Broiled New York Strip Steak

Author Notes

I was so excited to see your best broiled steak recipe contest. Steak is one of my favorite foods and while barbecuing outside is ideal for some, it is one of the few barbecued meats that actually benefits from the broiler. Why? Because you can control the heat and it won't burst into flames when you put the lid down, run inside and came back out to find fat has dripped down into the flames and set your beautiful piece of meat aflame.

This is a recipe my dad used to make when I was a kid. He is recently deceased (cancer), but his spirit lives on each time I eat this and think of him. He used to rub the entire steak in a liberal dosing of pure yellow mustard, then add salt and pepper. I have updated it a bit, by substituting dry mustard and changing the spicing a bit. But its still every inch his recipe. The key is to buy a New York roast and cut it yourself into nice 2 1/2–inch slabs (or have your butcher do it). —coffeefoodwrite

Test Kitchen Notes

"I love this New York strip steak recipe because it's an homage to the author's father—which means it is, like the best things in life, tried and true. It's also a reminder that most of us have broilers in our ovens but forget to use them. Which is a shame! Broilers allow for high, concentrated heat, mimicking the sear of direct heat (e.g., a pan, grill, the sidewalk on a hot summer's day) without the muss or fuss. I also love how old-fashioned it is. Somewhere along the way we fell in love with roasting but forgot about broiling, but it's time for a comeback, I say.

To broil steak, just be sure to watch it carefully under the broiler so it doesn't burn and follow coffeefoodwrite's cook times and recipe directions exactly. Also note that this recipe specifically calls for a very thick cut of steak: 2 1/2 inches, which is much taller than what you'd usually find at a grocery store. If your steaks are thinner, reduce the cook time and check the internal temperature early. Remember: rare is 120 to 130°F, medium-rare is 130 to 135°F, medium is 135 to 145°F, medium-well is 145 to 155°F, and well-done is 155 to 165°F.

There are other ways to tell without a thermometer, like touching the flesh and seeing how it bounces back: a very squishy steak is undercooked, a slightly bouncier one is more cooked, and a rock-hard one is overcooked. But the best way to tell, really, is to cut into it yourself (just be sure to rest it out of the broiler for at least 10 minutes before carving). The video below offers a helpful visual tutorial, as well, so be sure to refer to that if you'd like." —Eric Kim

"I believe there's a culinary answer to almost all of life’s problems.

I’m not talking federal deficit, Af-Pak, bed-bugs-taking-over-Manhattan (or at least expensive suitcase stores within) problems. More like, I don’t like my office chair, my 11-year-old just told me she 'hates living here and there is zero chance it will get better' and as it turns out I’m out of dish soap and I just glanced up and saw a mouse run across my kitchen floor sort of problems.

The sort that really have no practical solution, nor legislative response. The sort you eat through.

For some, comfort might rest in the form of warm, crusty bread. Others take their peace from macaroni, or Mughlai biryani. High or low is of no consequence, or at least a highly flexible construct: a friend who has dined at all of the best restaurants in New York is a sucker for microwavable chicken wings; the aforementioned 11-year-old is as addicted to Humboldt Fog cheese and Utz salt-and-vinegar chips.

Me, I like a nice steak. I love the ease of it, of course, especially at the end of a bad day. Further, I am inexplicably nuts for the smells and sounds of a nice piece of beef crackling inside my oven. Maybe it reminds me of childhood–mom and dad were not great cooks but they did have a way with meat, seasoned with Morton salt and served on a chrome-and-glass coffee table in front of 'The Bob Newhart Show.'

Or maybe it's because I know my Texan husband will always smile when his plate o’ steak is plopped before him, a small reward for living with the likes of me, who is prone to bouts of crying over the fact that I cannot find the blade of my mandoline.

It seems that coffeefoodwritergirl is also moved with nostalgia whenever she makes Broiled New York Steak, a kind of recipe poem to her late father.

Now many of you (except the vegetarians, who have already left me to go back to cutting up onions or thinking deep thoughts about acorn squash) are probably saying, 'Um, Jenny I don’t need anyone to tell me how to make a good steak. Buy good meat, salt and pepper it up, salt it some more and don’t overcook it.'

Yes, you’re right, and that’s fine.

But there is something special about the combination of garlic salt and dry mustard rubbed onto your meat, a little extra burst of complexity in the tender bites of a properly-cooked meal. I skipped the seasoning salt, because I don’t own any, and I think you can, too, but be sure to use just as much mustard as our author suggests to get the full effect.

I made this twice and the first time used less pepper which I think is right; 4 teaspoons was bit much for my taste and overpowered the other flavors.

Here is something else: this recipe worked even better on my less expensive New York strip steaks that I picked up at Trader Joe’s than the grass fed babies I purchased a week later.

Does this simply mean fun seasoning can compensate for lesser steaks? Or that even our most intense investments in the flavor superiority of better meat is no match for the tang of mustard? I don’t know. I don’t care much either. I just know it worked for me." —Jestei

—The Editors