Steak is easy. In theory.
Cast iron. Meat thermometer, if you want. Steak. Salt. Butter. High smoke-point oil - vegetable, standard olive; peanut is better; safflower is best. Pepper, if you want. Garlic, if you want. Tongs or two spatulas. Don't use one spatula if you can avoid it. Don't use a fork to stab it either.
Season the steak. Either immediately before cooking or 45+ minutes before. Don't marinate. Throw the cast iron on the flame. Get that shit hot. Oil in. Steak in. Feel free to flip often - flipping once is a complete myth. Depending on the heat, you probably want one minute on a side, flip, one minute, flip, add butter and optionally garlic. As the bottom cooks in butter, baste the top with the butter. One minute, flip. Do it again. After the fourth minute you should be done. Meat thermometer should read about 5 degrees under your desired done-ness. Take it out, let it rest. Five minutes. Eat it.
Pepper before you cook burns the pepper, but it also crusts better. Your choice.
Expert mode uses clarified butter of ghee instead of oil and normal butter. You want butter for the taste (unhealthy, but tasty; that's how steakhouses do it; you might see a stick of butter per big steak...). You don't want normal butter on high heat for the initial cooking because it burns. Technically, the solids in the butter burn; that's why ghee is a perfect replacement.
Alternatives:
- Black and blue, or Pittsburgh blue. You find a heat source much hotter than your average gas or electric stovetop. It needs to be hot enough to basically char the outside in a minute or less. Do a minute, or thirty seconds, on each side. It will be pretty much blue rare in the middle.
- Sous vide. Get a ghetto one going with a beer cooler. Water at 130F, steak in a ziplock bag with the air pressed out, for pretty much as long as you want - an hour, two, four. Then flash fry it on the highest heat for thirty seconds to a minute on a side.
