Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here!
Today, it rained. These are words almost never uttered on the 10th of September in Northern California; but today, it rained. And it was a bit of a miracle. A front swept down from the Gulf of Alaska and brought with it a gentle taste of fall. It will get hot again by the end of the week, but today, we had a delicious morning and afternoon as clouds filled the sky and the hot, muggy air from the last couple of days was replaced with cool, sweet-smelling, gentle rain. I doubt we got more than a tenth of an inch, but for a couple of hours, we got a clement rain that cleaned out the air and left a cool breeze in its wake.
I eagerly await more signs of fall, but in the meantime, I cook.
I am happy to report that since my last post, I have now successfully pan-seared a steak in my new Smithey 10″ chef skillet–I’m calling it my “redemption steak” 😉 And I’m happy to say that I took my own advice and actually did not find it wanting.
The first thing I did was to change the steak I used. Instead of a filet, I used a boneless ribeye. Ribeyes have a little more fat and I thought it would hold up to the high heat of the pan searing a little better than the filet. I marinated it in lime juice and a generous amount of Kosher salt for about 30 minutes per side.
When ready to cook, I patted the steak dry with paper towels and sprinkled a little lemon-pepper on the steak. I heated my pan on medium-high heat and added a couple of tablespoons of pecan oil. I let the oil get to shimmering-hot before putting the steak on.
Since I was a bachelorette last week, Mr. Stone Soup having been away on his annual men’s fishing trip, I cut the ribeye in half and pan-seared just one half at a time in the skillet:
Once in the skillet, I left the steak undisturbed for about 3 minutes. It developed a nice crust:
I flipped the steak and left it to sear for about 1.5 minutes. My steak was only about 3/4-1″ thick, so I didn’t want to overcook it. I tossed in about a tablespoon of butter and basted for the last minute or so, before removing it from the pan to let it rest under a tent of aluminum foil for about 5 minutes.
I was rewarded with a very nice somewhere between medium-rare and medium steak:
The pan did just great. Not only did I get a lovely sear and a good overall even cook, the seasoning was in better shape after the cook because 1) I’m sure it had a better layer of seasoning on it overall having had a couple of cooks with oil since the last ill-fated attempt at searing steaks and 2) I patted the steaks dry, thereby avoiding getting so much of the lime juice in the pan to strip the seasoning. The cook also benefitted from having only the 1/2 of a ribeye in it, which helped to avoid the overcrowding problem I had in my last attempt. It probably would have done fine with the whole ribeye, although you would need to be really mindful of it reaching all the way to the sloping sides of the pan.
Overall, the Smithey 10″ chef skillet is a great little pan for sauteing vegetables, frying eggs, making frittatas and the like. Food releases beautifully, even when the seasoning has been a little compromised and the cooking surface heats evenly. It is a great pan for one or two people, but you have to be mindful of the small (6″) actual cooking surface. I think you could pan sear two small filets, but it’s difficult to do much more than that in it. However, on the whole, I’m super happy with this purchase and I can honestly say that it’s been in almost constant rotation since I acquired it.
Next, I will do a simple cook of a boneless, skinless chicken breast before moving on from this little skillet, so stay tuned!
In the meantime,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
