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If you do much reading or listening to expert cooks, you will hear many different opinions on whether or not to put salt on your meat. There are all sorts of conflicting opinions on this point. Some say you should salt them right before putting them in the pan or on the grill. Others will say you should salt the steak a few hours before cooking. And some will say you should not salt at all, as it causes the meat to lose moisture? Which is correct? There really is a right way to do it that will give you the best flavor. The ultimate answer to this age-old question is to just try it out. We bought six bone-in ribeye steaks so that we could test out which one was the best way to salt a steak. What we did was salt the steaks at an interval of 10 minutes before throwing them in a pan to sear them. So, the final steak we threw in the pan went in right after we salted it, and the first steak went in the pan after it was salted 50 minutes ago. All of the steaks were allowed to rest for 50 minutes before being cooked, so that we started all of them at the same temperature. What we found was that the steak that got salted right before cooking, and the steak that got salted/rested for about 40 minutes, were much more flavorful and tender. They were definitely superior to the steaks that were salted/rested at 10, 20 and 30 minutes. Why? If we cook it right after salting, the salt is on the meat surface and is not dissolved. All of the juices are still deep in the muscle. Searing at this point gives a really good searing that holds in the juices. However, after about 3-4 minutes, the salt by osmosis starts to suck out the liquid from the meat. This liquid you can see bead up on the meat surface. If you sear now, you are going to waste heat because you are evaporating this liquid. The temperature of the pan drops, and it does not sear as well. And the development of crust and those tasty browning reactions are reduced. At about 10 minutes, the brine that is produced from the salt as it dissolves in the juices starts to break down the meat fibers. It makes the meat more absorptive. The brine will start to get back into the meat. After about 40 minutes, most of that liquid is back in the meat. There also has been a bit of evaporation, so the meat has a bit more of a concentrated flavor. Also, after the liquid is absorbed back into the meat, the salt/brine work even deeper into the meat. This gives you seasoning even deeper into the meat. We found that the best steak of all was the one that was salted on top and bottom and left to rest in the fridge overnight. This gave the meat incredible flavor and was very tender. You do need to let the meat rest on the counter an hour before cooking to bring it to room temperature. The bottom line with salting your steak is that you should salt it for a minimum of 40 minutes and as long as overnight before you cook it. If you do not have that much time, you are better off salting it just before cooking the steak. If you salt the steak 3-30 minutes before cooking it, you are going to get the worst tasting steak and it won't be very tender. Lawrence Reaves writes for kitchen appliance companies, Hamilton Beach who has a selection of Indoor Grills and Proctor Silex who also offers Indoor Grills
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