As the dead of winter sets in many meat loving foodies find themselves deprived of what they crave the most, a great tasting thick steak! With grilling a non-existent option (unless you truly want to risk burning your house down or contracting frost bite on you toes and fingers) and broilers being one of the most useless kitchen items around, stove top cooking becomes the only option. However, many people find that cooking a steak on the stove is extremely challenging and will never yield the steakhouse quality steak they want and crave. I believe the biggest cause of this problem is because a vast majority of home chefs use way too much high heat! One of the greatest articles I found for producing some of the greatest steakhouse steaks was written a few years ago by Alain Ducasse (here). In this article he explains one of the greatest steak cooking methods that he uses at his restaurants. It allows for a little versatility and can be done at home with little to no special equipment. I have taken some time and put together my interpretation of this method as well as a photographic demonstration of this process. One of the greatest advantages of this method is that it is a very simple process to follow and yields perfect results almost every time!

The first step in the process is selecting the steak. I personally prefer a well aged rib steak as I believe that it a far superior flavor and contains the perfect amount of marbling!

To begin the cooking process (which should take approximately 45 to 50 minutes) heat your pan to a medium heat. Place the steak on its edge to begin the cooking process. The reason we place the steak on its edge is to render the fat which will help to reinforce the flavor! It may be difficult to get a thinner piece of meat to stand on its edge by itself. If this is a problem it can quickly be solved with a pair of tongs or two spoons. Cooking the sides of the steak should take approximately 10 minutes.

When the edges have achieved perfection it is now time to cook the steak faces. Before you place the steak face down smash two cloves of garlic and melt a quarter stick of butter into the pan. The fat will help two factors of flavor; first it will carry the flavor of the garlic into the meat and second it will help with enhancing the Maillard reaction. The Maillard reaction is responsible for roasted flavor, but be careful if you use heat that is too high this can quickly turn into a carbonized flavor which to me ruins the overall flavor of the meat.

After about 10 minutes, the first side should be reaching the perfect temperature. However, the butter has started to brown and needs to be replaced to prevent an infusion of the burnt butter flavor.

Finally, after another 10 minutes of cooking the meat should be reaching perfection. Resist checking the meats roasting by cutting into it, the more the meat gets poked the more juice runs out drying out the meat. I suggest using a meat thermometer to read the temperature to ensure the desired finish.

Once the meat has finished cooking on the stove it needs to rest. This allows the juices to settle back into the meat after they rushed to the surface from the cooking process. This should take approximately 15 minutes or half of the time the meat was on the stove. I use a warm plate or you can place it in a oven at approximately 150 degrees to ensure that the meat does not cool too much while you wait.