How to Reverse Sear a Steak _ Serious Eats

I am about to reverse sear two gorgeous aged rib eye steaks .

Traditionally , we would cook a steak by throwing it into a hot pan and then maybe finishing in the oven until it reaches its final internal temperature .

Reverse Sear kind of flips that on its head .

It sort of borrows a page from the sous vide book .

The steaks go in like this into a very low oven and they very slowly come up to temperature and only when in the center , the steaks have reached your desired temperature .

Do you take them out and then you sear them at the end to get the nice brown flavorful crust on the outside ?

Why do we do this ?

Well , for one thing , it gives us better control and a more foolproof method than if we went from high heat right from the start .

This slows everything down by you all a lot more time and your margin of error is much bigger .

The other really great thing about the reverse sear is because these steaks are hanging out in a dry hot oven , the surface will continue to dry out the whole time it's in there .

Dryness is what you want , when it comes time to sear the steak in a pan , a probe , thermometer will track the temperature of your meat while it's in the oven .

And I'm gonna just guess at where I think the center of this steak is .

Yeah , I , about there if you're cooking a bone in steak , just make sure you don't put the thermometers probe up against the bone .

That's gonna really throw off your readings .

If you don't have a probe , thermometer , it's ok .

You just use an instant thermometer to monitor the progress of your steaks .

And I'm gonna set an alarm 105 F .

I'm aiming for 1 15 .

But this gives me a 10 degree head start to make sure that I don't mess up .

Ah , ah , it's time to put the beef in the oven and let it do its thing .

And then this has a magnet .

I can stick , it's reading 49 F on the nose .

The other one is a little bit warmer .

53.3 F .

And I have an instant reed thermometer that I will use to confirm what these probe thermometers are telling me by taking a few other readings and a few other parts of the sticks just to make sure that I've got it right .

The thing is with the reverse Sears , the steaks are gonna jump a little bit more when they're out of the oven .

So we wanna pull them out a little before whatever a real desired final temperature is for rare .

That means taking them out when they're about 105 F in the center for medium rare .

That means pulling them from the oven when they're about 1 15 degrees Fahrenheit in the center and four medium , 1 25 et cetera , et cetera .

That doesn't mean medium is 100 and 25 F medium is actually warmer 1 31 35 more up there .

But that's gonna happen in the pan when they come out of the oven .

Sometimes it's slow us at the beginning and you think you get a sense in your head of what the rate of cooking is , starts speeding up .

I think it does .

I've never tested that empirically .

I'm pretty sure it starts speeding up .

That's been my experience .

Keep it , keep an eye on your meat any second that alarm is gonna sound .

My steaks are right at 1 15 or just a hair shy of it .

And I've already got my cast iron pan preheating .

I'm actually gonna crank the heat .

Now , I'm gonna get a tablespoon of oil in the pan .

I want this oil smoking hot .

My goal here is to preserve that kind of perfect doneness in the center of the steak .

So I really want to get the sear on this meat as quickly as I can so that I don't start over cooking the exterior that and the whole point of this method is to have a nice even doneness gradient .

So I really don't wanna do anything that's gonna work against that .

Uh-huh .

Now , these are not particularly beautiful at the moment .

They look like sad gray hunks of beef .

That's why we're gonna sear them .

Now , I'm gonna add a little butter to the pan for more flavor , but you don't have to .

I'm also going to add a time spring and some garlic to the pan to quickly get some more flavor into the fat in the pan .

Also that you don't have to do that's all optional , but it's , it's a nice touch .

If you can do it , then we go steak butter .

Garlic time swirl that around , press it down , make sure the steak is making full contact with the pants .

You don't end up with a , a little raised portion that didn't get brown enough 45 seconds a minute , really as quick as you can any longer .

And you might as well have just been butter basting in the pan the whole time because you'll start to get that done this gradient .

I'm gonna flip it .

There you go .

Sear the edge .

I see that how that's nice and brown there .

Now , a good kill the heat .

Now , reverse here doesn't really need to rest .

It's so low and slow coming up at the temperature that you don't have the same issues when you're doing a high heat method of giving the steak a chance to re absorb juices , you basically can cut into it whenever you're ready .

Hm .

I really got so tender , so juicy , so beefy with that great funk because I splurged on an age stick and , but I splurged .

I mean , seriously splurge .