Cooking a steak is a culinary skill that everybody should know. And while it’s not the most complicated thing in the world, there are still a few things that can trip you up.
The wrong temperature, timings and ingredients can turn what should be a delicious meal into a chewy, unpleasant mess. So if you’re looking to perfect your steak-cooking skills, the ideal method has finally been revealed – and it’s all to do with science. Experts say the secret lies in a formula that was created by the genius himself, Albert Einstein.
Professor Rob Appleby, a physicist from the University of Manchester and trained chef, says the formula L² = 4Dt can be used to determine how to cook steak. It might sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty straightforward.
L represents the thickness of the steak, T is the time for the steak to cook, and D is something called the diffusion coefficient – the speed at which heat moves through the steak.
This equation, which was first used to describe the motion of particles, can be applied to predict how long it takes for heat to penetrate and perfectly cook a steak.
“Steak science is surprisingly precise,” said Rob. “It’s not the weight of the steak that matters, but its thickness. Heat takes longer to travel through thicker meat, and Einstein’s formula helps us understand exactly how long it takes.”
According to Rob, the time it takes to cook a steak increases with the square of its thickness. That means doubling the thickness of a steak doesn’t just double the cooking time – it can quadruple it.
This insight busts one of the biggest BBQ myths: that a steak twice as big takes twice as long to cook. Instead, it’s all about how deep the heat needs to travel – something you can calculate using physics.
By using the formula and a simple temperature probe, home cooks can avoid overcooking, undercooking, or the dreaded burnt-outside, raw-inside disasters.
The timing is perfect for Father’s Day weekend, when millions of dads will be firing up their grills. Josh Novell from Polhill BBQs, who helped create the chart, said: “People are always nervous about steak, especially on a BBQ, but this takes the guesswork out. You don’t need to be a physicist; just have the right tools and the right method.
“When you’re cooking over flames or coals, heat zones vary and it’s easy to burn the outside before the centre’s ready. But by understanding how heat travels through the steak, you avoid solely relying on instinct.”
