Make a Classic Pan-Seared Ribeye Steak Recipe

- Today in Test Kitchen, our number one

recipe

on our website, the

classic

pan-

seared

ribeye

. What

make

s it so special? It's the crust on the outside. It's all technical, friends, and we'll do it right now. (upbeat country music) And we think this

recipe

is popular for several reasons. Use

ribeye

, my favorite cut, which is incredibly marbled, robust and perfectly cut. Another reason is that people are looking for options on how to cook indoors and have a great

steak

experience inside the stove. In this recipe we are going to add a little oil, and a little salt and pepper, a very traditional technique, but in a cast iron griddle over the fire.

For other recipes and videos, be sure to subscribe! To start I have a cast iron skillet that I am preheating in the oven. It's important that we gently raise the heat in a cast iron skillet, so I put it in the oven, set it to 450 degrees. And then when it's hot, I'll take it out and we'll put it on the stove so it's ready to rock. So let's get our cast iron skillet and then we'll

make

sure to put it on medium heat while we prepare our

steak

. Make sure you don't touch that handle. Now we will have our steak ready to put in the preheated cast iron skillet.

I put a little oil on it so that it accepts a good amount of salt and pepper. This is a one pound steak, so a 16 ounce ribeye, take a look at the amazing marbling on that steak. Mm, that's going to eat very well. Let's put a little bit of oil on it and put salt and pepper on it and we'll set this thing on fire. While it's greased on that side, now I'm going to put salt and pepper on this side. I put a good amount of seasoning on it because it's a thick steak and I want that seasoning to be in every bite.

Coarse kosher salt, fresh ground pepper,

classic

. Now, the reason you put oil in it is to help the salt and pepper stick, but you also have a concentration of that oil right where the steak is instead of greasing the pan. In this case I forgot, as you saw, to put the oil on this side, so now I'm going to put a little bit on the outside. And then make sure I have my seasoning where I want it to be. And again, this is the medium heat. And I know my pan was really hot from the sizzling, right?

Now, if you haven't made this recipe before, know that you will be creating a good amount of smoke in the house, so hopefully you will have good ventilation in the hood or at least have the window open. Your smoke detectors may be going off. Two or three minutes on the first side, I flip it, oh, look at that crust. That's perfect, that's what you want. And then I add some aromatics. In this case, I have fresh thyme and a couple cloves of garlic that I just take and crush. To open the garlic cloves. Just throw them in the pan and then we'll put them in the oven.

And then it will crisp up on the other side in the oven. Okay, we come back out of the oven after six or seven minutes. The reason we put this steak in the oven is because it is very thick. If you were to simply do this on the stove, you would really have a steak that was burnt on both sides and undercooked in the middle. That's why we take advantage of the cast iron skillet and the heat it holds and the oven. At this point, you really want to turn the stove to a simmer and then we'll add a little bit of butter, so those aromatics come out and are part of the flavor that this steak takes on.

Flip it over and then we'll add butter and create a liquid that pours over this steak. Including those herbs, right? You've got herbs and garlic, a huge amount of butter and we just keep spooning it on top of this beautiful steak. You can do this for about 30 seconds or so, it foams and the butter browns and the nutty flavor is ideal with this robust steak. Oh. It will be delicious. I'm guessing the internal temperature of this right now is about 110, but it will continue to rise pretty quickly now to the doneness I'm looking for, which is medium-rare.

But you can take it further to medium, medium well or well, using an internal reading thermometer you can check for doneness. I would say if you like your steak well done, spend a couple more minutes in the oven. So to know your level of completion, take a look at the chart there. Alright, once the butter foam has disappeared, remove it from the heat. And we'll put this directly on a plate. And then make sure you take advantage of just putting all those wonderful herbs and garlic right on top and that browned butter that you can add, and this skillet, this cast iron has a nice port style to it so you can add that.

A steak this big is ideal for a couple, a perfect steak for Valentine's Day, but some of us could eat it alone, you know who I'm talking about. Now that the steak is no longer over high heat, we'll make sure to give it plenty of time to rest. So for this steak we're only looking at a minimum of five minutes, which gives you a chance to prepare everything else on the table, light the candles, etc. Now that it's rested, let's go ahead and cut it up. Oh. This looks very good. I'll cut it all up and then put it back on the plate.

Oh, this looks very good. Now this is my favorite way to make a ribeye, and you can see the crust on the outside, evenly on the top and the bottom is the goal here. I think we achieved it. Again, my favorite way to make a ribeye, in the cast iron inside that flavor, you can smell these aromatics. So hit us up in the comments, tell us how you like to make a ribeye. See you in Test Kitchen.