Cooking For Engineers

[Ravi Shanghavi]

Ingredients.

AAA/PRIME steaks
butter salted
kosher/sea salt
black pepper - peppercorns crushed

Steak left on counter until it is room temperature. VERY important. 20-30min or so. In this time you can sprinkle both sides generously with the salt and pepper. also. Melt a reasonable amount of butter and pour it onto both sides of your steak. so that the steak with it's pepper/salt is completely covered in butter. This sits for 20-30min until the steak is room temp. When you come back to the steak you'll see that the butter has hardened. This is fine. I've a number of times tested butter on the steak right before hitting the pan, or butter in the pan. Neither work as well as the hardened butter method.

You'll have cranked your oven to 500F. It will have a cast iron pan inside for 20min getting superbly hot. The stovetop will be cranked to the highest setting. Carefully pull the pan out of the oven and place on the stovetop for 1min. turn the oven down to 350F.

Crank up kitchen fan and open doors.
steak into extremely hot pan for 1-1:30 each side until it's the type of crispy you like. Pull it off and let it rest on plate for 2-3min.

the pan quickly rinse in hot water. yes there will be steam. but the idea is to clear the pan of the burned bits and butter. we're talking maybe 1second under the tap swishing around. yes the pan is hot. you'll have two oven mits to keep you safe though.

now the steak goes into the oven on that pan at the 350F. 5min for medium . *or depending on thickness of steak. This was assuming 3/4inch thickness.

Now pull the steak out. place on plate and cover with foil for 3-4min.

You're good to go.

Some caveats. Lots of smoke. and fairly lengthy process
Pro's. Excellent steak without a real grill.

thoughts. You may want to try the steak on a rack as suggested by alton brown.

Comments welcome!

Cheers, Ravi Shanghavi
Ottawa,Ontario Canada

[Tuscan Chef]

What is the exact meaning of Kosher salt. Beside the religeous aspect, I see that it is practically on every recepies and we don't have it here in Italy

[Ravi Shanghavi]

This is what I have for you friend. I wasn't aware until I just looked it up. But apparently it also has the properties to bring out the fluids from the meat.

If this salt isn't available Sea salt is fine, it's usually larger grains and I use a salt mill to break it down.

"The term "kosher salt" is largely restricted to North America; in the UK it is usually called "cooking salt" outside of Jewish communities with the term "koshering salt" [1] being used in those communities. In other parts of the world, it is also known as "coarse salt" or "cooking salt"."

- Ravi Shanghavi

[Tuscan Chef]

so it's what we call "sale grosso". Thank you.