I've tried to make the following sauce the last couple of days. The same pan is used for everything.
- Fry steak. Put steak on plate.
- Sauté onions.
- Melt butter and mix with flour.
- Add stock.
- Season.
- Let simmer for a couple of minutes
The taste and texture of the end result are fine. However, the high temperature of the pan (I like cancer with my meat) means that:
- The butter gets burnt. It's brown and half-molten long before I've time to add flour. Does this result in any undesired reactions?
- When the butter/flour mix is stable, the pan seems to be much hotter than 100 degrees. Adding the stock results in violent boiling. Could this damage my (teflon or cast iron) pan or affect the dish?
If the above poses problems, how should I solve them? (I imagine that) I like the taste imparted from the recently used pan.
Best Answer
You've got this all mixed up! Unless you're deglazing to do a pan sauce, the steak should be the LAST thing cooked. It's the centerpiece of the dish and the most expensive part, and shouldn't have a chance to get cold while you cook the other parts. Saving cleaning on a single saucepan is not worth eating cold steak.
You MUST use a stainless or cast-iron for this. As others touch on, teflon is not safe for searing, and fast temperature changes will wreck it.
Here's how to do things:
Alternately, here's another approach:
And, finally the deglazed pan sauce way
In a professional kitchen, you'd have your onions pre-sauteed or sauteeing at the same time as the steak, and your sauce will be prepared in bulk, beforehand. You'd only have to cook the steak and briefly heat or season the other two parts.