Best way to thaw stuff: stick it in a bowl. Run cool water into the bowl for 10 minutes. The water doesn't need to be flowing fast, just that the idea is to move lots of heat into it, without making it a breeding ground for bacteria. If you micro, it will cook the outside, and make it like rubber.
Also, if you meat has thin visible lines of fat (we call this marbling, cause it looks like marble), the meat will benefit from slower cooking... But since most steaks you buy from the mart are very lean, they benefit from very quick cooking.
Okay.. Dry the steak thoroughly. Next, get some pepper and salt, maybe a little chili powder/paprika and garlic powder/salt or cumin or cayenne pepper powder, and mix what you have together in about equal proportions with a little less salt than the other ingredients. It's really up to how spicy you want it, and what you have on hand, but overdoing spices will not be a good thing. On a really good, tender piece of meat, it's okay to use nothing but salt and pepper, but I like at least some garlic/onion powder. Take that mixture, rub it on your steak so that both sides are nicely covered.
Get a pan (cast iron works great), put a *little* veg or lite olive oil (not extra virgin, it will burn at low temperatures, and its otherwise a waste) on the bottom, and heat that sucker up so that the oil starts to look funky, but if you see little whisps of smoke, take the heat down. If you have more than 1/16 of an inch of oil, you've got way too much, you really only need a film of oil. Plop your rubbed steak down in the pan, and leave it alone for a few minutes--do not move it for at least two minutes. Also, don't cover the steak, that will just trap steam and make this process not work. What you're doing here is caramelizing the outside of the meat, making lots of flavor in the process... And if it looks dark brown, but not black, you're doing it right. If it's a thin steak (1/2" or less), it will cook pretty quickly, so if you sear that steak too long, it will be overcooked. Not good.
I use a pan, because most grills cannot produce enough heat to effectively caramelize the steak. If you do it right, you'll make as good a steak as most restaurants... And restaurants usually use a broiler that glows red to produce enough heat to make this happen quickly, then they cook the steak slower on a grill after that.
I like my steaks medium to medium well, so there's a little pink in the middle. This usually takes 20 minutes to get both sides good and brown on my cast iron skillet. To me it's the perfect balance between taste and juiciness, without hearing a moo each time you chomp down.
Unlike most people, I don't think marianiting a steak is always the best thing to do.
Last edited by RoofusMcDoofus (2006-12-14 16:11:27)