Steak Dinner

Tonight I decided to try a different way of cooking my steak for dinner. The decision was based on an article I had archived from Cooks Illustrated, a magazine I like to read not only for the recipes, but also for the techniques that are explained in the articles. The idea behind this technique was to avoid the grey, overcooked part of the steak when it was grilled at room temperature (outside) but still quite cool inside, needing more time to get the centre to the temp you want for rare to medium rare.

So, what I did was to leave this New York Strip in the fridge until cooking time. I then preheated the oven to 275*, kosher salted and freshly ground peppered the steak which I had pat dried and placed on a rack above a rimmed baking dish. Into the oven for 20 minutes.

At the same time I was roasting my potatoes in a toaster oven and creating my salad based on one I have eaten a couple of times in a restaurant in San Francisco. The salad is a quarter of a head of lettuce sprinkled with one rasher of bacon crisped and crumbled, about 3 oz. of blue cheese, and a drizzle of blue cheese dressing.  So, once the 20 minutes in the oven was up I tested the steak to find that the internal temperature was about 90* and ready for the stovetop. I wasn't up to bbq, so I had a heavy fry pan on heating up to a pretty high temperature, added some EVO and got it smoking. The steak then seared on both sides for about 2 minutes each side, then I used tongs to sear the fat cap for about a minute. I then put it back on the wire rack, covered with foil, to rest for about 10 minutes while the potatoes finished cooking. As I am sure you can see from the photo, the grey, overcooked band is not there and the steak was delicious to eat.

A positive result to this experiment.