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Stuff to Put on Steak at Home


Chris Amirault

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I've got two rib-eyes drying in the fridge with S&P and a small jar of homemade Worcestershire sauce (from Dave the Cook from a tweak of this recipe) with which they'll be served. Made me start wondering what other options I might enjoy next time.

What do you make to put on your steak at home?

Chris Amirault

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I've been making my mom's mustard butter for steak sauce for years...very easy and fantastic!

a bit each of:

chopped garlic

green onion

dijon or stadium mustard

soft butter

worcestershire

s&p

It comes out looking curdled and quite unappetizing, but put it on a hot steak...yum!

"Godspeed all the bakers at dawn... may they all cut their thumbs and bleed into their buns til they melt away..."

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We rarely eat steak, and when I do, it's usually raw. That said, when we do eat steak, we grill it rare and I make a sauce of raw garlic, olive oil and whatever green herb we have laying around fresh, with lemon and salt. I pulse it in a mni chopper. It's delicious, but your mate has to indulge alongside you, or there's no kissing after!

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I can't use this at home (because of the kosher issue) but I did make this while staying with a friend on a holiday: a combination of green onions, thinly sliced, blue cheese, crumbled, a bit of soft goat cheese (chevre), and 2 cloves of garlic, minced finely ... it was wonderful over the rare steak! :wink:

Melissa Goodman aka "Gifted Gourmet"

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Deglaze your frying pan with dry white wine, add some butter and chopped shallots.

When they're soft, add about 1 C demi-glace. Crumble about 2 TBSP of Maytag Iowa Blue Cheese into the demi-glace pan sauce, S&P to taste. When fully incorporated, serve on steaks.

This goes especially well with garlic Rosemary mashed potatoes to sop up the extra sauce.

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For really nice steaks, I don't add anything because pretty much any sauce or condiment will drown out the subtle mineral and other notes of the best steaks. However, for pretty much any other steak, I like something with a little heat. One condiment I reach for frequently with lesser cuts (like shoulder London broil, or flank steak) is schug. It's a Yemenite hot sauce with a thick, spoonable consistency, very popular in Israel. The dominant flavors are hot peppers, coriander and garlic. In America the most common incarnation comes from the Sabra brand and is called "S'chug" and you can also find other brands in Middle Eastern markets with various spellings such as "Shug" and "Skhug."

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For pan steaks, I like old-skool Steak Diane. After removing the steaks, fry shallots+butter in the same pan, deglaze w/cognac, add Dijon mustard, cream and demi, season. Fries are key to soak up extra sauce. And a cardiologist is also useful.

For grilled steaks, I like a little knob of compound butter. My current fave is Stilton/shallot/rosemary. Don't put cold butter on a steak; it won't melt nicely.

Hong Kong Dave

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Most of the steaks I get are local and organic, so just a touch of olive oil, s&p, occasionally red wine and garlic (if it's boneless). Super hot cast-iron skillet, 2 minutes each side, toss it in the oven for 5 minutes, rest, pour any juices over.

For flank steak, olive oil, a ton of fresh garlic, a little cumin, red chilis, and salt.

For t-Bones there's a nice marinade of orange juice and zest, cilantro, olive oil, chili, garlic, salt, pepper.

"A culture's appetite always springs from its poor" - John Thorne

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Mushrooms sauteed in butter with salt and pepper.

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

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Truffle butter. I take a good French butter and blend some black truffle oil into it, then re-chill it and top the steak with it. That's my all-time favorite. Well, nowadays I just sprinkle the steak with some truffle salt (Selezione Tartufi brand).

Sometimes, I'll go the olive oil, lemon and salt route.

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Counterman: “Three-ninety-eight a pound.”

Woman (incredulous, and loud): “THREE-NINETY EIGHT A POUND ????”

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I like some fresh ground black pepper, and some really good salt. Or sometimes if the stock class makes an especially good glace, I might grab a cube and serve a bit of glace du veau with it. Usually though a good steak IMO only needs some really good salt.

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Generally the better the steak, the simpler I like to keep it. I don't cook steak very often, so when I do I usually splurge and get something nice ... so it's rare that I make a complex sauce. I usually go for a sauce that intensifies and harmonizes the flavors rather than a condiment-style sauce that contrasts the flavors. So I make use of pan drippings, brown stock, and/or demiglace as the main ingredient, ocasionally with a flavor base of white wine infused with shallots--really basic stuff. Other ingredients that I like to use are mushroom preparations like duxelles, which just seem to bring out the best in meats without overpowering them. And also herbs, especially thyme as a background seasoning, and parsley as a finishing herb to liven and freshen the final flavor. And of course some salt and pepper for final balance. But not usually in the quantities you'd associate with a poivrade.

I like to keep the thickness of the sauce on the loose side ... I'm comfortable with anything from an unbound brothlike consistency to a very light syruppy consistency that's just thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. I think it's important that the sauce doesn't cling to the meat in such a high quantity to overwhelm it. Generally, the thinner the sauce, the more intensely I like to flavor it. which works out well, because most liasons tend to mute the flavors a bit. I'll often make a loose sauce with unbound, reduced stock, and then give it just a bit of sheen and body at the end with some butter. The demiglace that I make is quite intensely flavored, so I tend to use less of it than what's called for in most traditional recipes, and dispense with any additional reduction.

With a good steak I'm inclined to plate the meat with the sauce, usually on top of a small pool of it. I'm always afraid that dinner guests will look at a separate sauce container and think of Mom's Gravy, and drown their poor piece of meat. So I take care of it in the kitchen.

Edited by paulraphael (log)

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A beautiful, bone-in rib steak calls out for Montreal steak spices (the real deal - Schwartz's or Lester's) and minced fresh garlic.

Agree, and a in fact have heard this treatment suggested by local beef legend Michael Landrum, who now has two steakhouses in the Washingtonian's Top 100 list. Not being a Canadian boy, though, I've never heard Schwartz's or Lester's and so use -- gasp -- McCormicks.

By the third time you've done it, it takes about 3 minutes to make a Bernaise sauce and nothing makes you look quite so cool to your guests as whipping up a steak Bernaise with one hand behind your back, as it were. Plus, it tastes grreat. One night I got a little trashed before dinner and added finely chopped capers and cornichons. I'm sure there's an official French name for this variation, but we just call it "lumpy Bernaise." When making a Bernaise for the first time, always be prepared with about six times as much tarragon on hand as the recipe calls for. I don't know why, but they never call for nearly enough. Since you add it at the end, you don't have to sweat the exact amount and can just add to taste. This is better for a strip or something a little more austere than a rib-eye, so that no one actually keels over from a cholesteral OD at the table. It also should be served with some variation on the fried potato thing, to mop up the excess. Note that you can make Bernaise with red wine, if you accidentally drink all the white wine before dinner, but the resulting color can be aesthetically challenging.

For a skirt or an onglet or a flank, we like to make a compound butter out of roasted garlic and anchovie. And butter, of course. And, if there's a couple of tablespoons of beef stock in the house, you can cook it down to a goo with red wine, roasted garlic and anchovies (again -- I may be in a rut) and throw in some capers. It's a bit nasty -- but nasty in just the right way.

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I've got two rib-eyes drying in the fridge with S&P and a small jar of homemade Worcestershire sauce (from Dave the Cook from a tweak of this recipe) with which they'll be served. Made me start wondering what other options I might enjoy next time.

What do you make to put on your steak at home?

salt and pepper cook it rare to medium rare then top with:

after the flip put some gorgonzola or blue cheese of choice

chimichurri sauce

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If I'm looking for something quick and simple I like to season simply with salt and some smoked paprika.

When I have more time, I like to bash a bunch of thyme in a big mortar and pestle followed by some coarse salt, the zest of half a lemon and enough olive oil to create a wet tapenade like texture to marinate the meat in for a while. Then I throw it on the grill using the marinade/wet rub to baste the steaks.

Jeremy Behmoaras

Cornell School for Hotel Administration Class '09

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Browned butter. All time favorite over a good cut of steak.

While your steak is resting, ,melt a few tablespoons of salted butter in a SS saucepan over medium heat until slightly brown. When it starts to get brown, move it around a bit to keep the particles from burning. When I get it to the color I want, I take it off the heat and add a few pinches of bread crumbs and a few drops of basalmic vinegar. Be careful, the vinegar w/ cause it to bubble up a bit.

Spoon over your cooked steak and enjoy. yum....

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