How to be a Bachelor: Cooking a decent steak.

Not a perfect steak, not even a great steak. Just decent steak.

This entry on How to be a Bachelor refers direrctly to the principle of the 80% rule. Most importantly, all my posts on this topic will refer to the Don't do what I tell you to do principle. This is not about you doing any particular thing, it's about learning general principles by describing specific examples.

The most important part of cooking a decent steak is choosing a decent steak at the butcher shop. You may be kind of broke, you may want to cut back on your costs. If so, don't even buy a steak. Get some chicken and save your cash.

But if you can buy a steak, take a second to look them over. Later you can get on youtube and look up the excruciating details of choosing a really great steak, but for now let's just say you get a well marbled ribeye with very little visible gristle. Do take a second to look them over, don't drive yourself crazy comparing them. Take the middle road and let's cook a steak.

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This is a decent steak. The fatty end on the right is less than 100% but I can live with that. The marbling is the thin white streaks of fat radiating from the center, thicker, fatty bits. You can't see it here, but there was only one small strand of gristle, a translucent band of connective tissue that turns white when cooked and is difficult to cut and impossible to chew. The less of that the better.

The fatty bits are good. You are a bachelor, you don't have to pretend you are eating healthy by avoiding the parts that have the most flavor and, interestingly enough, the most vitamins. "Lean" meat is dry, tasteless and chewy. You may not think so having been used to skinless turkey breast, but it's time you got over that.

Oh wait....

You're a bachelor, you don't need a $6000 BBQ grill. Get out your cast iron pan. Don't have a cast iron pan? Doesn't matter. Get out any pan. Then get out your bacon.

OK, listen, you really need to have bacon. If you are a vegan, fine, but then you wouldn't be cooking a steak, would you? We can talk about cooking bacon another time. And BTW, we still need to talk about getting you a cast iron frying pan.

So fry up a couple of pieces of bacon. In case you are wondering, I cut it in half so it fits in the pan, and in my container, and so I don't end up eating so much expensive bacon.

But the reason you are cooking bacon is that bacon fat is the best thing to cook steak in. No, don't use vegetable oil. To cook a steak you need temps that will burn vegetable oil, and then you have trans-fats. And a nasty taste. So cook your steak in bacon fat at a high heat, just barely less than smoking hot.

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They say the perfect steak is rare... I don't care. I don't want the perfect steak, I want the steak I like, I want a decent steak for me. Not for some guy who eats truffles.

So I cook it medium-rare. You decide for yourself, but here's the trick. Ignore what they tell you about only turning it once and not poking it with a fork. I'm going to say don't use a fork, but only because you don't want to mess up your pan by scratching it. I use bamboo chopsticks but any wood or nylon utensil will do. And then cook it for a little while on each side, once for every degree you want the steak cooked. See, you don't want to burn it on one side trying to get it medium-well. So you let each side cool off for a while while the other side cooks.

Turn once for rare. Cook both sides again for medium rare. Then medium, then medium well. Don't cook it well done unless you absolutely have to. It really does drive all the flavor and tenderness out of the steak.

Also, if you are aiming for well done and you overcook it... eek!

But you know what. My steak was pretty decent even though it came out closer to medium and a little dark on one side.

Why? Because I bought a decent steak, I cooked it in bacon fat, and I accept an 80% result.

I did everything I could to load the safeguards up in the front, so that accidents later on didn't matter as much. There's a principle for you. Expect yourself to be human. Make plans accordingly.

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The last part about making a decent steak, as far as technique goes, is to "rest" the steak. This is in all the videos and it's actually a good idea. See the paper towel in the last photo? Your steak is going to release some fluid for about 3 minutes. It's actually good tasting stuff, but it makes a mess when you are trying to eat. Put a paper towel on the plate, tilt it a little bit and go set up a movie while it does that.

That's right, you can eat in front of the TV because you're an adult bachelor. This is one of the few times you can do what you want to do, so ignore those article writers who say it causes stress.

Their article causes stress.

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All images from pixabay or my camera unless otherwise noted.

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Please try my Future History stories - Enmity

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