How to cook the perfect steak

And so, here we are again at the start of yet another column about steak. I offer no apologies for my tendency to return to this subject time after time — people write whole books on the subject, for God’s sake! — but there is a provocation for this particular piece.

The provocation I refer to is an experience at an upmarket restaurant a while ago. In April, I had one of the best steaks I have ever eaten at this restaurant. It was Australian Wagyu from the famous Blackmore farm. I eat my steaks medium rare (as should you — any more cooking is a waste of good steak) and the chef served me a beauty: dark and nicely charred on the outside but tender and melting on the inside.

The point of Wagyu (or of that sort of beef — I have written before about the misuse of the term) is that it has better marbling than most steaks. Marbling refers to the little specks of fat and sometimes to the pale veins that streak the outside of a steak. The theory is that as you cook the steak, the fat will melt and make the meat more tender. In the case of the Blackmore steak, it was everything that good Wagyu should be.

I went back to the restaurant and asked for the same steak. They said that they had nothing from Blackmore but they had perfectly good Wagyu from elsewhere. Okay, I said, bring it on!

When the steak arrived, it had the texture of the sort of packaging material that they put around the edges of a TV set before they push it into the carton. Nor did it have much taste. In fact, it had very little juiciness and all those Wagyu clichés about melting fat could no longer be applied.

I asked to see the chef who had cooked my first steak several months ago. He took one look at my plate and asked me not to eat it. He disappeared into the kitchen and minutes later, a second steak was on its way to my table.

This was not as wonderful as the Blackmore beef, but it was pretty amazing anyway.

I asked the chef if he had used the same beef. It turned out he had. It was exactly the same kind of steak as the first one. So, why was this one so much better? It had to do with the cooking, he explained.

Over the years, I have had many similar conversations with chefs and I have come to some conclusions about what makes a great steak. Here are some of the things I have learnt.

1. Any fool can mess up a great piece of beef. But even Alain Ducasse will not be able to serve you a great steak if the beef is of inferior quality. The secret to a good steak is the quality of the meat. A cheap cut will never make a great steak.

2. There is no such thing as the perfect beef for a steak. Many people think US Prime makes for the best steaks. In Europe, they argue that Ame-rican cows are fed on corn and that this gives their beef an unpleasant taste. Far better, they argue, to eat beef from cows that have roamed the meadows and eaten grass. In Italy, they swear by the Chianina, a breed of cow most closely identified with the bistecca of Florence. In Scotland, they say that grass-fed Angus (by the way, Angus is as misused as Wagyu as a description) makes the best steaks. And so on.

I take no sides in these disputes. Nor have I any interest in the part-of-the-animal battles. Some people like sirloin. Others prefer fillet. Some enjoy the heft of a T-bone.

All this is fine by me. It boils down to a matter of individual taste and nobody can tell you what you should like. You’ll just find out through trial and error.

3. Many chefs will tell you that marination is the 
secret of a good steak. This is nonsense. A good steak should never be marinated. You want to taste the flavour of the meat, not the marinade.

4. At busy restaurants, chefs rely on a technological innovation called sous-vide in fancy kitchens and called ‘boil in the bag’ by sceptics such as myself. Sous-vide involves sealing the steak in a vacuum in a plastic bag and then immersing it in a bath of warm water for a long time. When the steak emerges from the 
plastic bag, it is usually quite soft. Lazy chefs will then sear it on the griddle and act as though they have cooked it on the fire at the very moment your order came in.

Chefs are divided on the use of sous-vide techniques but of one thing there is no doubt: it is the worst possible way to cook a steak. You get meat with the texture of a wet sponge.

5. So, what’s the secret to cooking steak? There are many techniques. The French like to fry theirs in a little fat. Some chefs believe that a perfect steak is cooked in the oven and then seared in the pan.

Heston Blumenthal has such an elaborate technique that just reading about it is exhausting. I am hardly going to go head-to-head with Blumenthal or Wolfgang Puck or any other famous chef. 
But I think when you cook steaks in large quantities — as they do in restaurants — you need fancy techniques. When cooking them at home, however, you can give each steak your undivided attention and don’t need the specialised techniques of restaurant kitchens.

6. So, here’s what I think is the best way to make a steak. First of all, the meat must be at room temperature. Second, you must pat it dry so it has no moisture clinging to it. You can season with salt and pepper but don’t pay too much attention to 
the mythology about salt drawing the juices out.

The single most important factor is heat. Cooking a steak is like cooking a great Chinese stir-fry. You can cook dir-ectly on a griddle or in a cast-iron pan. But you must have very high heat. The pan should be smoking hot. You don’t need any oil or fat. Blumenthal suggests spraying a little oil on the surface to ensure that the meat does not stick. But I don’t think that’s always necessary.

Once you have a smoking pan and a dry steak, you let the two meet. I would suggest 60 to 90 seconds on each side for the initial searing. Then, you should touch the steak with your finger (it is not that hot) to see if the meat is firm. If it’s still too soft then maybe another 30 seconds to a minute on each side.

And that’s about it.

7. Some qualifications. A thick steak will take longer than a thin one. And the steak will keep cooking even after you’ve removed it from the pan for at least another five minutes, so don’t worry if it seems too rare at first.

Easy, isn’t it?