What are the effects of salting a thin steak that’s grilled on a pan

I go into a lot of detail regarding steakhouse quality steaks in my answer here.

Excerpt:

Any steak you buy in the grocery store is minimally wet aged. The finest steakhouses dry age their beef. The difference? Wet aging consists of simply vacuum packing the meat (as in a whole side of cow) and refrigerating it for about a week. After that, it's cut smaller and sold to stores. Dry aging is a more complicated and expensive process. Dry aged beef is hung for at least two weeks in a refrigerator. Moisture in the meat is allowed to escape and evaporate, which concentrates the beef flavor of the beef. The beef also grows a moldy rind which is cut off and thrown away. After the aging is complete you're left with 75-80% of the meat you started with. This commands a premium price.

Please note that the dry aging happens long before you purchase the steak. The entire cow is dry aged before it is even cut. You cannot truly, safely dry-age steaks in your home. There are refrigerator aging approximations, but they are just that, approximations.

A few things:

• grain fed vs corn fed vs grass fed. Each style lends their own flavour to the beef.
  • free range vs. feedlot. Cows fattened on feedlots will have more fat; the meat of free-range cows has a deeper flavour. Feedlot cows will also be more tender.
  • 'Organic' (a word with no meaning really) vs non. Some chefs are concerned with antibiotic and hormonal treatment of cows; generally speaking, something labeled 'organic' is less likely to have been chemically treated while alive.
  • marbling, the degree of intramuscular fat. More marbling = more flavour. Bear in mind of course that some cuts (e.g. tenderloin) have very little intramuscular fat.
  • aged or not, and wet vs. dry. Aging meat allows lactic acid to denature proteins and increase flavour. Dry aging is significantly better for this than wet. However, that comes at a cost, as dry-aged meats must be trimmed, resulting in a lower yield per initial pound of product.