Chef Kerry Heffernan On The Best Way To Reheat A Steak

Chef Kerry Heffernan, who you might remember from a recent season of Top Chef Masters, has spent time as Executive chef at acclaimed New York restaurants including Eleven Madison Park and South Gate, and he's currently the chef at the newly-revamped Dylan Prime and is also putting touched on his latest cookbook, 12 Months in Sag Harbor.  The chef dropped by to discuss his menu at the restaurant, which includes a raw bar, steaks like a 42-ounce ribeye and lamb saddle, plenty of sustainable seafood, and a slow-roasted pork chop, and we took advantage of the opportunity to ask him what the best way to reheat one of those spectacular steaks if you can't finish it all in one sitting.

"You'll be disappointed one hundred percent of the time if you try to reheat a steak looking for it to be exactly the same as it was the night before," he told us. "I always use the opportunity to make a warm sandwich."

To begin, Heffernan lets the steak sit outside of the refrigerator for at least an hour in order to bring it up to as close to room temperature as possible. He then sears it briefly (for a minute or so per side) in a hot pan, "just to warm it up," he said. "You don't want to try to heat it all the way back up, or else it'll turn out gray," he said.

Once the steak is out, he briefly lets it rest, then slices it thinly. From there, it's all about using what's in season. "If it's summertime I'll put the steak on some toasted crusty bread and top it with a fresh-sliced tomato, herbs and olive oil, and during the winter I like to put it on potato bread with a compound butter I make that's 50 percent butter, 50 percent acidic mayo," he said.

So there you have it: don't try to bring your steak back up to perfection; take advantage of the opportunity to make a killer steak sandwich.