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I have trouble cooking a steak 'medium', and to be honest, cooking it at all.

These were my steps:

  1. Bought a steak (hip) that was about 1cm to 1.5cm in height. I let it reach room temperature (1 to 2 hours outside the fridge) and dried it.
  2. heated a metal pan and added some oil when it was already quite hot
  3. put in the meat. It was 'glued' to the pan slightly (not hot enough?) but that was only a minor problem
  4. fried from both sides on high heat for about 1 minute until sides had a light brown (see picture)
  5. reduced heat and kept cooking

However, after about 10 minutes, the outside color had not changed much, and the inside was still raw after cutting it in two pieces to have a look.

The picture shows that, clearly, something is totally wrong here. In addition, the steak doubled in height while cooking (Is that a sign of cheap meat with too much water?).

What mistakes did I make so that it went as it did?

After quite some cooking time: steak

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    Possible duplicate of How do you properly cook a steak?
    – Debbie M.
    Mar 20, 2016 at 18:20
  • Thank you for reading. I don't think it's a duplicate since I followed the steps in your referenced question and still got strange results. What do you think?
    – Xiphias
    Mar 20, 2016 at 18:37
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    Was your pan a cast iron skillet? 'Glued to the pan' normally indicates either not hot enough, or the steak was not dry when you put it in the pan. I normally find oiling the steak more useful than oiling the pan but YMMV.
    – abligh
    Mar 20, 2016 at 19:41
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    How much are you turning down the temp?
    – Catija
    Mar 21, 2016 at 14:38
  • My pan was a pure steel pan, nothing non-sticky. Maybe it was not hot enough, but should that affect the growing in size? I don't know exactly how much I turned down the temp, but I made sure the oil would stop 'bursting' and rather cook more silently.
    – Xiphias
    Mar 21, 2016 at 22:16

1 Answer 1

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There are many variables here that may or may not caused OP's problem.

The Pan sounds as it might not have been hot enough. How hot was quite hot, how long could you hover your hand above the pan?
Did you notice any change to the oil once you added it to the pan, did it streak, did it start to smoke?
[Personally I tend to oil the meat before placing into the pan.]

I think the main flaw is the frying for a minute on each side, at the temperature you had, that cooking time was too low. Maybe 2-4 minutes on each side. A medium should have a lot more heat penetrate the edges and allow that heat to transfer and cook the steak off the heat.

That's an acceptable blue/rare steak though.

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