[Aquamarine.]

When I fry my steak I cook it so that is it medium (sometimes medium rare) and I begin by heating up the pan with a bit of butter in it until it is very hot and season each side of my steak then as I put my steak into the pan I reduce the heat to medium and cook it for 2-3 minutes each side, however on the first side everytime the edges of the meat always look black and burnt! (Although it doesn't really affect the taste much.)

Any idea how I can solve this problem? Is it to do with the butter in the pan before?

Thanks for any help!

[herecomestrouble]

Try letting the pan become very hot before you add just the smallest amount of oil or fat – about 1 teaspoon... see if that works. Bon appetit!

[Neville 'Facking' Bartos]

Why butter? Whats wrong with oil>?

^Yes listen to above, pan has to be hot first^

[lodzinski]

use oil to seal the steak as it has a higher flash point, so you can get it hotter than butter. once the steak is sealed, add butter into the pan and use the foam it should create to get that nut-brown flavour and colour into the steak.

[simeon]

Use a very light oil like Grapeseed. If it's a good enough Steak, you'll only want to taste it, and not what it's been cooked in.

Butter burns at the temperature you need to be cooking the meat.

Get the pan as hot as you can and cook the steak by turning over every 15-20 secs.

'Sealing' is a misleading term. You can't 'seal' meat and hope to keep the juices in. Browning the meat is a different matter all together.

[Hopefull]

The problem is your heat full stop. What I would do is work out what is minimum, medium and high on your cooker/hob.

After that stick your pan on medium with some oil (tablespoon) and let it sit for 5 mins. The bottom line is that your pan will only get as hot as the hob and what you set it at. What type of pan are you using? A thin pan will not hold a heat not will it be even.

Additionally I would look at the thickness of your steak, if it is thin then there is no problem sticking the pan on a high heat and flash frying it. If it is a big thick fillet then your will burn the outside whilst not cooking the inside on a high heat.

In addition butter will burn, either quickly (stuck in a hot pan) or (slowly with some oil added), my advice is to cook the steak and clean the pan then add butter and baste or take the steak out and stick a knob of butter on it.

[newman24x]

(Original post by Aquamarine.)
medium (sometimes medium rare) and I begin by heating up the pan with a bit of butter in it until it is very hot and season each side of my steak

emmm...steak...sounds lovely....i want one...hungry...

[lodzinski]

dont clean the pan! that's flavour! deglaze it with brandy, throw in some cream, green peppercorns - quick as peppercorn sauce/ om nom nom nom (and of course, season your meat just before you put it in the pan.)

[Hopefull]

(Original post by lodzinski)
dont clean the pan! that's flavour! deglaze it with brandy, throw in some cream, green peppercorns - quick as peppercorn sauce/ om nom nom nom (and of course, season your meat just before you put it in the pan.)

Agreed, but what a lot of people do is stick butter straight in and burn the damn stuff and ruin the flavour from the butter with the burnt scrapings. In addition if someone is burning the steak the last thing I would want is a sauce made from the burnt scrapings, it will be bitter as hell.

[lodzinski]

true, but all you have to do is adhere to the golden rule - 'if it's brown it's cooked, if it's black it's ******'

[simeon]

(Original post by lodzinski)
true, but all you have to do is adhere to the golden rule - 'if it's brown it's cooked, if it's black it's ******'

The tills at my parents restaurant had the following cooking instructions for Steak:
Blue, Rare, Med Rare, Rare, Med Well, Well, BTF.
We had college trainee in on work experience and it had to be explained to him that BTF meant Burnt to F***