The main claim to flipping only once is that you'll reduce the amount of browning that will occur and also reduce the flavor. While this can be true, you can easily avoid this drawback by ensuring you do not have an overabundance of surface moisture on your steak and have sufficiently high heat.
Ideally, Prentiss says, you should turn the steak once on each side to get those crosshatch grill marks, and then only flip it once.
To grill a juicy steak, you want to disrupt the juices as little as possible, so that means flipping the steak as little as possible. After a total of around 5 minutes on the first side, flip the steaks over using your tongs (never pierce the steaks with a fork!). Rotate again.
Medium-Rare Steak Temperature and Cooking Tips
To cook a medium-rare steak, place it on a hot grill for approximately 5 minutes. Flip, rotate, and move to another spot on the grill. Cook an additional 4 minutes, or until it reaches an internal temperature of 130°F (it will continue to cook while resting).
Why Do You Let Meat Rest? Internal juices constrict during the cooking process, and resting meat allows its juices to reabsorb and redistribute. Cutting it too soon will cause its juice to pool out and yield a dry cut of meat.
Our Dallas steakhouse chefs do so about every 30 seconds, but as you're probably not grilling with a stopwatch, flip them as much as you want. Most likely, you'll tend to other foods simultaneously, so keep going back to the meat to keep turning it.
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. That will get your steaks to a beautiful pink medium-rare.
Despite popular belief, when you're pan-searing a steak, it's not necessarily a bad thing to flip it more than once. The main thing to remember is to let one side get a good sear before flipping it. Then, let that side sear, too.
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!
Grilling Flat Iron Steak
Put the rack directly over heat to sear steaks for 2-3 minutes. Flip with tongs and sear for another 2-3 minutes on the other side. Pull from grill when internal temperature reaches 125 degrees for medium-rare (adjust as desired for other doneness levels).
Season the Steak: Steaks don't need much to make them great. Just before grilling, brush them lightly on both sides with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. If you want to get fancy, you can add spices like chili powder, paprika, or garlic powder to the rub.
The most important tip for grilling a perfect steak is a HOT grill. Use indirect and direct heat on either a charcoal or gas grill for the best results. Sear the first side of your steak on the hot side of the grill and finish in indirect heat after flipping.
The perfect steak requires time, and that is the approach that we take with salting. We recommend salting your steak approximately one hour before cooking it per inch of thickness. For example, if you were working with a steak that was 2-inches thick, then you would salt your steak 2 hours before cooking it.
Grilling with the lid on or off – Leave the lid open when you're searing steaks and need to keep a close eye on it. Once you move it to indirect heat, you can close the lid and let the smoke do its thing. Quick-cooking foods can usually be cooked (fish, veggies, hot dogs) with the lid open the whole time.
Probing also helps you know the meat temperature to avoid overcooking. Another benefit that has been associated with poking holes in raw meat is that it helps tenderize the meat. The piercings allow heat to penetrate deeper when cooking, cutting down on the cooking time and making the meat tender.
Certified Angus Beef says that a steak is considered rare when it is cooked to 125 degrees Fahrenheit. This falls short of the USDA's recommendations by 20 degrees, so it's still not considered safe to consume.
To achieve the perfect rare steak, cook each side for approximately two minutes. Like with the blue steak, cook each edge for a couple of seconds. This makes sure the inside is around 75% red, with a bit of blood still oozing.
Some chefs are swayed to undercook because rawness and near-rawness is seen as somehow superior. “Overcooking steak is regarded [by some] as a greater moral and aesthetic sin than undercooking it,” Mark Schatzker, author of Steak: One Man's Search For The World's Tastiest Piece Of Beef, tells The Post.
Undercooked. If a steak hasn't been cooked long enough, it can become chewy or tough as there hasn't been enough time for the heat to fully penetrate and melt the fat and any connective tissue.
When you cook a steak to medium-rare the internal temperature is hot enough to allow excess moisture to escape through vapor or steam, keeping your steak juicy and flavorful. Medium or well-done steak not only exceeds the just right zone of protein balance, but it also causes moisture to evaporate from your meat.
Dietary goal
If you eat red meat, limit consumption to no more than about three portions per week. Three portions is equivalent to about 350–500g (about 12–18oz) cooked weight. Consume very little, if any, processed meat.
Often mistaken for cube steak, minute steak is actually thinly-sliced sirloin that's quite tender and therefore cooks quickly. This very lean cut can become leathery if cooked for too long, so stay close and attentive throughout the cooking process.
Five to seven minutes should be the minimum if you're in a rush. If you know your cut is thick, give it at least 10 minutes. You could rest it for 5 minutes for every inch of thickness. You could rest it for 10 minutes for every pound.