Air-Fryer Steak with Garlic-Herb Butter

I'm going to admit, the air fryer has produced one of the best steaks I've made at home. I grill, smoke, reverse-sear, cast iron butter baste, etc, etc. But. My brother and I got a couple of 1.5" prime, well-marbled ribeyes. Seasoned well overnight in the fridge. Used the "grill" setting, med-high. and had temp probes set to 125 degrees. Flipped maybe at 80 degrees. The crusty sear is something hard to recreate. I've made other steaks that stopped conversation, but not with that crust.

My steaks were a little thin so they cooked faster. Subbed Penzeys Chicago Steak seasoning and only made 1Tbsp of butter and it was a thoroughly enjoyable, quick and easy main dish.

I was a bit disappointed in this. No crisp-crusty surface on the steak, as you’d get with grilling, which I feel is one of the best parts of steak. Maybe that’s asking too much of an air fryer. We have a built-in air fryer in our oven (Frigidaire “Professoonal”) so maybe it’s not as good as stand-alone ones -? Also, cooked ~3/4” sirloin steaks for 5 then another 5 mins but it was still rare in spots. Again, maybe that’s our air fryer. The spice rub was ok but didn’t really shine through for me.

does this stink up your air fryer/oven from the grease? i havent had great luck doing meats in my breville in this regard....

This was so good. Air fryers vary, so check the temp before you think it's done. Mine took 5 min and then 2 min to reach medium rare.

I’ll do this for Valentine Day for my wife. We’re elderly, so there’s only the two of us. Buying all the fresh spices isn’t practical, so I’ll just use reduced amounts of dried of which we have plenty. We have an air fryer, but cooking the steak in a cast iron skillet is also an option. Either way, it will be medium rare and done with love.

Dear NYT: I never cooked steak before. Thank you for this SUPER easy recipe. I made it for Valentine's Day and it turned out great!!! Yes even I can cook steak now!!

This worked surprisingly well for a relatively thin sirloin. It didn’t have the nice crust you get with other methods. But it was fast, energy-efficient and easy to clean up, and the steak came out perfectly medium-rare after 9 minutes without setting off any smoke alarms.

Serious substitutions here; most important that I had rwo inch-thick bone-in pork chops. Didn't have thyme, coriander, lemon or flaky salt. But still, wow... One surprise: we very rarely use raw garlic in anything and it really stood out (in a good way). And don't plan on kissing anyone later who didn't share this meal with you. ENERGY SAVER: I put the little Pyrex dish with the herb butter behind the air fryer and the hot blown air did the melting! OK, that's obsessive...

What I love here is the simplicity and ease if you've brought your steak up to room temp in advance and your steak is not super-thin. Be sure to test the temp at 5 mins and adjust accordingly. Extremely useful technique overall. I've done this a few times - working up from a real-cheap cut to a much more expensive cut. Helps keep my mostly-vegetarian kitchen mostly grease-free.

I'd crank the heat up to 500 or more. Also, if it's a strip steak, I'd lean into a rosemary and lemon based chimichurri.