Every carnivore loves to gobble down a tender roast meal bursting with charred meaty goodness! A real meat lover would never pass up an opportunity to consume a succulent fillet fresh off the griddle. But as easy as devouring a steak is, cooking it is not. Achieving that beautiful sear over a steak without losing all the juices in the meat is not a cakewalk; it’s an artful skill that can only be mastered with practice and experience.
That said, there are a few techniques to cook a steak perfectly, even if someone is a newbie cook. If you want to learn those tricks, then keep on reading because here we have a list of techniques from culinary gurus that will give you a thick and juicy steak anywhere.
Prepare The Meat
Prepping the meat is a critical step that comes before all else. You may think that preparing a steak means seasoning it up well, but that’s not our idea of readying the meat.
To cook a thick meat cutlet to perfection, you should warm it up a bit for 30-60 minutes before putting it on the griddle. The Curious Cook, aka Harold McGee, the famous American food author, suggests wrapping the steak in a cling film and immerse it in a pot of warm water for anywhere close to an hour. Take your brisket out just a few minutes before cooking.
Another cooking expert, Alain Ducasse, the French-born Monegasque Michelin star chef, believes that to make a tender roast is to allow the meat to come to room temperature before placing it over the fire.
To get the best of both worlds, you can bring up your steak’s temperature by following Harold’s suggestion before allowing it to come to room temperature right before cooking, just as Alain has advised.
Drying
According to the famous British steakhouse Hawksmoor and America’s Test Kitchen’s Cook Illustrated Recipe Book, patting a steak dry before cooking is a failsafe secret to an ideal medium-rare piece of meat. Of course, you need to be careful with the cooking time, but if you do that right, you can get the perfect fillet, all thanks to dabbing.
Wet meat takes an eternity to form a beautifully charred crust, and while it struggles on the grill, it can catch some unpleasant boiled-meat aromas. If you can’t dab your fillet dry, leave it at room temperature for a while; doing so will take away some of the moisture from it.
