Cookalong Live How To Prepare Steak Gordon Ramsay on Channel 4

Hey, wow, I didn't realize that... Up until I read your comment I thought it was both to give it color and flavor, but also to keep the juices in; but since you explained otherwise, it makes sense. Thanks for the tip!

it has nothing to do with losing juices within the meat. those juices are removed anyway when you rest your meat. its about caramelization and flavour, not tenderness.

i like to cook my steak in a cast iron pan, i prefer it way more to a grill. a grill can impart a really bitter flavour on the meat, and you have more control in a pan. sear it on one side, flip it, color the other side. toss in your butter, garlic, thyme, sage, any herbs you want, butter baste the steak for a few minutes as the butter browns. transfer it to the oven, cook it to a nice medium rare, let it rest.

Thank you. It's surprising how many cookbooks perpetuate the old "sealing in the juices" myth. Usually they're the kind of cookbooks that are written for people to own and look at but not actually use.

correct. the reason we caramelize meat is because of flavour and texture, not to 'seal in the juices'. thats bullshit, and any chef will tell you that.

To answer your other question: I don't have any stars, but I cook a great steak.

If, like me, you cook steaks on a griddle over very high heat, the pan juices tend to evaporate and/or dry up and stick to the griddle. I loosen the residue with a little stock or wine or both and let it reduce to a rich jus while the steak is resting. Nothing special about this, it's the way any bistro cook does it. The 3 secrets to cooking a steak are 1. very high heat (browns it), 2. short cooking time (keeps it juicy), 3. let it rest for at least 5 mins afterwards (retains juice).

"Searing" is not a cooking method, it's a process that happens during cooking. Any good steak should be properly seared, but garrettface is wrong to think that it "keep[s] the juices in". It doesn't, as Ramsay and any other good chef will agree. The browning reaction happens when juices squeezed from the inside of the steak caramelise on the outside.

Cooking a steak is a trade-off between getting the outside nicely browned and stopping the inside from drying up.

So explain why searing a steak is the accepted means of cooking a steak at the best restaurants over what you all seem to claim are superior methods.

Where's your stars? ;x

bollox deep fry the bastard in cling film! this keeps the juices inside and also gives it a lovely burnt plastic taste!

And i should know i have 4 michellin tyres!

i don't deny that you still lose juice when you sear a steak, but you lose way less then you would cooking them otherwise.

it's just a better method of cooking them, i find.

The only problem with that is that if you've cooked the steak over a properly high heat, you won't be able to pour all the pan juices into a jug because most of them will have caramelised.

Searing a steak doesn't keep the juices in at all. This is a common misunderstanding. If searing kept the juice inside, well-done steaks would eventually explode, because the juice inside would ultimately boil, expand and make them puff up and split - which is, incidentally, exactly what happens to pita bread when you toast it. Meat is more porous than bread, and p3rs0nan0ngrata is right to point out that the juices get squeezed to the outside of the steak.

Absolute bollocks.

The meat is already solid. When it cooks, the protein fibrils are contracting. When this happens, water is squeezed out of them.

Try it for yourself. Weigh a steak, cook it, weigh it again and, for further evidence, pour the pan juices into a measuring jug to see how much juice you've lost.

searing it does a better job of keeping the juices in because it solidifies the outside so much quicker.

if you broil it or grill it, the cooking process is to gradual to keep the insides from leaking.