When using an electric frypan, I cook steaks differently to when on the BBQ. In my big electric pan, I heat to high, then cook on a medium heat (7) and I turn the steak twice at certain stages of the cooking process.

I like my steak medium rare, whereas some may like it rare or blue and others  prefer it not mooing at all; which is well done. I really enjoy it with my husband’s special garlic BBQ sauce. Sorry, none of that tomato or bbq sauce which my nieces and nephews love.

Medium steak

Steak with tabasco garlic sauce

Also I choose grass-fed beef because the meat is tenderer and sweeter than grain fed beef. I have tasted the different because we have grown out our own beef; having been on a dairy farm. Some fun facts about Meat include it is high in protein; ‘feeds your muscles, good source of iron and carries oxygen in the blood to your cells’.

When I used to cook at the Innot Hot Springs Hotel I cooked on a huge, flat, cast-iron hot plate. I knew my steaks were good because people came back week after week. If one was too mooey for their liking – I gave it a bit more sizzle. Full-time work got in the way of my part-time; but I can still cook a mean steak.

Turn as steak juice appears

After first turn

Here is my step-by-step of how I cook a medium steak. Add more or less time, for well done  or blue.

Ingredients

– from local butcher

• 2 grass-fed T/Bone Steaks
• 1 kg of sausages
• butter or olive oil

Equipment

• electric frypan
• tongs or flipper

Method

1. Pour oil or dab butter in heated electric frypan – first on high then turn down to  medium (7) heat. Allow butter to heat.

2. When pan is hot, place sausages and T/Bone Steaks together. It should sizzle if hot enough.

3. Allow steaks to start to bleed through to the top before turning steak over. You should hear a good sizzling sound – medium heat.

4. Repeat step 3.

5. After the second turning over of steak, you see a tinge of pink moisture on the steak. This is the ‘medium’ steak stage.

6. Turn off, and allow to rest on a plate for a minute before serving.