Recently the New York Times’ Julia Moskin wrote an article about cooking steaks on the stovetop.
The article reads like cooking a steak on a skillet is a novel or intimidating process, but it had a few interesting thoughts. I’m always reading articles about seemingly simple and time tested methods like cooking a steak or roasting a chicken, as there are always a few things you can tweak to enhance flavor or presentation, or adjust to accommodate the piece of protein at hand.
Last week I cooked a strip steak in cast iron gleaning some of these ideas, and last night I prepared a double cut bone-in pork chop, which I was so happy with, probably the best I’ve ever had, I had to brag to someone other than my wife. The poor vegetarian in our household, always dealing with offending smokes and meaty aromas, was kind enough to tell me, “I’m glad you’re so happy with your pork chop”, without rolling her eyes.
I brined the chop for half the day in a 3% salt and 1% sugar solution. I then dried the chop with paper towels while I got my skillet raging hot, dropping in a tablespoon of bacon fat before dropped the chop and pressing it gently. I gave it two minutes before flipping, then two minutes on the other side.
I slightly reduced the heat to medium-high and began flipping the steak every minute. After a couple minutes I dropped two partially crushed cloves of garlic, still in their skin, into the pan, tilted it to accumulate the fat and juice and quickly and repeatedly spooned the liquid back over the chop.
This process continued for another six minutes or so, until the chop nearly registered 140F. For the last two flips I hit each side with salt and coarsely ground pepper, an idea I love as adding it at the beginning of cooking causes it to burn. Adding at the end just toasts it, activating the aromas.
The steak rested for nearly ten minutes, which was more time than it took me to devour the tender, crusty, salty, joyful cut of swine.
There’s something about grilling outdoors, on wood, which cannot be replaced, but a crust like this makes a damn hard argument that this is the best way to cook steaks.