How To Cook The Perfect Steak - Bass Strait Porterhouse W/ Pepper Sauce

We love our steak, and we love our Bass Strait Beef! Cooking the perfect steak in a skillet, pan, charcoal BBQ or Gas BBQ can be daunting - especially if you have company - so we've put together our best tips for cooking steak the Super Butcher way. 

We've taken a Reserve Grade (Marble Score 3+) Bass Strait Porterhouse and broken down the steps to cooking it to perfection - and serving it with one of the only sauces that elevates a great steak rather than overpowering it. 

Cooking a steak is so easy once you know the steps, but understanding how to do it perfectly takes time and patience. Follow the steps below to cook your favourite steak to perfection in a few easy steps. 


1) Bring your steak to room temperature

By removing it from the fridge and letting it rest on your chopping board or bench. Depending on the thickness of your steak this can take between 30 minutes to an hour. 

We do this so that the entire steak will cook evenly giving you an edge to edge medium rare - cooking a cold steak will take longer to cook from the outside in, meaning it will be pink on the inside and well done on the outside. 

2) Get your pan ripping hot

If your pan isn't hot enough, your steak will start to excrete water and begin to stew rather than sear. A hot pan cooks the steak faster and evaporates water as it begins to excrete. A hot pan gives a solid, even sear while not overcooking the inside. 

Seared Steak

On this topic:

Don't overcrowd your pan

if you have a 26cm skillet and two thick steaks, cook them one at a time. Ideally you're looking for at least a 3cm gap on each side of your meat so that the heat is distributed evenly and not absorbed by another piece of meat. 

3)  No Oil Needed

Trim a little fat from the fat cap of your porterhouse (or ask our butchers to leave some trim in each vacuum sealed bag for you) and render that first by placing it in the pan as it heaps up. Alternatively - start the sear with your fat cap down on the pan. 

4) Cook To Temperature

If you're not confident cooking by feel, cook to temperature. A Blaze thermopen or other digital thermometer will serve you for hundreds of steaks and ensure you're cooking it perfectly everytime. Cook to a couple of degrees before your preferred doneness as the steak will continue to cook while it rests.

Cooking time varies by starting temperature, heat temperature, whether you're cooking covered or uncovered and of course thickness. We hate giving cooking times as it can always change by the above variables - cook to temp for a perfect steak every time.  

Meat Temperature Chart Celcius
49C - 54C: Rare
54C - 60C: Medium Rare
60C - 65C: Medium
65C - 70C: Medium Well
70c Plus: We'd rather you didn't. 

5) Flip Once. 

This is completely personal opinion, but we like to flip our steaks once. We keep our steaks completely still for the first 50% of the cook to develop the best crust possible. In the last 30-60 seconds of the cook, we will pick our steak up with tongs and ensure every side of the steak is seared to render any remaining fat and get a 360 degree crust.  

6) Rest Your Steak

While cooking, the juices in steak leave their original positions and pool towards one side of the meat. Resting allows these juices to redistribute to their rightful homes and means you will have a juicier end product. This also means when you slice into it those juices won't spill all over your board or plate and will actually make it to your mouth.

7) Pan Sauce

Using the pan you have cooked your steak in is the ideal starter for a sauce or gravy. Whether your sauce is wine or water based - heat this up to boiling first and deglaze the pan by scraping any stuck bits of flavour (as it reaches boiling these will begin to lift on their own and just need a little push).

We used a Gourmet Granny's Pepper Sauce with this cook - we deglazed the pan by bringing 300ml of water to boiling. Added the packet mix and stirred until combined. Added 100ml of cream, stirred until thick and served. 

8) Enjoy It!

Once these steps become second nature, cooking a steak the Super Butcher way won't take any extra time - but it will be perfect every time. 

Bass Strait Porterhouse With Pepper Sauce