No please for the love of god do not rinse a steak... having a wet surface will prevent the maillard reaction from taking place, you wont get the seared effect without overcooking your meat.

You don't have to rub the salt in.. but you do need to season with salt for at least 45 minutes - the salt draws the moisture out of the steak the moment you season it.. after that through the process of reverse osmosis the moisture is drawn back into the steak and that's why you do it.

I really don't understand why you'd want to over season with salt in the first place so that you'd have to rinse excess salt off first. When they talk about patting a steak dry - it is not after having rinsed it. You really do need a dry surface to get a nice sear and washing a steak is definitely not going to help you do that. Truth is, how much seasoning to use on a steak comes out of experience, with most recipes just giving vague instructions such as "season generously with salt and pepper" without specifying how much to use or how to go about doing it. The best thing for anyone cooking is to learn from mistakes ie.. use less salt the next time.

Actually, after having skimmed through the article - it clearly copies what I posted above so I really don't know why you posted the link in response to my post?

I think the question being asked is a bit silly ie do you prefer a dry rub or wet marinade - that really depends on what taste you're going for. My preference for a nice ribeye or sirloin would of course be just to season with salt but there's no denying the awesomeness of Korean style bbq short ribs (Kalbi) which is seasoned in a soy sauce, sugar based marinade, or even a Chinese style beef/ginger/scallions stir fry which is just marinated in soy sauce+corn flour.

With chicken, in response to the above, the reason why you would want to dry brine - which is to rub entirely with salt and under the chicken breast skin is to allow reverse osmosis to happen making the meat itself juicier and tastier. I would do an overnight salt rub whether I was roasting the chicken or poaching the chicken for hainanese chicken rice. Marinating is really to add a different taste profile for whatever recipe you're making eg satay with its rich ginger/galangal/lemongrass/sugar/onion/turmeric/kunyit paste

so asking whether a dry rub or marinade is better depends on what you're trying to make...

No worries man - I'm not a professional chef either and like you I'm still learning. I make a lot of mistakes when cooking but I think that's the only way to improve your cooking.

I've had to ramp up the amount of home cooking i'm doing recently as we just got a domestic helper at the end of May. I'm trying to teach her how to cook, but the problem is I'm not a very experienced cook because this is Malaysia and most times it's easier to tapau rather than cooking especially when it's just the 2 of us.

So, to teach my maid how to cook I have to perfect a few basic recipes so that I can be as clear as possible when giving her instructions otherwise i'd be eating crappy food. In the end I've done more cooking in the last few months then I've done in the entire time we've been married