I decided to cook some steak tonight for dinner. I know it is not the most exciting thing to cook compared to what I have prepared in the past however a good steak does require some skill to be done right. I got thinking about steaks today from watching a video on youtube by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay on how to cook, you guessed it, a steak. In that particular video I believe he was cooking a Steak Diane which is a lot smaller steak than what I was using so to get an idea for how long I needed to cook each side of the steak I used a calculator which I found online here. This link will give you an idea for how long you should cook your steak, you just plug in the thickness of your steak and how well you want it cooked. In case you are wondering the steak which I was cooking was about an inch and a quarter and was a rib eye cut.

After coming home from the grocery store where I had got my steaks I simply let the steaks rest and be brought to room temperature. This way when the steaks are room temperature they will cook quicker and the center of the steaks would not cook as unevenly as it were if I were to cook the steaks right after taking them out of the refrigerator. After letting the steaks sit about a half hour in their packaging I took them out and seasoned them with salt.

At this stage I got the pan ready by coating the pan with extra virgin olive oil and allowed the oil to smoke a bit before cooking the steaks. Since the pan is already pre-heated it will sear the steaks instead of placing the steaks on a stone cold pan, which will not sear the steaks, plus it will cook a lot quicker. When the oil started to smoke a bit I placed the steaks on the pan. I will only flip these steaks twice, first for about 6 minutes and on the 2nd side about 4 minutes because I was going for a medium-rare done steak. To calculate about how long your steak should cook click here. I should mention as well that I was using a grill pan, which is the next best thing to using a grill because it will at lease give you those distinctive grilling marks on your meat.

After flipping the steaks once I waited until about a minute to when the steaks would be finished on the pan and hit the pan with some butter and basted the steaks a little bit. This will create a nice sauce to accompany the steaks and it is certainly not too hard to do. Next I took off the steaks when they were finished and let them rest on a place for about 10 minutes off the pan. This is an often-overlooked step in cooking beef. This allows the steaks to cook inside making the flavors more intense. Also when the hot butter sauce that we just made is poured on top of the steaks it will cook the exterior of the steak as well and it adds extra flavor, which is never a bad thing.

The steak turned out great, if not slightly more done than I would have liked. Next time I will simply cook the steaks for less time. Cooking is of course not an exact science!