Frequently Asked Questions. Is it better to pan fry steak in butter or oil? Both butter and oil are good to pan fry a steak. It really depends on personal taste and the type of steak.
I use a little of both. The oil has a higher smoke point which means it won't burn when you crank the heat up high. The butter, however, gives it great flavor. Using both slightly decreases the smoke factor while providing a nice sizzle for the fat on the outside of the steak to crisp up.
Yes, you can cook a steak in a frying pan. Heat the pan to medium-high heat and add a little oil or butter. Place the steak in the pan and cook for 3--4 minutes on each side until cooked to your desired doneness.
Adding butter to steak adds extra richness and can also soften the charred exterior, making a steak more tender.
Second, by the time your steak is ready the butter will have moved past browned and onto burnt, creating undesirable bitter flavors. Instead, start cooking your steak in the bare pan until it's about 20-30 degrees from your desired doneness, THEN add the butter.
It's as simple as this: while the steak is searing in the pan, throw in butter, garlic and thyme and baste continuously as the steak finishes cooking. The garlic-thyme infused butter does all sorts of wonderful things to the steak, seeping into the cracks and crevices, and adhering to the crust of the steak.
Most fine restaurants age their beef to intensify the flavor and improve the tenderness of the cut. Aging is done by letting the meat sit (in very controlled conditions) for several days or weeks.
Indeed, compound butter is very common in traditional American steakhouses, and it's an incredible way to enhance and add flavors to steaks. But, it's just not a traditional part of the churrascaria. Most of our meats are as simple as can be; the meat itself, the salt that crusts it, and the flavor of the fire below.
Now, before you accuse restaurants of butter sabotage, let's talk about the "tenderizer" effect. The fat in the butter can help soften the meats' protein fibers, resulting in a more tender steak. It's like giving your steak a spa day, minus the fluffy robes and cucumbers on the eyes.
Start in a cold pan (no need to preheat). Flip the steaks every 2 minutes. Start with high heat, and then after a few flips, turn it down to medium. Cook until the exterior is well browned and the interior registers 120 degrees Fahrenheit (for medium-rare).
Season it as though it were right about to hit the grill. IF YOU PUT A TON OF SALT ON YOUR STEAK, IT WILL BE SALTY! Just use as much salt as you normally would add to a steak, and do not rinse the steak before cooking.
Season steaks with pepper, add to pan, and cook, flipping frequently with tongs until well browned on all sides (including edges, which you can sear by holding steaks sideways with tongs) and the internal temperature has reached 110°F (43°C) for rare or 130°F (54°C) for medium (steak will continue to cook for a bit ...
Because it browns easily and can burn when cooked at high temperatures, butter is usually unsuitable for dishes that require a high cooking temperature. Instead, cooking oils are the best option and there are a variety of choices available from peanut oil, to avocado oil, vegetable oil and olive oil.
Make sure your pan is hot
Use a stainless steel or a cast iron skillet for this kind of cooking; avoid nonstick skillets. Add a few teaspoons of vegetable oil (which has a higher smoke point) and set the pan over high heat. Pat the meat dry as the pan heats — this helps keep it from steaming instead of searing.
The key is salt and butter
"In almost every restaurant worth patronizing," he wrote, "Meat and fish are seared with a mixture of butter and oil." Cooking steaks in a bath of butter, along with a bit of garlic, rosemary, and thyme, is what makes restaurant steaks so succulent.
Basting it with butter both deepens the crust on the outside and helps the steak cook more quickly.
What kind of butter do steakhouses use? Restaurants like Ruth's Chris Steakhouse often serve compound butter. It's just softened butter with a variety of herbs and spices.
Take Texas Roadhouse for instance: Their steaks get generously rubbed with a sweet yet smoky seasoning before the meat is grilled. This creates juicy meat with a spiced crust that packs a flavor punch with each bite.
By adding salt to your steak, you will help pull out moisture from the meat, enriching the flavor of your steak while tenderizing it in the process. Salt will act as a natural brine and can be added up to 24 hours before cooking, instilling deep, rich flavors and tenderness to any cut of beef.
What's the Best Steak for Pan-Frying? You'll have the best results using the pan-searing technique if you select a boneless steak between 1 and 1 1/2 inches thick. We'll get into cuts in just a bit, but we generally recommend using thicker cuts like a New York strip steak or a boneless ribeye.
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!
Cooking steak in a cast iron pan is ideal because cast iron heats very evenly and retains heat exceptionally well. A pre-heated cast iron skillet provides the intense heat needed to sear the exterior of a steak to a crispy, flavorful golden-brown while also cooking the interior to perfection.
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.