Katie Lee's Go-To Steak Order Is Unexpectedly Simple And Totally Relatable

Every chef that eats meat is going to have an opinion on the best way to cook a steak, but not too many are as pleasantly unfussy as Katie Lee. The West Virginia-born Lee has been helping Americans cook for over a decade as one of the hosts of Food Network's "The Kitchen". She's also the author of four cookbooks dedicated to simple, comforting home cooking. So when we asked 14 celebrity chefs how they take their steak, it wasn't surprising that she kept it classic, choosing a ribeye as her preferred cut of steak. But what was a refreshing surprise is that she says she likes her steak medium, something plenty of chefs would turn their nose up at.

For years it has felt like cooking a steak past medium rare has been treated as a cardinal sin of the food world, but the reality is that plenty of steaks are great at that doneness, maybe even their best, and a ribeye is definitely one of them. A big reason why people think you shouldn't cook a steak past medium rare is because you'll start to dry it out and make it tough. But someone as experienced as Lee knows that ribeyes have plenty of fat marbling due to its location around the ribs of the cow. That fat makes the steak extra juicy, plenty enough to be cooked past medium rare without drying it out. In fact, that extra cooking time will help render even more delicious fat.

The same reasoning holds up for the texture of ribeye as well. Coming from a part of the cow that gets very little work, ribeye steak are naturally tender. Cooking them to medium doesn't go far enough to change that. Rare ribeye steaks can actually be unpleasantly soft, and that extra chew you get from cooking it a bit farther can be firm and nice. Not everyone loves a pink steak the way a lot of chefs do, and lots of people don't want to worry about taking all kind of preparatory steps to make sure they can cook the outside of steak to a nicely browned level while still somehow keeping the inside rare. While you should never cook cuts like sirloin past medium, with a ribeye there is no practical reason not to. It just comes down to personal taste.

While we often recommend a reverse sear to get the most precise temperature, to get a perfect medium ribeye a simple stovetop sear in a cast iron pan is all you really need. Cooked in a preheated pan over high heat, your ribeye should come out at around 130-135 degrees Fahrenheit, which will raise to a perfect medium 140 degrees as it rests. This should only take around 8-ish minutes for an inch-and-a-half thick steak. With a steak as rich as ribeye, all it should need is some salt.