Rob Levitt's 3-3-2-2 Steak Searing Method

Opinions about how to cook the perfect steak are like short tempers: every chef has one.

Which really just demonstrates that there is no one correct way to cook a steak; there are many, and if you can learn to execute even one of them correctly, you’ll be eating delicious, char-edged, red-centered pieces of beef from now until the cows come … well, to your table. One such strategy (and perhaps the easiest one, at that)? The “3-3-2-2” method, a steak-searing trick that Rob Levitt, the man behind Chicago’s Butcher and Larder, just shared with The Takeout.

First, he decries a couple old-school steak credos (your pan doesn’t need to be “rippin’ hot”; your steak doesn’t need to be room-temp). Then he proposes a very simple process:

Step 1: Select your heaviest skillet and let it sit over medium heat for a few minutes.
Step 2: Put a couple tablespoons of the cooking oil of your choice into the pan.
Step 3: Lay down a steak (as in, your average 1/2-inch to 1-inch strip or rib eye) on that oil.
Step 4: Wait three minutes (and don’t touch the steak).
Step 5: Flip it, wait three more minutes (and don’t touch the steak).
Step 6: Flip, two minutes (no touching).
Step 7: Flip, two minutes (seriously don’t touch that f*cking steak).
Step 8: Let it rest for five minutes.
Step 9: Now you can touch it. And eat it.

In other words, if you can remember the not-quite-Fibonaccian sequence of 3-3-2-2, you can cook a perfect steak.

We believe in you.

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Image via Rawpixel / Unsplash

h/t The Takeout

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Walker Loetscher

Walker is the former Editor in Chief of InsideHook. Before that, he was the Managing Editor of Howler Magazine. He attended Georgetown University, and lives in the woods with a nice lady and some dogs.