Mistakes Everyone Makes When Cooking Steak

When cooked correctly, steak is the king of meats. It's big and bold, and it has a way of dominating any meal in the best way. Although there are a few tricks to make cheap steaks taste expensive, steak is also usually pretty pricey, especially when you go for options like thick-cut ribeyes, New York strips, or filet mignon cuts from the tenderloin. Things can get even more expensive when you graduate from buying regular beef at the grocery store to grass-fed beef, enormous bone-in tomahawk steaks, or specialty dry-aged options from the butcher shop.

When steak is cooked to medium-rare temperatures, it's absolutely worth the high price tag. Unfortunately, it's easy to make a mistake or two that can ruin your investment, turning a perfectly good steak into an underwhelming meal. But don't despair: We know a few tricks to save your steak from turning into a dry, tough, unappealing hunk of meat. Read on to find out how to cook steak as good as your favorite steakhouse restaurant.

When given a choice between lean and fatty, most people will err on the side of lean. This is understandable if you're looking to cut calories, but otherwise you're probably better off buying a smaller, fattier piece of meat. This is because the fat often adds flavor and juiciness to the steak, especially when the fat is "marbled" throughout the steak.

Good marbling is an indicator of high-quality meat, and it is one of the things USDA inspectors look at when deciding on the rating. An even distribution of fine marbling is the best choice, and will earn the meat a USDA rating of "Prime" for the best cuts (usually sold in hotels and restaurants), "Choice" (good quality, less marbling), and finally "Select" (leaner cuts that have a little less flavor). If you go below "Select," you're getting into generic, store-brand, plastic-wrapped meats, and although they offer financial advantages for the budget-conscious consumer, you'll probably incur net flavor losses if you go this route.

So you bought your steak on Monday and plan to eat it on Wednesday, and in the meantime it's sensibly sitting in the fridge waiting patiently. With many of the other animal products that you probably have in your refrigerator or freezer, you'll typically want to get them to room temperature before you cook them. With things like chicken and fish, which either need to be thoroughly cooked for safety, or just evenly cooked throughout, bringing them up to room temperature improves your odds of getting it right. But when it comes to steak, which neither needs to be cooked thoroughly, nor evenly, having the meat start out on the cold side will work in your favor.

Regardless of how you like the inside of your steak done (we'll get to that later), you probably like the outside to be dark brown and lightly charred. If you also like the inside to be anywhere south of medium, you'll probably go with the standard cooking practice of throwing it onto an insanely hot grill or pan for a couple minutes. If you time it right, this will sear the outside to crispy perfection without letting the heat do much to the inside. In the case of a rare steak, this can require as little as one minute per side, depending on the thickness. The internal temperature of a rare steak is around 125 degrees, so if you're cooking it from room temperature, say 72 degrees, the grill only needs to raise the internal temperature 53 degrees to hit that mark. But if you leave your steak in the fridge at around 35 degrees, and throw it on the grill at that temperature, the grill now has to raise the inside temperature 90 degrees to get to the same place. This achieves two things: the extra time required to heat the steak to the ideal temperature makes it easier for you to hit the window of perfect doneness, and it also gives the outside a little extra time for the Maillard reaction to take effect, which uses the transformation of amino acids and sugars at high temperature to produce that mouth-watering grilled flavor you're totally thinking about right now.

If you suddenly have a (very understandable) desire to cook steaks for dinner but only have frozen steaks on hand, fear not. According to Cook's Illustrated, cooking steaks straight from frozen is better than thawing them before cooking because it results in more retained moisture and less overcooking. However, since the process works best when you freeze the steak in a specific way, you may still prefer to plan ahead and cook them straight from the butcher instead.

It goes without saying that you should season your steaks before you cook them, but are you seasoning them enough? Maybe you give them a light sprinkling and call it good. You'll find that although the light sprinkling seemed like just the right amount on the surface of the meat, it totally failed to take into account the iceberg nature of steaks in general: most of the meat is below the surface. When you season your steak, you should apply a generous helping of kosher salt (and pepper, if you like) and rub it into the surface. It's fine, you can't really go wrong with salt and pepper.

If you're feeling adventurous, you can take it much further. There are endless recipes for steak rubs and marinades to get your mouth watering, but a simple one to start with is made simply by adding garlic powder and onion powder to salt and pepper. Be warned that using exotic rubs and marinades (like these creative ones) might overpower the more subtle flavor of the meat. But if you only have access to a so-so cut, a sneaky rub might make all the difference to your meal.

You're cooking a couple of classy steaks that cost you most of a day's wages, so you're going to do it right and cook them in some classy extra virgin olive oil, right? Wrong! Extra virgin olive oil might be the best choice for a lot of cooking, but it isn't cut out for the heat. Throw it on a nice temperate salad or bake it in a cake, and it's right at home. But throw it on a grill at 500 degrees and it will cut and run and leave bad flavors in its wake. Extra virgin olive oil has a low smoke point of around 320 degrees, and butter is a bit higher at around 350 degrees. If you use either of these, or any other oil with a similar smoke point, the oil will start smoking (obviously). Apart from the aforementioned bad flavors the oil will leave behind, the smoke may contain toxic chemicals and could leave carcinogenic compounds on the meat.

Better choices for grilling or frying steak include peanut oil, canola oil, and extra light olive oil, all of which have smoke points above 400 degrees. In general, the lighter the color of the oil, the higher its smoke point. The more highly refined oils also do better at high temperatures, since the refining process removes many of the combustible compounds. Choosing the right oil will help you make tastier steaks, and when you fry steaks inside in the middle of winter, you won't turn your house into a really big meat smoker.

Common wisdom would have you fling the steak onto the grill, and flip it once halfway through the cooking time. And it would be hard to make a claim that this method doesn't work, because a million tasty steaks have been cooked this exact way. But just because it works doesn't mean it's the best way. This method is trying prevent unnecessarily removing the steak from the heat. However, according to the Food Lab, extra flipping might be just what the doctor ordered. Frequently flipping the steak actually helps to more evenly cook the steak. The brief period of cooling lets excess heat escape and prevents the meat near the surface from overcooking. It also helps the meat cook faster, because although there is a small amount of heat loss, the temperature doesn't get down far enough for the cooking process to stop. Thus, flipping about every 30 seconds effectively simulates cooking the meat from both sides at once and can shorten cooking times.

Despite the advantages in cooking speed and even cooking, the Food Lab admits that this technique doesn't change the flavor much from the single flip method. So if you're engaged in a particularly interesting conversation or if you would rather give your attention to a certain dinner guest than a charring hunk of meat, you won't harm your reputation by reverting. But if you want to faster food or just an excuse to stop talking to a certain dinner guest for a few minutes, start flipping.

You can skip this step for steaks that are an inch or thinner, but using the oven is a great way to cook thick steaks. Cooking a steak over direct heat on the grill or in a preheated skillet will cook the steak from the outside in, caramelizing the exterior as the heat slowly creeps towards the meat's center. But it takes a long time to cook a thick steak all the way through, and you can end up burning the outside before the inside finishes cooking. Stovetop searing also doesn't ensure the steak will cook evenly, as the meat is only exposed to heat from the bottom.

Instead, use the oven's overall heat to finish cooking your steak. You'll still want to give the steaks a hard-and-fast sear to develop that gorgeous crust, so go ahead and sear the steak for three to four minutes on the first side. Then, flip the steak over and pop it into 450 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 10 minutes. The pan will be hot enough to sear the second side, and the gentle heat of the oven will cook the steak through while keeping it nice and juicy. If you're using a probe thermometer, even better: You'll know the exact moment when you should remove the steak from the oven.

Steak is pretty awesome, and you can't be blamed for wanting to immediately shove it down your throat once it's off the heat. This is a mistake. As meat is cooked, the fibers start to shrink, and any water they contain is squeezed out and into the spaces between. The higher the temperature the meat achieves, the greater the effect. If you cut into the meat immediately after it comes off the grill, much of that liquid and — the juiciness it would have been responsible for — will run out onto your plate. However, if you cover the meat in foil and let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes, the fibers in the meat will have a chance to relax and let some of the juices back in.

Cooking a quality steak can be a stressful experience for you as well as the steak, what with all the heat, spitting oils, charring meat, and short cook times. So if you don't give yourself a chance to relax, sip a glass of wine, and anticipate the pleasure to come, you will have turned the chance to eat like a king into a nothing more than a medieval chef simulator.