Enjoying a fresh, juicy steak, whether it's a ribeye, filet mignon, flank steak, or flavorful sirloin, is truly a unique experience. Unfortunately, sometimes you make your favorite steak recipe with the best steak sauce you've got in the fridge, but you can't finish all that you've cooked and you need to figure out how to reheat steak the next day. Leftover steak has a bad reputation for ending up overly chewy and tough when reheated in a microwave-safe dish, but it doesn't have to be that way. There's a best way to reheat steak, according to a few different sources, and it doesn't involve your microwave.
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Best Way to Reheat Steak
If you're looking to prepare reheated steak from last night, your first step should be to preheat your oven. Both Cook's Illustrated and Delish recommend the reheating method of cooking the steak first on a wire rack over a baking sheet, baking dish, or baking tray in your oven, then finishing it on your stovetop.
Cook's Illustrated says the best method to get a decent reheated steak is to "warm them on the middle rack of a 250-degree oven" until the internal temperature reaches 110 degrees on your meat thermometer, then pat the steak dry with a paper towel.
Then, heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil or olive oil in a cast iron skillet and cook your steak over medium-high heat. You're going to want to sear both sides without overcooking, and each side should take a minute or two. You can flip in 30-second intervals. This will help the outside get crispy again.
After the steak rests for around five minutes, it should reach about 130 degrees, if you want to end up with a medium-rare steak. You might have to adjust cooking times and temperatures if you'd like your reheated steak to have a different "doneness" in the end.
What you'll have after all of that is a steak that might not have all the juiciness of the original did right after grilling, but it'll be much closer than if you stuck it in the microwave with a damp paper towel and hoped for the best. If you're not a fan of the oven method, you can slice leftover steak up for fajitas, which are a bit more forgiving. Beef broth can also be used to bring back some of that juiciness. What's your favorite way to reheat a steak?
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