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.
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