4 simple steaks you can cook in a pan
No need to fire up the grill
By Cara Nicoletti, Food52Â |Â 4:02pm ET
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Get sizzling.
(Food 52/Mark Weinberg)
Steaks are often thought of as summer fare, since so many of them do
so well on the grill, but there are a number of cuts that do beautifully
in a pan as well. Four of my favorite pan steaks are chuck eye, blade,
flatiron, and Denver. As an added bonus, these steaks are all from the
shoulder, which means that they are so flavorful they need only a bare
minimum of prep before cooking. When pan-searing steak, I stick to these rules:
Salt and pepper your steaks liberally and let them sit out at room temperature for about 40 minutes before cooking.Drizzle some neutral oil with a high smoking point in your pan (I like using cast iron) and get it ripping hot.Cook your steaks for the time recommended in each paragraph below,
and let them rest about 10 minutes before slicing them against the grain
How's that for an easy steak dinner?
Chuck eye:
At The Meat Hook we call this
steak "Delmonico," which is a name generally given to a boneless rib eye
steak — and also happens to sound a lot more appealing than "chuck
eye". The rib eye and the chuck eye share the same major muscle: the longissimus dorsi.
When this muscle, which is the eye of the rib eye steak, travels into
the shoulder, it becomes the chuck eye, or Delmonico steak. What this
means is that it has a lot in common with one of the most expensive
steaks on the animal’s body, but costs about 1/3 of the price. The chuck
eye won’t be as tender as the eye of your rib eye steak because it’s in
a harder working area of the body, but it will have the same rich
flavor and beautiful marbling. I like to cook Delmonico steak just
slightly more towards medium than medium-rare, to give the fat and sinew
time to render out — about 6 to 7 minutes per side in a hot pan.
Blade:
This steak is sometimes called the flatiron (which is the name of
another steak we'll cover later on — can someone please tell American
butchers to start streamlining their steak names?). As you might've been
able to guess, this steak peels off of the animal’s shoulder blade.
It's lean and surprisingly tender for a shoulder steak, with an
incredibly rich, beefy flavor. It’s great as a main dish steak, but
because of its shape and thickness, it also makes a great steak to cut
into strips for fajitas or steak salads. Blade steak is best cooked rare to medium-rare, which, because it’s so thin, takes only 2 to 3 minutes per side.
Flatiron:
These steaks are commonly called "clod heart steaks" or "clod
steaks." They come from a major muscle called, you guessed it, "the clod
heart." Left whole, the clod heart (no relation to actual heart)
makes a beautiful roast, but cut into steaks it's just as delicious.
Like the blade, flatiron steaks are quite tender and have a really rich
flavor. They're super lean, so be careful not to overcook them or you'll
risk drying them out. I like to cook mine to rare or medium-rare —
about 4 to 5 minutes per side.
Denver:
This cut was unveiled as a "new steak" a couple of years ago by Certified Angus Beef,
who spent a ton of money and time trying to de-bunk the misconception
that cuts from the leg and shoulder were only suitable for braising.
Like all of the steaks mentioned here, Denver comes off the shoulder. It
has gorgeous marbling and flavor, and just enough chew that it does
best if it’s hit with a Jaccard tenderizer
before cooking. Because of its long muscle strands, it is particularly
important to cut this steak against the grain after cooking and resting
it to make sure that it doesn’t get too tough. Cook it to medium-rare,
about 4 to 5 minutes per side.
This story was originally published on Food52.com: 4 simple steaks for your pan 4951