 I've been fortunate, and well I guess unfortunate enough, to work in some of New York City's best steak houses, such as Del Frisco's. And I've observed what they do in regards to the preparation of their steaks and what separates a New York City style steak from other steaks, in particular the seasoning, the high heat boilers, how we put our steaks out on a hot plate, and how we finish them with butter. So I'm going to go over those elements, as well as other elements that will help you perfect your steak in a very quick, easy, and almost like full proof method. And guys, reversia, sous vide, you guys, I don't want anything to do with you. There's no reversia, there's no sous vide, okay? That's not what Keynes does, that's not what Peter Luger does, Gallagher's, all the best New York City steak houses, that's not what they do. And I have achieved a perfect temperature gradient throughout the steak without those methods much quicker and much easier. In order of preparation, there are several important steps to ensure that the steak gets an even crust and is perfectly cooked. First of course, with cutting the steak. Here I have some fairly thick cut steaks, although this is helpful and reduces the margin of error for cooking, the center gradient temperature, you know, if the steak is too thin, you might overcook it. It also helps weigh the steak down in the pan, and although you could do that by pressing down on the steak, it's just an inherent aspect. So definitely, if you can opt for the thicker cut steak, you can always cook it more. The next element that you can't really alter afterwards is the fat on the steak. And the fat on the steak, even though these steaks are pretty lean grass-fed, can be alleviated by basting the steak with fat throughout the cooking method. What this does is the fat is what evenly distributes the heat on the steak. Some of you might have noticed that your fattier steaks crisp up really nice and then your leaner steaks don't. What we do is we either baste them with clarified butter in a broiler on like a filet mignon or on a port-a-house or ribeye steak that might not be necessary. The dryness on the steak is the most important thing for the crust. By putting a very heavy salt and peppercorn seasoning on the steak, that does dry it out, and then I like patting it dry with paper towels, you could take an additional step and like dry brine, air dry the steak in a fridge overnight on a rack or something, but you know, that's a little much for me and although that can get you like a very almost like glass-like, sharp-like crust, it's not practical for a lot of people and the final thing that separates New York City from other steak houses is the seasoning, the heavy heavy black peppercorn ratio to salt. In addition to that, we do put our steaks on hot plates. What that allows us to do is you can pretty much have a raw steak and then if you put it on a 500 degree plate, it'll literally cook to like medium within a few minutes before it gets to the customer, so we'll definitely show that and in addition, we finish our steaks with clarified butter or regular butter. So I'm going to take you guys through all of these elements and all you need is a, I have a steel pan here, you could use cast iron. Yeah, honestly, I want it to be outside on my 1,000 degree grill, burning my face off, but I know most of you guys don't have access to a nice wood flavor. That's not the focus of this video. Alright, so let's kind of go over the elements we have here. Of course, we have our nice thick cut steak. I'm just going to pat it dry really quick and then we want to season it very heavily with salt and pepper. So always fresh ground black pepper and you guys might be thinking, Frank, isn't that a lot of pepper? Out of New York. This is what we need. You don't want to see the steak anymore. That's for peppercorn and then this salt is very, very salty. It's a Celtic salt, so I don't really want to overdo the salt on this, but this is a very, like, it's almost like a finishing salt. It's so salty. So just heavy peppercorn and salt to taste. Okay, so now we have our steak all prepped and ready to cook. The other elements we have are the thermometer. You know, I mean, people in New York City, these boiler cooks, they've cooked hundreds of thousands of steaks. You need one of these thermometers. You don't have the experience. And this is the clarified butter I'm going to use to cook with as well as finish the steak. Here I have a ceramic plate that can go in the oven. So I'm turning the heat in my pan here on medium, medium-high. And what I'm also going to do is I'm going to keep a lid nearby because this will get grease everywhere. So generally speaking, you know, we cook the steak in the pan. We throw it in the oven to finish in the pan and then we have a hot plate. I'm going to get a plate under the boiler that's going to be nice and hot that's ready for when we're done cooking the steak in the pan. Now, before we cook this steak, let's go over the temperature. So in the steakhouse, we used to do rare cool, rare warm, medium rare, medium. And then we did medium well and then well. Rare cool was rare with a cool red center. Rare warm was rare with a warm red center. That was still pretty much blue rare for a lot of people. And then medium rare was a hot red center, which is what most people think of like super rare. And then our medium had a little bit of red in the middle. Our medium is what most people consider medium rare. And then medium well was pink throughout. And pink throughout is what a lot of people consider medium rare. And then we had a medium well was a little bit of pink. So there's several temperature gradients to get to rare. You want once you go above 120 degrees, the steak will start turning pink in the middle. So anything past that point is going to be a a denomination of rare. So like, if you take the steak out of the pan at 110 degrees, and it goes up to 125 on the plate, it's going to be, you know, a medium rare steak. We're going to probably shoot for maybe like 120 degrees at the end. So we're probably going to take it up to 110 and then put it on the hot plate, let it rest for a few minutes. But just in general, the end temperature for each derivative of that 120 is rare. 125 is medium rare and 130 is pink medium. So between that degree range is where you'll see the variance in color. And it does get very, very, very specific and detailed timing. It's literally a few degrees can perfect the temperature that you like. That's why Suvi works for a lot of people. That's why, you know, if you're not using an instant read thermometer or have tons of steak house cooking experience, it can be very difficult to time the cooking right. But you got your boyfriend here. So we'll figure it out. So definitely want to keep the steak padded dry right before you put it in the pan. I'm going to turn the heat down a notch. I can already smell the heat on this pan. I'm just going to put a little bit of clarified butter in. And now the steak goes in. Okay. A lot of people say don't move the steak. Don't flip it. This depends entirely on the temperature of the pan. The hotter the heat is, the more frequently you can flip the steak. Even as you know, if you have a super hot wood fire, you can flip the steak every five to 10 seconds if you wanted to. Here, our pan wasn't super hot. So we're probably going to let it go for another minute or so to see that the steak did not stick at all, even though the pan is steel. So what I like to do is I'll turn the steak a bit, just so the surface and the heat distribution is a little different. So I turn the steak, cover it. Come on guys, I don't want to get grease all over my Halloween decorations. So maybe about a minute in the pan, we're going to flip it for the first time. And yeah, that's already a better steak crust than you know, about half of you guys are posting online. So I don't know what to tell you. Okay, again, I'm going to turn the steak a bit. If you have a much thicker steak or the steak was cold, it might be more difficult to cook at the temperature in the pan. That's where in the case if we say, okay, well, we have a super dark brown crust and it's still raw in the middle, then we can put it in the oven. Look at that. See? And most of you guys have said, oh, well, Frank, how much more of a crust can you get? Well, the interior temperature of the steak is about 55 degrees. That is cold, very cold. So we have a perfect crust yet the steak is still not cooked. What I will say is, yeah, this looks like a nice deep brown crust. And it's about an amber color, but the difference between a pan sear and a boiler and a wood fire is that a wood fire gets a little darker brown of a crust. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take this off the heat and we're going to put it in the boiler in the oven. Probably going to take about five, 10 minutes to get up to 110 degrees. And then we could put it on our hot plate and see what temperature it gets up to. Just about a few minutes and make sure you flip your steak over in the pan every few minutes. Alright guys, our steak measures 100 degrees in the middle about 110 on this part. So we're going to take it out right now. Here we got a super hot plate. Steak goes on. You hear that? You guys hear the steak cooking on the plate. So what we're going to do now is I'll finish it with a little bit of clarified butter. And here I have flur de sel de grante. Just a finishing salt. I wouldn't really do this in the city. I just have it. So just a little bit of finishing salt on top. And now we're going to wait about three minutes to simulate you know how long it takes the steak to get to the customer from the kitchen to the customer two or three minutes and we'll take the internal temp of the steak again. I think I'm going to overcook my steak. So it has been about well two or three minutes. So let's take the internal temp of the steak again. Steak was like 100 degrees into the dead center. Now it's up to like 117. So guys, hot plate couldn't cook a steak 15, 20 extra degrees if the plate's really hot. So keep that in mind. You know, we essentially had a raw steak before now. And this is this temperature gradient is what a lot of people will consider a perfect rare steak. And you know, it's red in the center, pink to the edges, pretty much perfect. The reason there's a little bit of extra gray on top is because I flipped the steak over. That was the part of the steak that was sitting on the hot plate for about two minutes. So really, you know, we have a pretty much perfect temperature gradient throughout the steak. And let's taste it. There's something about that black peppercorn seasoning. I just love it. And guys, I've tried seasoning before with black pepper. I've tried seasoning after. I've always preferred the flavor before when it's cooked. You know, you got the hot plate, you got the juices running, you dip the steak in, it's so good. So thank you guys for watching. If you guys would like to support me or the channel, please just share the video. If you guys want to check out my Amazon shop, I have some seasonings on there, probably some cooking related stuff even to this video. You can check out my website frank-tifano.com as well. And if you guys would like to reach out to me for one-on-one cooking lessons, shoot me an email frankatifano at gmail.com. Let me know how you guys like this video. I was thinking about doing some more cooking related stuff, maybe like a chicken, carbonara pasta. Let me know.