Why does my pan "seared" meat always turn out grey instead of pretty and brown :<
You're either cooking it on too low of a heat, OR you're fucking with it too much.
How to Sear Meat Good:
While you're waiting for the pan to heat AS HIGH/HOT AS IT'LL GO, salt the outside of your meat. Use BIG FLAKE SALT, or CHUNKY SEA SALT. Using fine table salt you'll end up with really overly salty food.
Get your pan RIPPING hot. Like, when you toss a drop of water on it, that fucker dances across the pan.
Add oil enough to coat the bottom fully, and wait for it to also be ripping hot.
Place your meat in the pan
DON'T FUCKING TOUCH IT!!
Seriously. don't touch it until you see the grey 'cooked meat' color creeping up the sides. Once you see about a full centimeter of cooked-color up the sides of the meat, THEN you can flip it over.
Cook on that new side until the 'edges' of the meat look completely cooked. You can then check if it's browned properly, and poke at it or cut it to see how 'done' the inside is.
At that point for a steak I'd turn the heat down or off entirely, and let the residual heat cook through the middle.
