What happened to my steak?
I have trouble cooking a steak 'medium', and to be honest, cooking it at all.
These were my steps:
- Bought a steak (hip) that was about 1cm to 1.5cm in height. I let it reach room temperature (1 to 2 hours outside the fridge) and dried it.
- heated a metal pan and added some oil when it was already quite hot
- put in the meat. It was 'glued' to the pan slightly (not hot enough?) but that was only a minor problem
- fried from both sides on high heat for about 1 minute until sides had a light brown (see picture)
- reduced heat and kept cooking
However, after about 10 minutes, the outside color had not changed much, and the inside was still raw after cutting it in two pieces to have a look.
The picture shows that, clearly, something is totally wrong here. In addition, the steak doubled in height while cooking (Is that a sign of cheap meat with too much water?).
What mistakes did I make so that it went as it did?
After quite some cooking time:
Best Answer
There are many variables here that may or may not caused OP's problem.
The Pan sounds as it might not have been hot enough. How hot was quite hot, how long could you hover your hand above the pan?
Did you notice any change to the oil once you added it to the pan, did it streak, did it start to smoke?
[Personally I tend to oil the meat before placing into the pan.]
I think the main flaw is the frying for a minute on each side, at the temperature you had, that cooking time was too low. Maybe 2-4 minutes on each side. A medium should have a lot more heat penetrate the edges and allow that heat to transfer and cook the steak off the heat.
That's an acceptable blue/rare steak though.
Pictures about "What happened to my steak?"
Why is my steak so watery?
There are really only two reasons a steak might taste watery\u2013which we'll interpret as having thin, tasteless juices\u2013and both are easy to fix. The first scenario is that you may not have seared the meat sufficiently to cauterize the surface and seal in what's inside.Why is my steak so dry?
Beef: You are probably overcooking your meat and/or you are using very low-fat cuts. Don't cook beyond medium (Europe) / raw (Australia). Cuts with high amounts of fat in the meat (e.g. Scotch Fillet) are much harder to dry out than cuts with little fat (e.g. Rump Steak).Can steak rest too long?
You can rest a steak for too long. If it's too tightly covered for too long, you can overcook it and dry it out. Other than that, the main risk is that your steak will get cold. It's always better to let it rest too little than too much, as losing some juice is better than eating a cold steak.Why is my steak bleeding while cooking?
It turns out, it's not actually blood, but rather a protein called myoglobin, according to Buzzfeed. The protein is what gives the meat and its juices a red hue, and it's perfectly normal to find in packaging.Why I Season My Cutting Board, NOT My Steak
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Dimitri C, Ruslan Khmelevsky, Farhad Ibrahimzade, Farhad Ibrahimzade