destroyed, and after fifty degrees collagen is compressed. And already at seventy degrees, the steak does not retain oxygen and becomes gray. Therefore, it is better to cut the steak across the fibers, this will ensure the passage of hot streams through the meat.

Even eminent chefs disagree about how quickly to start eating a finished dish. Some believe that the meat needs to lie down for ten minutes and reach the correct state, while others recommend eating it right away. Of course, it's all a matter of taste. So experiment and decide which option suits you best.

Steak... Steak is a meat dish that is prepared from certain parts of the carcass of young bulls of certain breeds (Hereford, Angus, etc.).

Most people mistakenly believe that a steak is a whole piece of any grilled meat. Far from it. In fact, steaks are made from the finest parts of the animal. At the same time, no more than 10% of the entire carcass is suitable for cooking. Therefore, the first step for the right and tasty steak is choosing the right meat.

To prepare steaks, take the subscapular part of the carcass (where there are a lot of fat veins), the lumbar part of the back in the area of ​​the thick edge, the head of the tenderloin, the thick edge of the middle part of the tenderloin, and some others. Depending on the portion used, steaks are given additional names. For example, a roundrumb steak is prepared from the top of the thigh, filet mignon - from a cut of the central part of the fillet, etc.

The steak meat should be red or dark red. It is worth checking the meat with your finger, pressing on the piece. If, after pressing, a hole forms, which then returns to its original position, the meat can be taken. If you press hard enough, the steak will come out tough, if the hole does not expand - the meat is most likely stale and also does not fit.

Despite the fact that beef steak is considered a classic, the dish can also be prepared from other types of meat (for example, veal, pork, etc.), as well as fish.

Before cooking, it is worth deciding on the degree of roasting - whether you like raw meat or steak with blood, medium, deeply roasted meat, or whole and completely fried.

It is important to prepare the meat for the steak correctly: to clean it from films, tendons. Next, you should cut off a piece of medium thickness at least 7 centimeters in length. A piece is cut in the central part of the side where the longitudinal fibers are located (up to the middle of the thickness). Finally, the meat is opened with a "butterfly" - the transverse fibers of the notch should appear at the top. This allows the meat to cook better.

The steak is marinated for 12 to 48 hours. A traditional marinade is a mixture of wine vinegar, vegetable oil, soy sauce, spices and salt. Fry steaks in pans and electric grills.

The meat is spread on a hot surface, fried on both sides for a minute, and then cooked to the desired degree of roast.

It is strongly not recommended to determine readiness with a fork - the juice will flow out and the meat will turn out to be dry. If this check is necessary, it is better to cut a piece in the middle (quite a bit). Allowing the meat to stand under the lid, turning off the heat, you allow the juice to be distributed as evenly as possible over the piece.

I've been making steaks for years, from a wide variety of meats, and I dare to hope I'm doing it well. In this article, I decided to collect all my experience that will allow you to achieve excellence in cooking steaks. And feel free to follow the links - they lead to other articles that cover various aspects of grilling and serving steaks, such as cooking meat or making steak sauces.

How to make a flawless steak

Cooking a perfect steak can be challenging even for a skilled cook: small cuts of meat can cook too quickly, becoming dry and tough, too large ones to burn on the outside without being cooked on the inside. If you are new to steak cooking, I recommend using a heavy skillet or grill pan - charcoal or electric grills are also great for steaks, but the pan will be easier to control the temperature.

Step 1 - prepare the steak

Cooking a steak begins by choosing meat from a grocery store or butcher's shop. As a rule, imported beef is used for steaks, and although high-quality steaks from Russian beef have recently begun to appear, foreign terminology is still used to classify meat cuts. The easiest way to train steaks is with steaks. ribeye and striploin, he's New York (in our classification, these cuts more or less correspond to a thick and thin edge) - they are soft in themselves, and will turn out to be tasty, even if you miss a little with the roast.

Pay attention to the so-called marbling of meat: the fat should be as evenly distributed as possible over the meat, then during the preparation of the steak, these inclusions of fat will melt, making the meat more tasty and juicy. Classic steak thickness - 2.5 centimeters, and if you buy meat already cut, make sure that the steaks are of the correct thickness, if you take a large piece, try on how you will cut it. So let's get started.

• If the steak has been frozen, thaw it overnight in the refrigerator and wipe it dry.
• Remove the steak from the refrigerator at least 20 minutes before frying to allow it to warm to room temperature.
• Brush the steaks on both sides with vegetable oil (I use olive oil, but you can use any unscented vegetable instead) and season generously with salt.

Step 2 - preheat the pan

• Preheat the skillet over medium-high heat - it should be hot but not smoking (if the skillet is too hot, the steak will burn on the outside before cooking on the inside, and it will be tough).
• The hissing sound after you place the steaks in the pan will tell you if it's warmed up to the right temperature.
• Another way to check the heating of the pan is to drip some water on it: if you have heated the pan well, the droplet will collect into an elastic ball that will run along the surface of the pan like crazy.

Step 3 - cook to taste

• For medium rare, place the steaks in the skillet so that they are not touching and let cook for 1 minute.
• Use tongs to gently turn the steaks over (be careful not to damage them to prevent the juices from leaking out) and cook for 1 minute more to form a crust.
• Turn steaks over again and reduce heat to medium. Cook for 2 minutes, turn over, and cook for 2 more minutes.
• To test the doneness, gently press down on the steak with your fingertip. The steak with blood should be soft and pliable, well done and firm, and the middle one, as it should be, will be something in between.

Steak cooking time

You can vary the steaks to your liking by lengthening or shortening the cooking time. Below is the approximate time that is suitable for a 2.5 cm thick steak. Thicker steaks require a longer cooking time and vice versa.

• Rare (with blood) - 1-2 minutes on each side, rest for 6-8 minutes;
• Medium rare (low roast) - 2-2.5 minutes on each side, rest for 5 minutes;
• Medium - 3 minutes on each side, rest 4 minutes
• Well done - 4.5 minutes on each side, rest for 1 minute.

However, the most accurate (although not always accessible to a beginner) way to determine the degree of doneness of a steak is to use a meat thermometer.

Step 4 - rest the steaks

• Leaving the meat to lie down for a while is just as important as cooking it correctly - in these few minutes the juices will be distributed inside the piece, the temperature will even out inside and outside, and the whole steak will become warm, juicy and tender.
• Remove steaks from skillet, season with black pepper and place in a baking dish. Place a slice of butter on each steak, cover with foil and leave in a warm place for 4-5 minutes.
• Remember, it's better to rest the steak longer than necessary, and not less, this will allow it to acquire the greatest flavor and softness.