Perfect Oven Cooked Steak in Minutes
Learning how to make steak in the oven isn't any harder than learning how to slap it on the grill or in a frying pan. Pay attention to the heat, timing and what kind of steak you're working with and there’s no reason you can’t cook up a perfect steak in the oven when grilling season is over.
How to Select Steak
With so many cuts to choose from, how do you figure out which kind of steak to buy? Aside from finding a place that sells good, fresh meat, most people select their steak by how lean or fatty it is.
Lean steaks lend themselves well to marinades or rubs because they don’t have the fat content to keep them moist during cooking. Marinades also help break down the tough tissue, making for a more tender steak. One exception to this is tenderloin steak — a lean cut but also the tenderest of the steaks. You don’t want to marinate beautiful tenderloin.
Other lean steaks include flank, round, shoulder, sirloin, T-bone, and tri-tip. Cuts with good marbling, an indication of fat running through the meat, include porterhouse, rib eye and chuck eye.
Broiling is Simple
The best method for cooking steaks in the oven is to broil them. For some reason this cooking method tends to scare people off, but it’s really not that hard. Just think of a broiler as an upside-down barbecue — it’s the same idea … just different. The thing to remember about broiling is how far away the meat is from the flame. You don't throw a steak right on top of the flames on a barbecue, do you? Same with a broiler. Before you turn the oven on, move the broiler rack to three to four inches away from the flame.
Preheating is Key
Turn the broiler on and heat the pan you will be cooking the steaks on. Just as you don’t want to throw the steak in a cold pan or on a cold grill, you want to make sure your broiler pan is nice and hot as well. Oil it a little with olive oil and turn the broiler on for 10 minutes.
Degrees of Doneness
When the broiler is preheated, put your steaks on the pan and slide it under the flame. The amount of time you will cook the steaks depends primarily on the thickness and the cut. For instance, cook a 1 inch thick T-bone, Flat Iron or porterhouse for 15 to 20 minutes total, flipping it once halfway through the cooking time. A 3/4-inch rib eye or strip steak will take slightly less time, about 8 to 11 minutes total.
You can tell exactly when your steak is done by taking its temperature with a kitchen thermometer. Slide the probe into the side of the steak until it reaches the middle. A rare steak cooks to 140 degrees; medium rare to 145, medium to 160, and well done cooks to 170 degrees. Pull your steak when it’s five degrees below the desired temperature and let it rest for 10 minutes to get the perfect degree of doneness.
Now you know the tricks to broiling. Try it, and let us know how your steaks turn out!