In IRC a few of us often discuss cooking stuff and several people are very good cooks so I figured a thread for RPG's recipes, advice, and if people have questions would be good. 

I think I will open up with how to pick out a proper steak and how to prepare it.

[b]How to Steak[/b]
First off steak is awesome so you should learn how to pick out good beef and make it since it is awesome.

Steak has many different cuts from chuck shoulder to sirloin, when you go to the meat aisle at your grocery store it can be difficult to pick out what you want so I will try to help you there first. In the US meat is graded in 1 of 3 ways, Select, Choice, or Prime. Prime is the best cut and most expensive, Choice is next, and Select is the cheapest but worst grade. You can do a taste test for yourself but understand there is a huge difference in quality of the meat based on grade. It is based mostly on marbling deciding the grade. If you are new to making steak I would say pick choice cuts for now, when looking at meat there is still a huge difference when it comes to quality within each grade. What you want is generally thing white lines running throughout the meat. If you have very thick lines those thick lines are basically inedible though can be cut off and used for other cooking uses. If you have very red throughout meat that has almost no white lines then your meat will have very less flavor to it.

So when you go to the market look through the different meats and look for nice thin lines through most of the steak, some steaks will have thick lines through them on every single one and that is due to the cut, for example the rib eye is a preferred cut and you will always see a decent chunk of fat on it. That is just the cut it is and is a very good cut. Now speaking of cuts there many, many cuts out there. To simplify things for now you want either a loin or rib cut generally. Some of the best cuts you will see regularly will be the Rib Eye and Sirloin. When you look at steaks get a nice rib eye or sirloin with thin white lines throughout that will be a good tender juice steak with a lot of flavor and easily cooked.

Now there are various other things people look for as well such as size. Personally I like my steak 1.5-2 inches thick, steaks generally do not gain or lose much in size from before to after cooking as long as you do not overcook which I will address later. For now though just think of what size you want, I like mine on the thicker size so you might like yours closer to 1 inch(2.5cm) thick. Most other things in regards to picking out a steak are personal preference and you can learn later on.

Do not buy frozen steaks, just don't.

Once you have your steak picked out time to prepare it for cooking, steaks are general sealed and cooled. Let your steak sit out on the counter and slowly rise to room temperature, depending on the size of the steak this should take from 30 minutes to half an hour the steak will likely increase in size slightly during this time as it breathes and warms up. Once you put it on the counter lightly use kosher or sea salt on one side, about halfway flip it over and salt the other side you will notice it will get redder as well as this happens and the salt should no longer be apparent before flipping and later cooking. Once you are ready to cook rub pepper onto both sides and then oil to both sides as well.

How done your steak is, is entirely a matter of preference. This is a good image to what each level looks like.

[hider=Doneness][img=http://i.imgur.com/HxRz8.jpg][/hider]

Now you may be thinking about how you can tell how done it is from the outside, no worries there is a handy trick for that. 

[url=http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/the_finger_test_to_check_the_doneness_of_meat/]Steak Doneness Finger Trick[/url]

You do not have to use your finger on the steak if you do not want to, a utensil is fine.

Do not cook it to blue rare or well done. Blue rare is too underdone and you can potentially get sick from it and well done is a waste of good meat.

After the cooking you may think it is time to dig in, not yet. If you cut into it right away the inside will be juicy but the outside drier, let it sit for 5-10 minutes for the juices to seep into the outer layers of the steak. Once that is done you can dig into your perfectly prepared steak and I promise you will taste the difference.

Oh, I almost forgot, if you use steak sauce on good steak, I hate you.