Bone-In Ribeye w/ Mushroom Balsamic Sauce

Happy Friday, guys!

How was everyone's week?  Ours was pretty busy.  I've been working all week and just have been too exhausted to do much of anything else!  I had the pleasure of having the day off yesterday, though, and decided to surprise Andy with some big and juicy steaks for dinner.

The sauce is really easy, too.  I decided to pickle some mushrooms (weird, but pleasantly acidic) and use the quick pickling liquid as a component in an easy pan sauce. 

The whole meal came together in less than 30 minutes and was absolutely delicious!  We both cleaned our plates right up!

Ingredients:

2 bone-in ribeye steaks
salt and pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/4 lb. cremini mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup white balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon salt
1 cup veal/beef stock
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

In a small saucepan, bring the balsamic vinegar and salt to a boil.  Stir until the salt is completely dissolved.  Place the mushrooms in a small bowl and cover with the hot pickling liquid.  Let sit for at least 30 minutes.

Heat a large cast iron skillet under medium high heat.  Melt the 2 tablespoons of butter.  Season steaks with salt and pepper on both sides.  Add to skillet and cook until a nice sear forms.  Cook the steaks until desired doneness - a perfect medium rare for us take about 7-8 minutes depending on how thick your steaks are.

Remove the steaks from the skillet and let rest on a cutting board.  Add the mushrooms and pickling liquid to the pan to deglaze.  Cook until mushrooms are starting to soften and vinegar is reduced to about 3 tablespoons.  Add veal stock and reduce liquid by half, or until at a syrupy/sauce-like consistency.  Mount the sauce with the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter and season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Serve steaks with desired starch (we had some mashed potatoes) and top with mushrooms and sauce.

This was definitely a nice little treat.  We don't have red meat very often, but when we do, we like to do it up right!
Hope you all have a great weekend!

NY Strip Steaks w/ Port Wine Shallot Butter

While blogs all over are showcasing turkey this, and turkey that, I thought I'd take a different turn.  Do something completely off the Thanksgiving track.  Steak and frites. 

Anyway, this is another simple, yet fancy meal that can be made any day of the week!

We make beurre blancs for a lot of things on our menu at Jack Fry's.  We do a country ham beurre blanc to go with oysters, a sage beurre blanc for the filet, and a tomato and chive beurre blanc for our salmon.  All of which are A-MAZING.  But I may be partial since I work there.

So it's almost second nature to me to present a dish with a beurre of some sort included as the sauce.  One of the easiest and tastiest sauces you can make, in my opinion.  I mean, really, who doesn't like something covered in butter?  Probably a health nut... but good for us, we're not of that population.

Ingredients:

2 NY strip steaks
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil

Port Wine Shallot Butter:

1/4 cup port wine
1 small shallot, minced
1/2 cup veal/beef stock
1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cubed
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 425 F. 

Heat a large oven-proof skillet (a cast iron works great for this) under medium high heat and add olive oil.  Season steaks with salt and pepper on both sides and add to pan.  Sear until nice and caramelized.  Flip steak over and transfer to oven to finish cooking to desired doneness.  We like a good medium rare-medium in our house.  Let rest for about 3-5 minutes before serving.

While the steak is finishing in the oven, you can start your sauce.  Heat a medium saucepan under medium high heat.  Add red wine, shallot, stock, and cracked pepper.  Reduce mixture to about 2 tablespoons.  Turn heat down to low and whisk in butter, a couple cubes at a time, being sure not to add more until the previous cubes are almost fully incorporated.  Continue until all butter is added.  Strain sauce of solids, if desired.  Stir in fresh parsley and season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Top steak with butter sauce and serve with a side of your choice - we did frites.  Dig on in!

This is definitely something so simple and quite delicious!  We don't indulge in red meat a lot in our house, but when we do, we do it right!

Hope you all have a great holiday weekend!

Herbed Ribeye Steaks

I've been a real carnivore lately.  I don't know if it's my current workout, the heat, or whether the meat in the meat department looks especially tempting - but we've had some steaks at least once a week for the past couple of weeks. 

These ribeyes were so easy and tasty, I knew I had to share them with you guys.  If you have an herb garden like I do, just pluck your favorite herbs, throw in some garlic if you'd like, and you're on your way to meat heaven.

Ingredients:

2 ribeye steaks
2 tablespoons herbs of your choice (I used rosemary, thyme, and sage), finely chopped
salt and pepper, to taste
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil

In a small bowl, combine the herbs, garlic, and olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper.  The herbs should be dense like a paste so you can spread them on the ribeye. 

Heat a grill or cast-iron skillet (it was way too hot outside to be grilling) to medium high heat.

Spread the herb mixture on both sides of the steaks.  Cook steaks to desired doneness.

And bam, a fantastically easy steak dinner in no time!  You can even deglaze the cast iron skillet (if you didn't choose to grill, of course) with some red wine and beef stock to get a fantastic sauce.  Let it reduce until slightly thickened and then mount it with a pat of butter - pour the sauce on top of the steaks to take them to a whole other level!

Hope you guys are still staying cool - we're expecting temps in the high 80's this week (which is a MAJOR change from triple digits!) - so hopefully we can enjoy the outside while we can =)  Have a great day guys!

Steak Allemande

 

How was everyone's weekend?

Ours was pretty fun!  I had to work Saturday night, but I had Sunday off.  We spend the day at a cookout for a friend's birthday.  We played volleyball for the majority of the afternoon - which was extremely fun, but also extremely exhausting!  We definitely weren't ready for it to be Monday though!

So we made allemande sauce last Friday.  Like I said, it is one of my favorite sauces and it goes very well with steak or chicken.  We had ourselves a fancy little steak dinner on Friday night (so much cheaper than going out!) and this is how we put it together! 

Ingredients:


2 NY Strip Steaks (or cut of your choice!)
Allemande Sauce, warmed
1/2 lb. brussels sprouts, halved
1/2 lb. red potatoes, quartered
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for rubbing steaks
salt and pepper, to taste

Light a grill under medium high heat and preheat your oven to 425 F.

In a large bowl, combine the brussels sprouts and potatoes with olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper.  Spread the vegetables on a baking sheet and roast for about 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Rub olive oil on both sides of steaks.  Season both sides with salt and pepper.  Grill the steaks to desired doneness.  Let rest for 5 minutes.

To plate, place a decent amount of the roasted vegetables on the center of the plate.  Lean steak on top of vegetables.  Finish plate with allemande sauce. 

Voila!  Fancy dinner at home.  And oh. so. easy. 

Hope you guys have a great start to your week!

Ribeye w/ Asparagus

Okay, remember that whole statement from Thursday of me saying that I was going to be getting into some debauchery, but not 'really'?  Well, 'really' happened.  Hehe.  I've been a bit behind (obviously, since there was no post yesterday), so I couldn't just leave you guys empty handed.  And hopefully I'll be up to speed Monday!

So let's talk Ribeye.  A lot of people kind of stray away from ribeye cuts.  Too much marble to work around, and all that jazz.  But me.  I love a good ribeye.  I actually LOVE the marbling (am I sick?  I don't care!)  And the beauty of a ribeye to me, is it's simplicity.  You don't have to jazz it up, you can just let the good grass-fed beef (assuming that you bought a grass-fed beef product) speak for itself.  And to pair it with some simply sauteed asparagus and squirt of lemon juice?  And you have yourself dinner in seriously less than 20 minutes. 

Think I'm crazy?  Think I'm lying?  Try it for yourself.  I'll show ya! =)

Ingredients:

1 lb. boneless ribeye steak
salt and pepper, to taste
olive oil, for rubbing
about 15-20 asparagus spears
juice from 1 lemon
lemon slices, optional
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, optional

Preheat oven to 500 F.

Heat a large oven-proof skillet under high heat. 

Rub ribeye with olive oil and generously season with salt and pepper on both sides. 

Place ribeye in dry skillet and cook for about 30 seconds.  Using tongs, flip over and cook an additional 30 seconds.

Carefully place skillet in oven and cook for about 3-4 minutes per side, for a medium rare/medium.

Carefully remove skillet from oven and transfer steak to cutting board to rest for about 5 minutes.

While your ribeye is resting, you can prepare your asparagus.  Gently toss the spears with some olive oil, salt and pepper.  Squeeze the juice of half of a lemon onto the asparagus. 

Carefully wipe the skillet used for the steak clean with a paper towel (it'll still be hot, so make sure you're careful!) and heat under high heat.  Melt 1 tablespoon of butter to the skillet and add asparagus.  Saute for about 2-3 minutes or until starting to soften, but still crisp and green.

Cut whole ribeye in half to serve as two steaks.

To plate, arrange about 6-7 spears on a plate and top with one ribeye steak and serve with a lemon wedge.  You can also top your steak with a little pat of butter, if you'd like.

Seriously.  Simplicity.  At. It's Finest.  No joke.  And what did I tell you?  Dinner is ready in 20 minutes!  Enjoy the rest of your weekend guys! 

And I know I've been all about the meat this week, but I promise next week will be a little 'sweeter' and 'lighter'!