that fella could have saved himself a whole lot of trouble had he just known about blue apron blue apron delivers a package with all the fresh ingredients recipes and directions you need to cook gourmet meals at home ingredients are sent in the exact proportions so no shopping needed blue apron ships three meals per week for two four or six people in refrigerated packages to your doorstep always with free shipping it's the easiest most convenient way to make gourmet tasty meals that's fantastic sign up for a week of meals with the first two meals free by clicking the link below blue apron a better way to cook hi I'm Carl Engel with Pig Casa barbecue and today we're going to show you how to properly sear a steak so the first question we get is not only how do you sear steak but why do you sear a steak well searing a steak which simply is just exposing the service to extremely hot heat through a variety of methods to get a good carmelization of that crust of the spices you have and then letting the inside cook to the desired temperature but it adds an amazing texture and an amazing flavor and today we're going to do that and show you how to get that done so first thing you're going to want to do is there's a variety of methods to searing a steak the first method is in a cast-iron skillet so we've got a cast-iron skillet and you want this thing to be screaming hot so we're going to put that over our fire while we prepare our steaks now we've got a couple different steaks here and the first thing you want to do is let him sit out on your counter 45 minutes even up to an hour this is going to be okay you're not going to worry about germs or anything but just let them get up to room temperature because they shoes sear that steak you're going to want to do some cooking on the inside so the next thing you do is a lot of times there will be a little bit of moisture or water you're going to want to Pat these just take a regular paper towel Pat them dry get them good and dry because that water will have an adverse effect when you put it in your pan around your hot grill when you sear it so you want us dry a product as you could possibly get now we're going to season it so we've got a little bit of oil in the pan so we're not going to put any oil on the steak but we are going to liberally season it with salt and some cracked black pepper and again these are pretty good-sized cuts of meat so you don't want to really skimp and this is what is going to create that crust onto your steak and again after you get your seasonings on there Pat them in there really good okay so now how do you know we're going to do this when a cast iron skillet how do you know if it's ready how do you know if it's hot enough just take some simple water after you've been preheating your pan and just do a few droplets and you see how that kind of immediately evaporates away that tells us our pan is ready so now always be careful when you're talking about cast iron these handles get extremely hot so you want to be careful but take some tongs and then we're going to put it in the pan straight side down and you want to hear listen for that sear now it's important don't touch it let the pan do its work let it get a good sear get a good crust on it about 1 to 2 minutes each side and then we'll be ready so we'll flip it here in just a second okay we're ready to turn our steaks it's been about 3 minutes on this burner depending on your burner we could be anywhere from a minute and a half to four minutes depending on hot your burner gets but all we're going to do now and again be careful these cast-iron skillets get really hot we're going to want to flip it straight over look at that incredible it's got an incredible crust not burned but that has seared in those juices it's seared in those seasonings now we're going to do the same thing on this back side and we'll go to that point okay the other option you have if you don't want to finish it on a grill and again you could sear this on your stovetop no problem is to finish it in the oven we put our oven at about 300 degrees place our pan right inside the oven let it finish to the desired temperature you want and we'll come back here when it's about a medium-rare to a medium and we'll cut into it and see how we did okay we've been searing about five to five and a half minutes right here we're on our second side so now you got two options number one we always want to check the temperature where we're at so right now if you eat a rare steak this is probably about where a rare steak is but you don't want to leave it in your pan and burn it so you have a couple options you can finish it on your grill whether it's charcoal or gas if you have a charcoal set it up for indirect grilling and you're going to want to put the pan away from the flames on a cooler part of the grill if you have a gas grill put one of your burners on really low and the others you can put on high to where it works more of is them as an oven and again want to take your pan and you can just set it on the grill you can see we will move these down to the lowest setting these are on the highest setting and we will finish it to the desired temperature again about 120 is going to be rare 125 to 130 is a good medium rare you get up to about 140 145 is about a medium if you're going to cook much more than a medium then it's not going to be quite as tender in our book but that's going to give you the most flavorful sake so okay our steaks finished cooking to the desired temperature we want we'll just pull them off our grill we'll set them here let's see how we did again be very careful that pan is going to be crazy hot you can see a great sear a great crust on both of these steaks okay we've taken them off the grill there at the temperature we want which for our purposes if it is about a medium so now we're going to cut into these steaks and see how we did if you like it a little bit more rare certainly you can cook it to whatever temperature there's no right or wrong to it it's juicy it's flavorful let's test it out just an amazing flavor you get a little bit of crunch from biting through those seasonings that you made on that crust with your searing try it at home you'll love it