The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

orders for chicken that table twelve is waiting for. At home,
we don’t have the same urgency—we have more time to
plan and more time to execute.
As it turns out, a better way to cook a thick steak is to
start it in a hot pan and then turn down the heat. You want
to time it so that the optimal level of browning is achieved
just as the center of the meat reaches the desired final
temperature. How do you brown using moderate heat? First
of all, use some butter. The milk proteins in butter brown
naturally, giving the steak a jump start. Second, baste the
steak. By spooning the hot fat over the meat as it cooks, you
allow both sides to get the browning effects of the butter
while simultaneously shortening its cooking time. For more
on butter-basted steaks, see the recipe here.
Alternatively, you can go radical and use my technique
for cooking your steak in a beer cooler (wait, what?—skip
ahead to here, and you’ll see).