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Pan-broiled Steak
Remove extra fat from the meat. Heat a frying pan very hot without any fat.
Sear the meat on both sides, then cook more slowly until done. Steak one inch thick should be cooked five minutes.
Season and serve on a hot platter.
A bare-bones method that assumes a heavy iron pan and a cook who knows when meat is done. A few things need spelling out.
- The pan"Very hot without any fat" means cast iron or heavy carbon steel, preheated 4-5 minutes until a drop of water skitters and evaporates on contact. Nonstick pans should not be taken to this temperature.
- Rub the meat, not the panWith a lean modern strip or sirloin, pat the surface completely dry and brush it lightly with a high-smoke-point oil rather than oiling the pan; the dry pan of the original relies on the steak's own fat to render on contact.
- Pour off the drippingsPan-broiling proper means the meat is never allowed to sit in its own fat, or it fries rather than broils. Tip the accumulated fat out of the pan once or twice during cooking.
- Five minutes is rareFive minutes total for a one-inch steak in a very hot pan will generally give a rare centre, around 125F. Allow roughly seven minutes for medium-rare and nine for medium; an instant-read thermometer settles it, where the original simply says 'until done'.
- "Cook more slowly"Drop the heat to medium after the sear. On a modern gas or induction hob that happens in seconds; on the solid-top wood or coal range of the period the cook would have shifted the pan away from the hottest plate instead.
- Season at the endThe book seasons after cooking, which keeps the surface dry for browning. Salting well ahead, or immediately before the pan, are both commonly recommended; salting a few minutes ahead is usually said to be the worst moment, when surface moisture has been drawn out but not reabsorbed.
- Rest and serveGive the steak five minutes on the warmed platter before cutting. The original specifies only thickness; a one-inch steak will typically run somewhere around 10-12 oz, enough for one generously or two modestly.
- VentilationA dry pan at searing heat smokes heavily. Open a window and run the extractor before the meat goes in.
Pan-broiling is the stovetop answer to a problem the wood and coal range created: real broiling meant holding meat over live coals in a wire gridiron, and by the late nineteenth century many American kitchens had closed-top ranges with no accessible fire. Cookery writers of the era promoted the smoking-hot dry pan as a legitimate substitute that browned the surface and, in the language of the day, "sealed in the juices" -- a theory later disproved, though the technique it produced is sound for other reasons. The terseness of the entry is telling: steak was assumed knowledge, and the instruction the reader actually needed was to keep the fat out of the pan.