re: Help with a porterhouse

Did you use just a vegetable oil?

youre playing with fire without a thermometer

You can guess but it doesn't sound like you cook steaks often enough to know what to shoot for.

Post a pic of the steak if you can. Thickness with determine a lot

I added a good amount of evoo to cast iron.
turned it up to about med to medium high. a 6 on my 1 to 10 range.
let the oil heat up until it is barely smoking
throw steak in and flip every 30-40 seconds. the more flipping the better.
i did this for about 4 minutes and added butter to the pan.
butter melted right away and i leaned the cast iron towards me eith the steak sitting up high.
spooned the melted butter and oil on top of each side of the steak.
total time was about 6-7 minutes for a pretty thick medium rare ribeye

https://www.seriouseats.com/2012/12/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-pan-seared-steaks.html

quote:

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If there's one piece of steak-grilling advice that people seem to get more persnickety about than anything, it's that your steak should only be flipped once.

False. This is another hang-on gleaned from steakhouses in which it's simply impractical for a cook to flip more than once given the number of steaks they have cooking on a grill at the same time. At home, you're probably only cooking a few steaks at a time, and it's ok—indeed, it's better—to flip your steaks more often.

You don't have to take my word for it either. Famed food scientist and author Harold McGee has been advocating this method for years (and has the data to prove its efficacy). Dave Arnold over at Cooking Issues has replicated his tests, as have I (with hamburgers). You can quite easily do the test for yourself.

By flipping a steak multiple times—as often as once every 15 seconds or so—you not only end up with meat that's more evenly cooked, you also cut down on your cook time by as much as a third, and develop a great crust on top of that. This is because with multiple flips, neither side is exposed to intense heat for too long, nor does it lose much heat to the relatively cool air above. It's the equivalent of cooking it from both directions simultaneously.

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So if it's not that thick, only a little over an inch, what would be the cooking time for rare/mid-rare?

I didn't believe it either but the steaks came out great. Might do this method again this weekend

Maybe 5 minutes total.

The finger to thumb test is usually a good indicator of how much a steak is cooked if you aren't using a thermometer.

I had a timer running on the stove but I pulled them after I pressed on them with the tongs and they felt right. One went 7 minutes and one went around 5.

Like the link says somewhere in the article, you can cut it open in a little spot and check to see how much its cooked.


That article is really good

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The smoke point isn't that high for vegetable oil and especially butter. Evo would be the best bet.

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EVO is one of the lowest smoking points of all oils. Go with Peanut or Safflower.

EVOO is around 400, Veg is in like the lower 300s I believe

Well google says I messed that all up

LINK

Apparently Veg is somewhere in the range of 400-450 and EVOO is more like 325-375

Yea I thought it was opposite too, but I never really cook with veg oil much