Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here!
Another day, another opportunity to learn, right? And how do we learn? By trying…and sometimes by failing.
Yesterday, I did not excel at pan-searing steaks in my new Smithey 10″ chef skillet. It happens. Not every experiment can be a success and if you’re a regular reader, you know that I share the good with the bad–for a giggle, here’s a link to my most epic failure: sauerbraten.
Onward and upward. For the pan-seared steaks, here’s what I did, what I think went wrong and what I’ll do differently for my next attempt:
To prepare for my cook, I browsed the Smithey website and watched the video on pan-searing steaks. While I love their products, I found the Smithey video for pan-searing steaks to be less than helpful for a novice. The video assumed an innate knowledge of when you should turn your steaks it instead of giving times, etc., and just kind of emphasized that you should rely on your “feeling” about when the steaks were ready to turn/done that was kind of useless–for me, at least. I found another recipe that gave some times. I also have an instant-read thermometer, and so I just decided to go for it.
And in my zeal to use my new pan, I neglected to utilize my own recipes. I usually grill steaks, sometimes broil, but rarely pan-sear them…unless, that is, if I’m making steak au poivre, which would have yielded a significantly better cook than what I got. But–live and learn, right?
I got three little filets and I squeezed lime juice on them and liberally sprinkled them with Kosher salt as I usually do. When I was ready to cook, I fired the pan up on medium-high heat. After maybe 20-30 seconds, I drizzled pecan oil into the pan and let it get good a shimmery before putting the steaks into the pan:
And now let’s start listing the mistakes:
Mistake number one: I should have patted the steaks dry with paper towels before putting them into the pan.
Mistake number two: this pan was too small to fit all three steaks. The pan is a 10″ chef skillet–10″ across the top of the pan that has sloped edges, angling down to only a six inch cooking surface. A larger flat surface would have been better for this cook than were the sloped side edges of this pan.
Mistake number three: I think a rib-eye would have been a better choice than a filet–more fat to keep the steak juicy.
I left the steaks to sear for a couple of minutes before turning them:
These actually don’t look too bad, but I could have left them for longer to get better color/crust.
I left them to sear on the other side for two minutes and then added butter and rosemary:
Mistake number four: Had I then stuck to the times I had originally decided to use, the steaks might have been better. I was going to cook for about 1.5 minutes per side, marinating constantly with the butter and rosemary sauce before removing them from the skillet and resting them under a tent for about 5 minutes. Instead, I poked an instant-read thermometer into the side of the steak, which showed a temperature of only about 110–but I only checked the side of the steak that was in contact with the other steaks, not on the pan-side. I continued to cook the steaks. I ended up cooking the steaks for more like 3 minutes per side and the result was not good.
The sides of the steaks where they had been resting on the sloped edge of the skillet were way overdone, while the other side of the steak that had been in the middle of the skillet, crowded against the other steaks, was a medium.
Mistake number five: I should have gone with the times I use for my steak au poivre–about 3 minutes total per side, then resting under a tent for 5-7 minutes.
The result on these steaks was that the portion of the steaks that sat up against the side of the pan, where it slopes down, rested on the side of the pan and cooked the steak to well, well, well done and the other side of the steak, where it had been more or less resting against another steak was kind of a medium.
Lessons learned:
1: This pan can’t cook more than two steaks at a time because you need to have plenty of flat space for the steak to cook on away from the sides of the pan.
2: Pat the steak dry before putting into the pan. I think they might have cooked better, but also, because I marinate steaks in lime juice, the acid from the lime juice took the seasoning off the pan. This is what the pan looked like after cooking the steaks and before washing:
Sorry–that picture is kind of out of focus, but you can see that there was a lot of sticking. It cleaned right up with a steam cleaning, but as you can see from this picture, it took some of the seasoning with it:
No real harm done–I gave it another layer of seasoning and I’ll cook my eggs in it tomorrow morning so it can get another nice round of seasoning:
3: stick to tried and true timing–my steaks would have been better if I hadn’t cooked them for so long, depending instead on a thermometer that was registering the temperature the part of the steak that wasn’t getting as much heat.
So–lots of lessons. I think the biggest takeaway is that this pan has a rather small cooking surface, which is not a flaw. It is better for sautéing vegetables or frying eggs and the like. I am going to try to cook one steak on it to see how it does–I imagine it will do just fine.
So! Tune in again for more lessons in the kitchen with Keri!
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
