This recipe comes from Gordon Ramsay’s F Word^[1] –

Gordon Says “don’t be afraid to cook a steak on the big night. If you follow these simple rules, it will be easy. Let the pan get nice and hot. If there’s no heat in the pan, there’s no color. If there’s no color, there’s no flavor”. Make sure the steak is relaxed, meaning it’s at room temperature. A relaxed steak will cook quicker, and won’t be stone cold in the center. Ingredients needed to cook a perfect steak couldn’t be simpler, so grab a steak next time you’re at the market, and treat yourself to a delicious meal.

Keep in mind, stove cooked steaks can produce lots of smoke while cooking. Open the windows before you start, and turn on the exhaust fan.

Ingredients:

• New York Steak (or your preferred cut)
• Salt
• Freshly Cracked Pepper
• Butter
• Neutral Oil (flavorless cooking oil)

Directions:

Use a generous amount of salt and pepper to season the steak, and gently press it into the meat with your fingers. The thicker the cut of steak, the more salt and pepper you will need.

Use a heavy pan for cooking steak. Cast iron pans work best for this particular meal. Get the pan nice and hot, then add the oil. Wait for the oil to heat up, it should just start to smoke before adding the steak. Add the steak and push it down in the center with your fingers to ensure the entire steak is touching the bottom of the pan.

It’s very important to only flip the steak once during cooking. Moving the steak around while cooking it will only drain it of essential juices and lead to a less than desirable result. For rare, cook 2-3 minutes on the first side, then flip the steak. About 1 1/2 minutes into the second side, melt butter into the pan. Spoon the butter over the steak, ensuring to cover the entire steak. When the steak is just about finished, turn it onto it’s back, fat side down. Cook for about 30 seconds to reduce and soften the strip of fat. Remove steak from pan, and baste again with butter from the pan. Leave to rest, then slice if desired.

You can test doneness of the steak by comparing the firmness of the steak to parts of your hand. Rare is on your thumb muscle, near your palm, medium is near the outer edge of your thumb, and well-done is where your wrist meets your hand. Watch the video for a visual explanation of firmness. Embedding is disabled on the video for some reason, but you can watch it by clicking the link.

F Word
How to cook a perfect steak.^[2][3]

References

1. ^{^} F Word (www.amazon.com)
2. ^{^} F Word (www.amazon.com)
3. ^{^} How to cook a perfect steak. (youtu.be)