Sam cooks steak | 4Food

Date Published:: 15/01/2008

Steak is a fantastic choice for this Friday's Cookalong. If we could work out the ratio between good flavour and ease of cooking, a decent sirloin would come out even. It's quick, low maintenance and, if you follow a few simple rules guaranteed to be delicious. By our Cookalong guinea pig Sam Jordison

The rules

The trouble is that steak is just as easy to get wrong as it is to get right. That's why I'd advise that if you only have time to watch one of Gordon Ramsay's training videos before Friday night you make it this one. The rules he imparts are clear and straightforward, but if you deviate from them your delicious juicy steak could quickly morph into something with the looks and personality of a dry, hairless hound.

Everything Gordon says in the video is gold. In brief:

First allow the steak to warm to room temperature so that it isn't cold in the middle when it starts cooking. Get your pan good and hot. Add a neutral-flavoured oil. Put your steak into the middle of the pan. Two-and-a-half to three minutes each side. Only turn it once! Apply butter. Cook the fat on the side. Take it out and let it rest. Yum, yum, yum.

As you can see from these instructions, cooking a good steak is as much a science as it is an art. It's all about timing, temperature and precise movement (or rather, I should say, resisting the urge to move anything too much). There's a pleasingly nerdy exactitude to the whole process that appeals to the same side of my man mind as the one that enjoys poring over maps, arriving everywhere bang on time and collecting records.

Locating my inner caveman

I'm sure I'm not alone in having this masculine yen for cooking steak. I've often observed that guys who would never dream of cooking anything more complex than a bacon sarnie assume they have an instinctual feeling for steaks and start taking over the kitchen whenever they're around.

In fact, it's most fitting that alpha male Gordon Ramsay should be the one who teaches the nation how to make the ideal steak. The macho appeal of steaks is undeniable. Perhaps it's something to do with their rich full-bodied flavour. Perhaps it's because of all the muscle building protein they're supposed to impart. Perhaps some cave-man, hunter-gatherer instinct kicks in at the sight of something so wonderfully fleshy. Perhaps it's a combination of all three or even social conditioning. Anyway, we men are supposed to like steak and I'm not about to buck the trend. I love it.