Those reasons he mentioned are really just because restaurants want to pay as few line cooks as possible, so they cook steaks as quickly as possible too.
It's also because steakhouses have commercial equipment that can bring a refrigerated steak to the proper temp fairly easily, with a nice sear, not to mention that line cooks generally have the experience to know how to bring those steaks to a proper temp using that equipment. And, occasionally, even highly experienced line cooks at the better places will still fuck it up.
Well, yeah, they can keep steaks in the water, but that contradicts bradley's assertion that steakhouses cook steaks right out of the chill. There's really no other magic way to make sure the inside is always properly done, "fairly easily", unless the line cooks are stabbing their steaks with Thermapens all the time. Even then, to minimize overcooking, they need to slow down the process.
I am squarely in the amature ranks as far as cooking steak goes so I have not heard that before. However, I am curious on how that works. If you cook two steaks, bringing them both up to the same internal temperature, why would the fact that one started frozen/partially frozen matter? Sure, the cooking times would be different but once they are at the same temperature why wouldn't they behave the same way?
Even given that it happens, isn't this something that can be easily compensated for during the cooking process?
Plus, I would think anyone doing this probably also has a freezer full of batteries so there might not be room for steaks.
-KeithP
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