The Time-Consuming Step You Can Ignore When Grilling Steak

Everyone has their own routine when it comes to their homemade steak. Some prefer to keep it simple, rubbing the meat with just salt and pepper before grilling. Others like to wait until after cooking to add seasoning. Some drizzle on a bit of cooking oil to prevent sticking, while others skip the oil altogether. All these are obviously up to your discretion and are entirely optional, but here's one step that we bet you've always thought is a must: letting the steak rest outside the fridge to come to room temperature.

You heard it right, you don't have to rest it if you don't have the time or the patience. The reasoning behind this is that allowing the steak to reach room temperature from its chilled state will help it cook more evenly on the grill. You'll often see cookbooks and recipes advising to let the steak rest for 20 to 30 minutes before cooking, and while this approach works well if you have plenty of time, it's not so cool when you're hosting a dinner party.

Resting your succulent cut of ribeye steak for 30 minutes really doesn't raise the core temperature all that much (a couple of degrees at best), so a rested versus straight-out-the-fridge steak will cook the same. Instead, what you really want to pay attention to is how moist the steak is out of the fridge.

Try touching your steak after a stint in the fridge and you'll find it a bit wet from the its natural juice. If you keep the steak uncovered in the fridge, there may be some fridge condensation on it, too. If you try to grill the steak without wiping all this moisture off, it won't be able to brown. Before the heat can sear the steak's surface, it must first evaporate all that moisture.

This is why salting your steak and letting it rest in the fridge overnight can help it brown better. It's not because kosher or sea salt (never table salt) is a magical steak crust-forming agent. Salt absorbs all the excess moisture on the steak so by the time you're ready to grill, the meat is already dry, primed, and ready to take on a crust on the grates.

No worries if you don't have time (or forgot) to do the overnight salting drill. Simply take some paper towels and thoroughly pat the steak down, wiping away any moisture from top to bottom until it feels dry to the touch. It's perfectly fine if the steak is still a bit chilled, as we mentioned earlier. Once you've finished wiping it down, you can pop it straight onto the grill and cook it as you normally would. Trust us when we say it'll still come out nicely seared.