Cooking in an apartment

I'm still on the quest for a lean cut of beef I can cook well in my apartment. I can cook in a crock-pot if I had one. And I've cooked a few different thick cuts wrapped in a foil bag with lots of liquid to duplicate the crock-pot effect. It comes out great. But I want something like a steak. The butcher gave me some small cuts and told me how to cook them on the stove -- but they didn't come out well. Too tough -- like a steak you'd get at Waffle House or something.

Tonight I'm giving one more stove try before I give up and buy a broiler pan and try that method. I saw a chef make it on Jay Leno last week -- skirt steak. It's really skinny and he cooked it in a skillet -- not because he didn't have another option, but because he's a chef and he chose to cook it that way. We'll see how it turns out.

Any recommendations? How about a george forman grill? Are those just a gimmick? How hard are they to clean? Rachel Ray has a grill thing in her kitchen -- what's that? I want a way to cook good lean meat. In this case: steak, but also chicken of course. Something GOOD, and reasonably easy to clean would be nice. I've got counter space.