One rare steak and one well done, 3 cm thick
A well done steak needs longer than a rare one of the same thickness, so putting them in together guarantees one of them is wrong. Start the well done one first, add the rare one 7 min 40 later, and they finish at the same moment.
| Time | What to do |
|---|---|
| 0:00 | The well done steak on 8 min 40 on this side |
| 7:40 | The rare steak on 4 min 30 on this side |
| 8:40 | Turn the well done steak 7 min 10 on the second side |
| 12:10 | Turn the rare steak 3 min 40 on the second side |
| 15:50 | Everything off the heat Rest 6 min — somewhere warm, not covered tight |
| 21:50 | Serve Every steak, every doneness, all at once |
Set this up with your own steaks and run the timer →
The numbers
- Rare (52°C on the plate) — 4 min 30 on the first side, 3 min 40 on the second.
- Well done (74°C on the plate) — 8 min 40 on the first side, 7 min 10 on the second.
- Both off the heat at 15:50, rest 6 min, on the plate at 21:50.
Two temperatures, not one
Those are the temperatures on the plate. A steak keeps cooking once it leaves the pan — the centre climbs 5°C while it rests here — so the schedule takes it off the heat at about 47°C and 69°C on purpose. Probe it as it comes off and a low reading means the plan is working.
Where these times come from
Heat diffuses into meat rather than travelling at a steady rate, so cooking time goes with the square of thickness — double the thickness and you roughly quadruple the time. These times come from solving the heat equation for the centre of a 3 cm steak, not from a lookup table. Turning the steak every 30 seconds instead of once will cook it faster, by up to about 30%, and more evenly.
Cook to temperature, not to the clock
Every pan and every steak is different. The centre temperature is the only thing that is actually true, so if you own a probe thermometer use it — 52°C for rare, 74°C for well done, measured on the plate. The useful part of a timer like this is knowing when to start each steak, and that doesn't change.