Sunday, September 13, 2009

How Hot and How Long to Cook a Steak?

By K.C. Kudra

For a lot of people, breaking out the grill means making that perfect steak. All kinds of food are excellent on the grill, but nothing is quite the same as a hot, juicy steak. However, learning how to make your steak come out great can be an uphill battle. There are all kinds of people out there saying they have got the best method. How do you choose? Let us take a look at the best temperature and methods for cooking a steak.

Step one is remembering that you do not start with cooking. You start by selecting the best possible steak, and some people even purchase a whole tenderloin and butcher it themselves to make sure they're getting great meat.

Choose steaks that are three to five ounces each, depending on who is eating, but always use a consistent size. That will resist in consistent, reliable cooking performance every time you make steak.

The next step is learning to cook beef on the grill, if you do not already know how. Many people think that grilling takes no skill at all, but they would be wrong. If you do not know what you are doing, you will get meat that is safe to eat, but does not have a lot of taste. Remember that grilling is a fast, intense type of cooking, which makes your mistakes that much more difficult to work around.

Make sure the grill is as hot as possible, and be sure to season your steak beforehand. Do not overdo it - you still want to taste the meat - but a little bit of seasoning goes a long way. Place the steak on the grill starting with the side you want to show off. That will be the side that is turned up on the plate. Cook until it's three quarters of the way done, then flip and cook the remainder of the way. Grilling beef is actually quite simple, just not something, that can be done without a little knowledge.

So, how long to grill a steak, and at what kind of temperatures? That is a hard question to answer, because every steak is a little different and every person likes his or her steak done differently. There are a number of things that will usually happen to your steak as it cooks, however, and keeping an eye on it to see these signs can help you make a good steak. Here is a look.

At a hundred sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, the proteins begin to coagulate, and the steak will shrink and stiffen, with sides that begin to tend toward gray or brown. At three hundred twenty degrees, the grill marks start to show and the sweet smell that says the steak is cooking right begins to appear.

That is because the sugars are caramelizing. When your steak is nearly cooked, it will begin to bubble as the juices come up from the bottom. That is when you need to flip your steak and allow it to cook the rest of the way.

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