Recipe

How to Cook the Perfect Steak: An Awesome Recipe

Each American eats around 220 pounds (or more) of beef every single year. It’s a delicious meat that we can’t have often enough, but a poorly cooked steak is easy to pass up. 

With such a beloved dish, it’s important to know how to treat your dinner guests to the perfect steak when they come over to your home. If your steaks never turn out the way you want, then now’s a good time to figure out what’s going wrong.

Listed down below are tips and tricks to help you learn how to cook the perfect steak. Plus, a recipe that’s great for beginners and masters alike!

Choosing the Right Steak

Even the best steak recipe won’t help if the steak itself isn’t the right one for the job. The first thing to look for in a steak is its grade level. The higher the grade, the better the steak, but it’s still possible to cook great steaks on a budget.

In the US, we have three types of grades:

• Select – The lowest grade. These steaks are serviceable but the marbling and quality are not so good, making it tougher and less flavorful.
• Choice – The medium grade. Choice grades have good marbling and flavor and are often the highest grade available in many supermarkets.
• Prime – The highest grade. These are the top-quality steaks that we all dream about, but a lot of general supermarkets don’t even carry these beauties. Most often, you’ll need to go to a butcher for this grade.

Regardless of its USDA grade, always choose a steak that is firm with an even distribution of marbling. The color needs to be a bright pink color, and avoid anything that’s dark red.

Understanding Steak Temperatures

We all have different ideas as to what’s the perfect steak, but knowing how to cook each temperature is a huge asset. When a guest asks for a specific temperature, you want to serve them a steak they love.

While knowing the finger test is good for professionals, an instant thermometer is even better for accurate reads every time. Use the following list to help get the perfect doneness for all preferences:

• Rare: 125º
• Medium Rare: 135º
• Medium: 145º
• Medium Well: 150º
• Well Done: 160º

Allow Time for Resting

It almost seems counter-intuitive to leave a hot steak covered to rest for any amount of time. The problem with skipping this step is that all of the natural juices that make for a flavorful steak are at the edges of the meat.

By allowing it to rest, you’re helping to redistribute those juices throughout the rest of the meat. This gives you the best flavor and texture every single time.

Always give your steak at least a few minutes of resting time before you dive in with high-quality cutlery, such as this modern knife set. It’s difficult to wait, but it’s well worth the effort!

Cater Your Seasonings

It’s easy to go overboard with seasonings. More seasoning seems like a good thing, at first, because it gives the steak more flavor.

For an even better result, it’s best to go with simple seasonings that allow the steak to speak for itself. You’re taking the time to cook a high-quality steak to perfection, why not have the flavor of the meat be the star of the meal?

Rubs and marinades are great for certain dishes, but most of the time, a simple seared steak is perfection, which is what our recipe is all about.

The Best Recipe for Simple Pan-Seared Steak

There are a lot of different ways to cook a steak that all result in a delicious meal. Before you dive into all of those different steak recipes, it’s a good idea to master the simplest version. The following is the best steak recipe to give you a lot of experience cooking steak while allowing you to experiment if you want.

Even if you never cook a steak in any other way, you’ll always have this method in your cooking toolbox. It’ll impress you (and your guests!) for many delicious years.

Ingredients:

• Room temperature steak (1 to 1 ½ inch thick of your grade choice)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 3 tablespoons garlic butter
• Cast-iron skillet

Cooking Process:

1. Make sure your steaks are at room temperature so that the outside cooks as soon as it touches the hot pan, creating a good sear. Take them out at least a half-hour before cooking.
2. Start heating your skillet. A cast-iron skillet takes up to 10 minutes to heat up to the right temperature. Once it starts to smoke a little, it’s ready.
3. Pat the steaks dry with some paper towels to get rid of excess moisture, then season with salt, coating both sides with a generous layer.
4. Place the steaks into the hot pan, and leave them there for at least 1 minute or until a good crust forms. This is why there’s no oil in this recipe, as it’s not necessary and can hinder a proper sear.
5. Once the crust is there, you’re able to flip the steak to the other side without it sticking. Cook the other side for 1 minute as well.
6. Continue flipping between the two sides for another 4 minutes.
7. Add in the garlic butter (use steak butter or regular butter if you prefer) and tilt your pan to one side to allow the melted butter to collect. Use a spoon to spread the buttery goodness over the steaks as it cooks, keeping the meat tender, juicy, and flavorful. Flip and repeat every minute or so.
8. Continue cooking for another 6 minutes, at which time you’ll test for the doneness of the steak.
9. Once it reaches your preferred temperature, take the steaks out, and allow them to rest for half the time they cooked.
10. Enjoy with all of your favorite sides and sauces!

Cooking the Perfect Steak Only Takes a Little Practice

Trying to learn how to cook the perfect steak seems like a daunting task at first. Once you try it a few times, it becomes far easier and you’ll never worry about ruining an expensive piece of meat again.

Continue practicing and come back to this page whenever you need a refresher on tips and tricks. You’ll be a master at steaks in no time!

Getting ready for a night of entertaining your guests? Check out the rest of our blog for even more pointers on how to wow everyone at your dinner table!

Try This Amazing Date Night Recipe

According to a study from the Marriage Foundation, married couples who have a date night once a month were the most likely to stay together. 

There’s no denying the power of quality time spent together to make a couple feel closeness and happiness. Date night recipes are a great way to combine that quality time with delicious food. You can even develop your cooking skills at the same time!

Read on for a great date night recipe you can try this month!

Date Night Recipes: Brined Pork Chops

Brining is one of those fantastic cooking techniques that’s both easy and makes an amazing difference in the flavor of your food. Not everyone learns how to brine growing up, so with this simple addition to your cooking repertoire, you’ll take your easy date night dinners to a whole new level!

One of the most common troubles with cooking is making sure that you don’t dry out your meat. Brining not only adds flavor on its own, but it also makes it easy to avoid drying out your meat. In fact, your brined pork chops will end up juicier and moister than even the most carefully prepared pork chops without brining.

To properly brine your pork chops, you’ll need a brining bag. A good brining bag will not only allow you to comfortably brine plenty of meat at the same time, but it will also make it much easier to clean up after your cooking. Plus, you can use it for many, many other delicious date night dinner recipes at home that call for brining!

Before you put your pork chops into the brine bag, you’ll want to make sure they’re completely unfrozen. Sugar is a great addition to a brine solution, helping to brown the meat and add extra flavors.

For this recipe, you’ll also need a heavy bottom frying pan. There are inevitably tiny differences in the thickness and density of the bottoms of frying pans.

These little differences mean that the surface of your pan is hotter in some spots and cooler in others. The result can be unevenly cooked meat.

A heavy bottom frying pan helps to maintain a nice even temperature so your meat is cooked perfectly all the way through. This delicious date night dinner idea will become a go-to choice when you can’t figure out what to cook for a date!

After your pork chops are done brining, don’t be afraid to rinse them off and pat them dry. The juices and flavors penetrate deep into the meat, so this won’t hurt the meat’s flavors in any way. On top of that, a clean, dry surface on your meat will allow you to apply a delicious dry rub.

Check out this link for more details on making the perfect pork chop brine. 

Make Your Special Night Together As Memorable As Possible

We hope you learned something helpful about great date night recipes in this brief piece. To find more recipes to enjoy cooking and eating, especially from the Mediterranean, check out our other pages!

Recipe for Success: How to Improve Time Management Skills

At least 89% of people waste time every day. 

With only 24 hours in each day, we don’t have time to waste. In fact, wasting too much time could lead to missed deadlines and impact your professional and personal life.

Keep reading to find out how to improve time management skills.

Create a Plan

We waste the majority of our time because of a lack of planning.

To avoid this, use a schedule maker to organize your day-to-day tasks. With this simple tool, you can be at ease knowing that your tasks will be efficient and structured.

It will help you prioritize your work, personal life, and appointments. You’ll know what is urgent and shape your other to-dos around those tasks.

Start by creating a list of everything you need to accomplish in a week. From there, write down deadlines and important dates that you can’t miss.

Keeping the end goals in mind, break down each task into small steps. For example, if you have to turn in a report next Tuesday, you can segment your schedule into researching, writing, and editing throughout the previous week.

That way, you don’t have to tackle the entire task at once and you won’t procrastinate. 

Set Healthy Goals

Setting goals helps build your motivation. Plus, it allows you to allocate a reasonable amount of time to get a job done.

It doesn’t have to be daunting. Start with setting small goals for your day. For example, you can set a goal of waking up 10 minutes earlier to enjoy your morning coffee without feeling rushed out of the door.

For work-related goals, create small steps rather than expecting yourself to accomplish something big. This keeps you from getting burnt out on what you’re working on, allowing you to tackle each part as you feel energized and focused.

Give yourself a small reward each time you’re successful. This can be as simple as taking a break and going outside.

By getting in the habit of setting small, healthy goals for ourselves, it becomes easier to accomplish what we’re setting out to do. As the old saying goes “if you wish to climb the mountain, you must do it one step at a time”.

Manage Stress

Another reason we waste time is that we’re stressed about everything we need to accomplish.

To overcome stress, focus on one task at a time rather than trying to do several at once. Studies show that 98% of people don’t multitask well, meaning that we aren’t able to focus on and complete anything we’re working on. 

Another way to prevent the daunting feeling of stress is by getting a head start on projects. This gives you a buffer in case of unforeseen circumstances. By starting ahead of time, you can take charge of your day and feel more self-empowered. 

Managing your stress helps you manage your time better. As a result, you’ll end up having more energy to focus on what’s important on your to-do list, since you’ll complete tasks quicker and more efficiently.

That’s How to Improve Time Management Skills

With these tips on how to improve time management skills, you can make the most of every day.

Create and stick to a plan, set healthy goals, and manage your stress so that you can be a master of time.

Keep reading our blog for more ways to improve your life.