Cooking Tips
Butter basting is the best way to get restaurant-quality steak at home. And it’s easy to do.
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Published Dec. 20, 2022.
Steaks can be cooked every which way: grilled, cold-seared, cooked sous vide and then pan-seared, smoked, cooked from frozen, or—if you’re feeling adventurous—grilled over a charcoal chimney.
There is no one way to cook steak. But without question, one of the most satisfying methods out there is butter basting a thick-cut rib eye in a skillet.
Butter basting may sound intimidating. Or it may seem like it’s a lot of work.
It’s neither. With just a few minutes of flipping and spooning the sizzling fat over the meat, you can have a restaurant-quality butter-basted steak cooked to perfection.
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What Does It Mean to Baste a Steak?
Basting involves continuously spooning (or brushing) hot fat or sauce over the item that is being cooked. In this case, a delicious rib eye. Sometimes the fat comes from the meat itself, but with this technique, we use butter.
Why Should You Butter Baste Steak?
In the traditional method of pan searing a steak in a screaming hot skillet, you cook each side of the meat just once, waiting to flip it until the side in contact with the pan has formed a thick browned crust. But this approach can also lead to a gray band of overcooked meat just below the crust.
Butter basting while searing means the steak cooks on both sides simultaneously so that it comes up to temperature faster and doesn’t have chance to overcook beneath the crust. (Flipping the steak continually as we cook also helps keep it rosy from edge to edge.)
In addition, our hot basting liquid of choice—butter with shallot, garlic, and thyme—helps deliver a beautiful evenly browned crust because you can focus the butter on paler areas that could use a little boost.
The final bonus of this method: You’re left with an aromatic browned-butter sauce that you can drizzle over the steak.
Butter-Basted Rib-Eye Steak
Forget your white noise machine and listen to the sweet sounds of butter-basted beef.
Get the Recipe
How to Butter Baste Better
1. Salt steak and let sit on wire rack for 45 minutes. When salt is applied to meat, the juices inside are drawn to the surface. The salt then dissolves in the exuded liquid, forming a brine that is reabsorbed by the meat, seasoning it throughout. The 45-minute mark is when the brine starts moving back into the steak.
2. Sear first in oil and then add butter. Starting the steak in a few tablespoons of vegetable oil gives it a nice initial crust. Waiting to add the butter until the steak has been seared for about 4 minutes helps prevent it from burning.
3. Add aromatics to butter. Once butter has melted and begun to foam, adding aromatics such as shallots, garlic, and herb sprigs brings additional flavor.
4. Flip steak every 30 seconds. Though unconventional, we repeatedly flip the steak as it sears. This allows for the steak to warm through more evenly because no one side is ever left on the heat long enough for the meat to overcook right under the crust.
5. Baste quickly. Use a metal spoon to rapidly spoon the hot butter and aromatics over the steak, concentrating on areas where the crust is less browned, until the steak registers 120 degrees.
6.Use butter as finishing sauce. Discard the aromatics and transfer the browned butter to a small bowl. Drizzle it over the sliced steak as a delicious finish.
Watch Senior Editor Steve Dunn share three key tips and demonstrate this technique, so you can butter baste like a pro.
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