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The best way to pan-sear a steak is to ignore one of cooking’s oldest “rules.”
In a Nutshell
Forget the one-flip rule. Flipping your steak frequently produces a beautifully browned crust and a more evenly cooked interior. Here’s the science behind it.
When I went to culinary school—what feels like about a million years ago—one of the first lessons we learned about searing steak (and just about every other protein) was simple: Put it in a ripping-hot pan, and flip it only once halfway through cooking. The thinking was that leaving the meat undisturbed was the only way to develop a deeply browned crust.
It wasn’t just something I learned in school, either. The same advice was reinforced in restaurant kitchens before and after culinary school, and it’s still one of the most common steak-cooking tips you’ll hear and see written in recipes today. But we now know that this is wrong.
Instead of letting one side cook for several uninterrupted minutes, I flip thick steaks every one to two minutes or so throughout cooking. This simple change produces a steak with a well-browned crust, a more evenly cooked interior, and less of the gray, overcooked meat that often forms just beneath the surface.
This isn’t some trendy internet cooking hack, either. Food scientist Harold McGee first demonstrated the science behind frequent flipping decades ago, and Kenji has since tested the technique extensively for both burgers and steaks. The results have been consistent: Frequent flipping browns the exterior just as well as the traditional one-flip method while producing a more evenly cooked interior and often shortening the overall cooking time.
How to Use the Frequent-Flipping Method
Instead of searing one side almost completely before turning the steak over, frequent flipping has you do it repeatedly throughout cooking.
That may sound like it would prevent a good crust from forming. After all, if browning depends on direct contact with a hot pan, wouldn’t constantly turning the steak interrupt the process by allowing the partially seared sides to cool between flips?
Fortunately, no. Each time the steak returns to the skillet, browning picks up where it left off. Over the course of cooking, those repeated flips develop the same browned exterior while promoting more even cooking throughout the steak.
Here’s an overview of the basic steps for best results:
1. Start with a thick steak. Frequent flipping works best with steaks that are at least 1 inch thick. Thin steaks cook so quickly that there’s less opportunity to develop a crust before the interior is cooked through.
2. Get your pan ripping hot. Cast iron and carbon steel are both excellent choices because they retain heat well, helping the steak brown each time it returns to the pan.
3. Flip frequently. I usually turn my steak every 30 to 60 seconds, but don’t stress about precise timing. Harold McGee’s testing showed that flipping as often as every 15 seconds works well, while other recipes—including some here at Serious Eats—recommend flipping closer to every two minutes. The important part is simply not letting either side sit on the pan for too long.
4. Cook to temperature, not time. An instant-read thermometer is still the best way to know when your steak is done.
Why It Works
Flipping a steak frequently sounds like it should prevent a good crust from forming. That’s exactly what generations of cooks—including my culinary school instructors—believed. But testing by food scientist Harold McGee, later replicated by Kenji here at Serious Eats, consistently found that frequent flipping produces just as much browning as the traditional one-flip method while improving the steak’s internal doneness. The reason comes down to heat transfer.
When one side of a steak sits against a hot skillet for several uninterrupted minutes, heat continues to travel inward even after the surface has browned. By the time you flip it, you’ve created a thick layer of overcooked meat beneath the crust while the opposite side is just beginning to cook.
Frequent flipping prevents either side from getting too far ahead. Every time you turn the steak, the hotter side faces upward and sheds some of its stored heat into the surrounding air while the cooler side gets its turn against the skillet. In his testing, McGee showed that you can shorten the interval between flips to as little as every 15 seconds, giving the steak plenty of opportunity to release some of its internal heat instead of trapping it. Kenji’s own burger experiments found the same principle in practice: Burgers flipped every 15 seconds browned just as well as those flipped once, cooked in about two-thirds the time, and had roughly 40% less overcooked meat around the edges.
The takeaway is that whether you flip every 15, 30, or 60 seconds, frequent flipping gives the heat less opportunity to build up under the surface, resulting in a deeply browned crust with a more evenly rosy interior.
When to Use This Technique
Although I use this method most often for thick steaks, it works just as well for other substantial cuts of meat, including pork chops, lamb chops, or tuna steaks—any protein that’s thick enough to spend several minutes building a crust before the center is done.
It’s especially useful when:
- You want a deeply browned crust without overcooking the interior.
- You’re cooking steaks, chops, or other cuts that are at least 1 inch thick.
- You want a more evenly pink center with less gray banding around the edges.
- You’re looking to shave a little time off dinner without sacrificing results.
That said, some perspective is important: Kenji points out in his testing that flipping only once won’t ruin your steak, and frequent flipping won’t transform a mediocre steak into the best one you’ve ever eaten. The differences are noticeable but a bit subtle: a slightly more even interior, a little less overcooked meat at the edges, and often a shorter cooking time by a couple of minutes.
If you’re juggling side dishes or, in my case, chasing kids around the kitchen while dinner cooks, don’t stress if your steak sits in the pan a little longer than planned before you flip it. You’ll still end up with a delicious meal.
But when I have the bandwidth, frequent flipping has become my default. It’s a small change that takes just a bit more attention and consistently gives me a steak that’s always a little bit better.
Read the original article on Serious Eats
