How to Cook Bavette Steak in the Oven

What is bavette steak?

Bavette is the French word for a flat, loosely textured beef cut often sold as sirloin flap, flap meat, or sometimes treated as a relative of flank steak. BBC Good Food describes it as a highly flavored cut that was traditionally a butcher’s favorite. It has a coarse, open grain that takes marinades well and a robust beefy flavor.

It is not always on supermarket shelves. A butcher counter or an online meat supplier is the more reliable source, and a butcher may sell it under a different name, so it is worth asking.

Because it is a thin, flat cut with long muscle fibers, it rewards fast, hot cooking, a short rest, and careful slicing. It does not reward long, slow cooking.

Oven methods at a glance

• Sear then oven-finish (most reliable): brown in an ovenproof skillet on the stove, then move the pan to a hot oven to finish. This gives a crust plus controlled, even cooking.
• Broiler: cook the steak on a pan under the broiler, close to the heat. This works like an upside-down grill.

Either way, the aim is the same: a browned outside and a center that stays on the rare-to-medium side.

Prep

1. Pat the steak dry. Moisture on the surface prevents browning.
2. Season. Salt and pepper are enough. Bavette also takes a marinade well (soy sauce, garlic, oil, a little vinegar or lemon). If you marinate, keep acidic marinades to a few hours at most, because longer soaks can leave the surface mushy. Pat off excess marinade and any loose garlic before cooking, since it can burn.
3. Let it warm slightly. Many cooks rest the steak out of the fridge for 30 minutes or so before cooking. Thin steaks warm quickly.
4. Heat the oven. About 375°F (190°C) is a commonly used temperature for the finish. Place an ovenproof skillet, such as cast iron, on the stove at medium-high heat while the oven heats.

Step-by-step: sear on the stove, finish in the oven

1. Add a thin film of oil with a high smoke point to the hot skillet.
2. Lay the steak in and leave it alone for about 2 minutes, until it has browned.
3. Flip once and sear the second side for about 2 minutes.
4. Move the whole skillet into the preheated oven.
5. Cook for a short time, often around 5 minutes for a steak of average thickness, then start checking with a thermometer. Thin bavette can be ready sooner, and a thick piece may need more. Go by temperature, not the clock.
6. Remove the steak when it is a few degrees under your target, move it to a board, and rest it.

How to cook a medium-rare bavette

Use an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part. As a rough guide, many cooks pull bavette at around 125-130°F (52-54°C) for medium-rare, since the temperature rises a few degrees while it rests. Typical doneness labels give about 120°F for rare, 130°F for medium-rare, and 140°F for medium, though exact numbers vary by source.

BBC Good Food advises cooking bavette on the rare side of medium-rare and resting it well. The reason is that this cut can turn tough and dry when cooked past medium.

Food-safety note: the USDA recommends 145°F (63°C) with a three-minute rest for whole cuts of beef. Cooking to a lower doneness is a personal choice. If you are cooking for anyone pregnant, elderly, very young, or with a weakened immune system, you may prefer to follow the USDA guidance. If the steak has been mechanically tenderized (some are), check the packaging and consider cooking it to the higher temperature.

Broiler method

1. Position an oven rack so the steak will sit a few inches below the broiler element, and preheat the broiler.
2. Place the dried, seasoned steak on a rack set over a rimmed pan, or directly on a preheated pan.
3. Broil for a few minutes per side, checking often. Broilers vary a lot in power, so watch the steak instead of relying on set times.
4. Check the temperature and rest as below.

Expect more smoke than with the skillet method. Keep the vent fan running.

Resting and slicing against the grain

Rest the steak for 5 to 10 minutes, loosely covered, so the juices redistribute. Some sources suggest a longer rest for this cut; the main thing is not to slice straight away.

Then find the direction the muscle fibers run. Bavette has long, visible fibers. Slice across them, in thin strips, ideally at a slight angle. Slicing with the grain is the quickest way to make a good steak chewy.

How to make bavette steak more tender

• Do not cook past medium. This matters more than any other step.
• Use a short marinade rather than a long acidic one.
• Rest the meat, then slice thinly against the grain.
• Cook it hot and fast: gentle, long cooking dries out thin steaks.
• Choose a well-aged, dark red piece when you have a choice at the butcher.

What is the 3-3-3 rule for steak?

There is no official “3-3-3 rule.” Different websites use the phrase for different timing shortcuts, and they generally do not account for thickness. For a thin steak like bavette, a thermometer will serve you better than any rule of threes.

Serving ideas

Sliced bavette suits tacos, fajitas, steak salad, and sandwiches, or can be served on a platter with chimichurri or a simple pan sauce. For a side, try blackened corn from the stove or roasted shishito peppers. Spoon any resting juices over the slices.

Related articles

If you are comparing methods, our guide to cooking grass-fed steak on the stove covers pan-searing in more detail, and how to cook steak pinwheels on the stove shows another way to use a thin, flat cut.