Talking Food with Cory Bahr: Making a Great Steak

Y'all, I'm Chef Corey Bahr and today we're "Talking Food." So, today one of the things we're going to talk about and one of the questions I get asked the most is how to cook a steak, not on the grill. And my answer for that is always one of these: a great cast iron skillet.

You start cooking a great steak by buying great meat. There's no substitute for buying high-quality beef. These are two cuts that we offer at Parish restaurant. This one is from Raines Farm. It's a Wagyu New York strip and this is a Master Kobe A9 sirloin cap.

The cooking of the steaks has to be quick and hot. Another no-no, don't apply oil at this point. You just want the meat the way it is. We have some kosher salt. I prefer Diamond kosher salt, we're going to go from about a foot above the meat in a circular motion. All sides, pat as you go. There we go.

What we didn't apply at this point is pepper. Because pepper burns and it gives off an acrid flavor. We want the steaks to be delicious. So just salt for right now. We have our cast iron skillet on the heat, we got to make sure it gets super hot before we put a piece of meat in there.

We want to immediately start caramelizing this beef. We're going to add a little bit of oil. You want to press that down in the skillet to make good contact. And then the hardest part, for most people, is to leave it alone. Like I said, you want to not flip them right now while you're building that crust. But you do want to move them around and make sure there's oil that's getting underneath the steak so you're getting that heat transfer into the meat. Going to take a peek. Oh yeah, that's looking great.

So at this point, I'm going to flip the steaks. Look at that brown crust. That's exactly what we're looking for. That heat has caused the steak to caramelize, that's form and flavor right there. One of the things I love to do, adding more flavor: pods of garlic, thyme into the skillet. That's awesome. And then a healthy amount of really good butter. We're going to baste the steaks. Just like that. Just give them a nice butter-garlic-thyme bath.

We're going to go into the 350-degree oven for about five minutes to get medium rare. The steaks have been in about five minutes. The next important really, really important process with the stakes is to flip them over and then rest them on a baking rack like that. Our steaks have been resting for about five minutes. Redistributing those juices, we're going to slice them up and just present them very simply. So we're going to cut our steaks now. So perfect medium rare sear. As you notice there's not juice running everywhere. That's because we rested our steak properly.

As y'all remember, we did not put pepper on the steak, because it would burn. So we're going to finish with a little bit of pepper. Always a pinch of salt, that roasted garlic as you can see right now, this is great. Little bit of garlic oil on there. And look at that. That's like its own sauce right there. And then one of our favorite ways that I think really highlight to me and one of my favorite ways. This was just a little salsa verde. Just a little drizzle. Drizzle a little more because it's delicious. And that's how we cook a steak.

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