When Cooking Steak, Should You Oil The Meat Or The Pan?

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When you're looking forward to steak night, the last thing you want to do is ruin the cut before it's time to eat. There are ways to ensure that won't happen, like choosing the right marinade, using a cast-iron pan to get a restaurant-worthy ribeye steak, and following the rule of 3's for steak cooking. Oil matters, too: A pan-seared steak needs cooking oil with a high smoke point, like canola or avocado oil, to help with even cooking and to add flavor. But you're then faced with the question of whether you should oil the steak or the pan itself. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference, even among pro chefs. 

Proponents of steak-oiling over pan-oiling maintain that it makes for a less greasy meal, along with less smoke during searing. But there are certainly chefs who advocate for the opposite. Paula Deen oils the pan, as does Richard Blais. Gordon Ramsay oils both. Chowhound spoke with Jonathan Bautista, the executive chef at Ember & Rye in Carlsbad, California, to get his view on this important question. He suggests oiling the pan, not the meat. "I keep the steak as dry as possible prior to hitting the pan," Bautista said. "I add the oil to the pan until it has a light shimmer and a small amount of smoke coming off of [it]."

There are several benefits of this method. Oiling the pan instead of the steak can allow for better control of how much oil ends up in your dish — it's easy to get heavy-handed when oiling the meat, especially if you're also oiling the pan. It also helps prevent sticking and encourages a nice, even brown crust across the entire surface of the steak.

You could know all of the tricks to a flawless pan-seared steak and still get it wrong if you don't do it often. Steak cooking techniques aren't a closely guarded secret. In fact, you can get tips everywhere, from chats with locals in your town's restaurant row to online seminars, podcasts, and more. Chef Jonathan Bautista mentioned YouTube videos as a great source for guidance, noting, however, that the real key to learning good steak searing techniques is to keep doing it. "Practice and repetition are important when cooking the traditional way," Bautista said.

If you're focused on fool-proof, even cooking, though, Bautista mentioned that a number of home cooks find a thermal immersion circulator or a sous vide machine helpful. These wand-like machines, such as the Inkbird WIFI Sous Vide Cooker, clip to the inside of a large cooking pot and circulate hot water around a steak in a vacuum-sealed bag. "It really makes hitting the temperature of a steak easy for home cooks," Bautista said. "I personally don't cook like this at home or at the restaurant because while the temperature is accurate, the texture is naturally altered in the process."

Bautista is referring to the fact that meat can become extra melty and almost overly tender if cooked too long with this process, which is a low-and-slow technique versus a high-temperature, fast pan-sear. Still, a number of home chefs and many celebrity chefs enjoy sous vide cooking. Ultimately, just like the debate about oiling the pan or the steak, searing versus sous vide cooking comes down to personal preference. For the most tried-and-true method, however, go for oiling the pan.