Here's a simple way to acheive a perfect medium-rare with a nice carmelized crust for your steak every time. Don't sweat the fancy name -- the Reverse Sear -- because this is easy. Great for indoor steak cooking.
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Allow your thick-cut steaks to defrost overnight. Remove from fridge and bring to room temperature an hour before you’re going to cook.
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Season steaks with salt on all sides.
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Preheat your oven or grill to 200 to 275 degrees.
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Place your steaks in the oven or on the grill. Depending on the thickness of the steaks and the temperature of your oven, this may vary. For a 1-inch Crowd Cow steak and a 275 degree F oven, 8 to 10 minutes will do the trick. Remove the steak from the oven.
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Heat a separate cast-iron or stainless steel pan to a high heat. Add a couple of tablespoons of avocado oil and, just as it begins to show the first signs of smoke, add the steak and sear on all sides -- about 1 minute per side.
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Let the steaks rest for 6 to 10 minutes before slicing in. Enjoy!
My advice:
Obviously, the thickness of your steak and the temperature of your grill or oven will affect your cooking time. Heck, the starting ambient temperature of the meat itself will affect the time needed!
For the first step, low and slow is the name of the game. You want to gently heat the meat over a long period of time so that it cooks evenly inside and out, then sear at the very end in as a separate step -- and at a much higher temperate --- hot and QUICK at the end.
Get to know how your meat feels. Handle raw meat and know what raw feels like. Touch it with the back of your tongs and feel how it squishes. Learn what raw feels like.
Then, as your cooking, periodically touch the meat again and feel how it tenses up. When the meat is just starting to tense up, but is still rather squishy -- that's medium rare.
Pull it off, perform your sear step, let it rest. Just before you cut in, guess what you think it looks like. If you're right, congratulations: you've mastered cooking steak. If you're off, adjust and try another steak. I promise, after 4 or 5 steaks, you'll basically be a magical steak jedi.
