What’s the secret to pan-searing a steak with regard to oil’s smoking point

This trick made cooking in my stainless pan much more non-stick, including potstickers (or "mandu" in Korean^^)

Edit: That's unusual that the cooking instructions have you add water. I usually fry my frozen potstickers straight from the frozen state (perhaps they are pre-boiled?). You will have to use the BOIL/BROWN method to utilize the technique below.

Use the "water test" to know when the pan is hot enough to add oil. Besides being fascinating to watch, passing the water test ensures the pan becomes amazingly non-stick.

When the pan is hot enough, water will ball up like mercury and slide around the pan without evaporating. The temperature required is pretty high, but I've found the non-stick properties remain if I add the oil and let the pan cool to the cooking temperature I want.

Note: preheating the pan like this applies to non-stainless steel pans, but water only balls up like mercury on stainless steel.

Detailed explanation of how/why this works: On properly heating your pan

There's a few things that could be going on here:

• cut: not all steak cooks at the same rate. Really tender cuts cook faster than some of the tougher, more flavorful cuts, increasing cooking time by up to 50%. Cuts like tenderloin, filet, and loin (US) - Sirloin (UK) are more tender and cook faster. Denser cuts like sirloin, top sirloin, and bottom sirloin (US) and rump (UK) cook slower. If you are cooking a denser cut then you simply need to cook it longer.
• Pan heat: Most chefs have really good stoves that produce load of heat, most mere mortals have average stoves which aren't as powerful. Medium heat on a professional, or very high quality stove is hotter than the medium heat on an average stove, so try cranking it up to full blast. Also, make sure your pan is fully up to temp. I cook my steaks on a cast iron skillet, and I let it heat up for 10 minutes before I start frying steak
• Heat contact: even though steak is full of fat it takes some time for this to start working, so coating your steak with a bit of vegetable oil (not olive oil, it burns at high temperatures) will make sure it gets good heat contact

So my advice would be to get the pan hotter and cook it longer. Try adding one more minute per side.

EDIT: @kenny says that he is cooking loin, so assuming it's 3/4", or 2cm thick and looking for medium done-ness I would cook the first side for 5 minutes and then the second side 3 minutes. The uneven times are to make sure it cooks evenly. So you need a total of 8 minutes cooking time. I don't do the flip every minute method because the uneven times work for me, and it lets me do other prep.