Sautéing

Part of the reason the French are fond of sautéing meat is that it allows them to make a quick sauce by deglazing the sauté pan—stirring a little liquid into it after cooking the meat, dissolving the caramelized meat juices and forming the basis for a sauce. To sauté so that these juices form on the bottom of the pan and caramelize without burning, you need to use a heavy-bottomed pan just large enough to hold the steaks in a single layer. If the pan is too small, the steaks won’t all come in contact with the heat and they’ll steam instead of brown, leaving watery, insipid juices in the pan and the surface of the meat gray and dull with no caramelized brown crust. If, on the other hand, the pan is too large, the exposed parts of the pan that aren’t covered with meat will become too hot and the juices released by the steak will burn, leaving you nothing with which to make a sauce. If you find yourself with a sauté pan that’s just a little too large, fill the empty space with meat trimmings or bones, if you have them. The sauté pan should be thick and heavy or the heat from the stove won’t be distributed evenly over its surface; there will be hot and cold spots, the steaks will cook unevenly, and, again, the juices will burn. Old-fashioned iron skillets make great sauté pans and they’re cheap enough that it won’t cost a fortune to have a collection in different sizes. They do, however, have one disadvantage. Because their inner surface is dark, it is difficult to judge the condition of the meat juices that have, one hopes, caramelized rather than burned on the pan’s surface. The only way to know is to deglaze the pan and taste the juices.