Pan Seared T-bone Steak: Easy, Simple Recipe - Barbecue FAQ (2024)

T-bone steak is an impressive cut of meat but it can be hard to pan sear.

A lot of recipes for pan fried/seared t-bone steak could be improved simply by:

1. Pat drying the meat and dry brining for at least 2 hours.
2. Using moderate heat and a little more of their high smoke point oil.

What to Look for in T-bone Steak

The only real difference between t-bone steaks is the size of the tenderloin muscle.

Here’s the muscle I’m referring to (highlighted in dotted yellow):

Ideally, the bigger the loin, the better.

Here’s a t-bone with a smaller loin muscle:

Aside from that, I’d suggest going with a cut that’s USDA choice graded or higher.

This grade implies that the meat has a high amount of intramuscular fat (marbling).

How to Pan Sear T-Bone Steak

To pan sear t-bone steak, you will need:

• A skillet – I used my Lodge cast iron skillet.
• T-bone steak – ideally dry brined with kosher salt the day before.
• A high smoke point oil – I prefer grapeseed.
• Unsalted butter – this is to baste the steak with.
• Spoon – used to baste with.
• Tongs – this simply makes maneuvering the steak easier.
• Paper towels – used to pat dry the steak to remove surface moisture.
• Probe thermometer – this ensures we don’t overshoot our internal temperature target.
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper

You can definitely get more creative than I did, using something like garlic cloves or thyme or similar aromatics.

1. If your steak had a strip loin side with a large portion of back fat, I’d suggest trimming some of it down. Apart from that, no other trimming is necessary.

2. The day before cooking the steak, I prefer to dry brine my t-bone steaks. If you’re doing this the day of, I’d suggest allowing the dry brine to go for 1-2 hours at a minimum.

To dry brine all you need is kosher salt – either Diamond crystal or Morton’s kosher salt.

Simply salt all sides of the meat:

Then place on a cooling rack on top of a plate and place in your refrigerator on the bottom shelf overnight:

If you’re dry brining the day of, you don’t want moisture pooled on the surface, It should appear “dry.”

Typically this happens in 1-2 hours.

3. The next day when it comes time to cook the steak, take the following to your work station:

• Cast iron skillet
• Tongs
• Spoon
• Unsalted butter
• Paper towels
• Pepper
• Grapeseed oil
• Probe thermometer

4. Take your steak out of the refrigerator and pat dry all sides with paper towel.

The goal being to make the surface as dry as possible.

The reason for doing this is so that the surface moisture doesn’t have to evaporate before being allowed to form a crust.

5. I prefer to apply freshly cracked pepper to the steak as I like the way it tastes when it’s seared in the skillet.

You could opt to apply pepper after, it’s totally up to you.

6. Set your burner to medium-high heat.

Once your skillet is hot (should take ~3-6 minutes), add cold oil to your cast iron pan.

Tilt the skillet, spreading the oil around and then wait for the oil to shimmer; This is hard to describe so I took a picture of it.

Here’s said picture:

To reiterate: I used more oil than I normally would here simply to compensate for the bone and the protein inevitably retracting/shrinking. This increases contact between the cooking surface and the meat.

7. Once the oil shimmers and you see a slight smoke, place your t-bone steak away from you onto the skillet with your tongs.

With your tongs, lightly press on the steak to ensure even surface contact between the steak and the pan/oil.

8. Now simply wait 90 seconds and then flip the steak over and place on a new area of the pan (opposite to where you just placed your steak).

T-bone steak 2nd flip:

So a good estimate would be:

• Place on skillet, wait for 1 minute 30 seconds, flip to a new side of pan.
• Wait another 1 minute 30 seconds, flip back to other side of pan.
• Wait another 1 minute 30 seconds, flip back to other side.
• Wait another 1 minute and 30 seconds, flip back to other side.

I’m flipping back and forth until I hit 10F under my internal temperature target (125-130F is my target so 125-10 = 115F internal).

The total time to achieve this was 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

9. Once you reach your internal temperature target, take the skillet OFF the heat.

We’re now going to butter-baste to finish the steak off.

With your skillet now off the heat, have the t-bone on one end of the skillet and add 2 Tablespoons of unsalted butter to the opposite end.

What you want to happen is for the butter to froth NOT brown.

Once it begins frothing, angle the skillet towards the butter and with your spoon, begin scooping the frothed butter and basting over the top of the steak.

Do this for roughly 30 seconds, then flip the steak and repeat the process on the other side.

For this steak I did this for a total of 2 minutes – so 30 seconds x 2 on each side.

10. The internal temperature should now be near your target temperature.

Take the t-bone out of the skillet and place on your cutting board to stand/rest for 5 minutes.

11. Now simply slice against the grain and enjoy.

Truth be told though, most folks slice the t-bone steak incorrectly.

I have a way more comprehensive guide on how to slice t-bone steak, found here.

I don’t think I could do that article justice by trying to condense it here.

Here’s one the slices to prove this concept:

I was fairly happy with the cook, what I’d deem medium-rare with a warm red center and minimal “well-done” band.