Place the tips of your thumb and your pinky softly against each other. Use your other hand to press the ball of your thumb. The muscle feels quite hard now. This is how your steak will feel when it is cooked well done.
Use the following timing recommendations to learn how long to rest steak so that the flavorful juices have time to distribute through your meat: Rest meat for 5 minutes per inch of thickness. Rest meat for 10 minutes per pound. Rest meat for 1 minute for every 100 grams.
During cooking, aim to cook your steak medium-rare to medium – any more and you'll be left with a tough piece of meat. Turning it every minute or so will make sure you get a really even cook. After cooking, leave it to rest and rub with a little extra virgin olive oil or butter for an incredible, juicy steak.
No. The United States Department of Agriculture recommends not eating or tasting raw or undercooked meat. Meat may contain harmful bacteria. Thorough cooking is important to kill any bacteria and viruses that may be present in the food.
If your grill is too hot, the crust might be a perfectly charred deep brown, but the center could still be raw; if your grill isn't hot enough, the steak could overcook by the time it gets those coveted grill marks. All in all, it can be difficult to recognize when a steak is fully cooked, inside and out.
Overcooked steak tends to be solid light gray all the way through, flavorless, dry, and feels like chewing a bundle of tough muscle fibers. It detracts from the sensory experience and can make eating your steak a painstaking and laborious task.
Most big steakhouses broil their steaks, using overhead, infrared broilers that produce incredibly hot temperatures to cook steaks. Don't worry though, you don't need to go out and invest in one, but the principle is the same. You need incredibly high heat in direct contact with the meat.
As a rule of thumb, when cooking steaks that are 1-1/2 inch thick, you want to go by the 3-4 rule. That is, three minutes per side on direct heat, then four minutes per side on indirect heat.
But the reality is that flipping a steak repeatedly during cooking—as often as every 30 seconds or so—will produce a crust that is just as good (provided you start with meat with a good, dry surface, as you always should), give you a more evenly cooked interior, and cook in about 30% less time to boot!
Adding butter to steak adds extra richness and can also soften the charred exterior, making a steak more tender.
Cooking slowly therefore is really the best way to naturally tenderize the meat and maintain a juicy texture. Gelatinized collagen is actually what gives the meat a sweeter flavour when smoked slowly. Does that mean Hot & Fast cooking should be avoided? Absolutely not.
Hot and fast: Anytime you are planning to use a thinner meat cut like the Skirt steak or the Flank, cooking it fast on high heat will yield the best results. With a thin cut, any slow cooking method will overcook the meat and leave it with a chewy, rubbery texture.
When you are using the fast-flip method of cooking steak, you flip the steak every 30 seconds. This fast steak recipe gives great results every time. And the steak cooks 30% faster, to boot!
Here, a meat thermometer is a crucial tool, and we suggest that everyone have one on hand. If you don't have one, however, or if it's not within reach when you need it, the touch test also works: Touch the cut of meat with your finger and then feel the fleshy part of your hand underneath your thumb.
If the fresh meat is a steak, roast or chop, then yes — medium-rare can be safe. That means the meat needs to reach 145°F internally and stand for three or more minutes before cutting or consuming.
If you'd like your steak medium-rare, it should feel like your cheek: tender and soft but still fleshy (as opposed to raw, which would be just soft). If you want a medium steak, touch your chin: The steak should still be tender, but with some resistance.
The center of the steak becomes supersaturated with liquid—there's more liquid in there than it can hold on to—so when you slice it open, all that extra liquid pours out. By resting the steaks, you allow all that liquid that was forced out of the edges and into the center time to migrate back out to the edges.