Steaks with Nate
It’s been well over a year since my last post in the food section, which is interesting given that the original point of this website was to chronicle my food journey. In any case, semester number seven of college was functionally over as of Friday, and so as my roommate and I walked the aisles of HEB I decided to go all-out and ask the butcher for two of the nicest steaks they had to offer. I did not know how to pan-sear a steak. I can’t claim to be Gordon Ramsay, but these turned out pretty amazing [1].
Anyways, here’s the video I used to guide my decisions more-or-less. Gordon is a solid chef, although there aren’t really very clear instructions to follow.
I took out the steaks about 30 minutes before I starting actually cooking, to bring them to room temperature and to add in the salt-and-pepper seasoning. I went full Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren with the salt, perhaps you should consider being less liberal (the end result was incredibly salty):
Seriously, there was way too much salt here. But look at that fat! There have not been many ribeyes as beautiful.
Anyways, as the steaks were marinating, Nate handled preparing garlic butter and mashed potatoes (which were absolutely fantastic, and the perfect complement). Kerrygold provides some truly quality stuff - dare I say better than the Central Market sticks in our fridge.
I finally started searing the meat, and the aroma was strong. It’s worth having some water nearby, because you’ll absolutely be salivating the entire time:
Basting with garlic butter was an interesting experiment in how to cram as many calories as possible into dinner.
A few minutes of searing with flips every minute, and these bad boys were basically done. I let them rest for a few minutes while Nate finished up the potatoes, and we were ready to eat. As always, I ought to work on plating, but this was absolutely amazing.
THIS is how you kick off finals season.
As always, there were some areas for improvement. I already talked about how much I oversalted the steak, but I also undercooked it ever-so-slightly and forgot to render the fat on the side. A few extra minutes couldn’t have hurt; I definitely served a rare steak instead of the medium-rare that I hoped for. All of these are easily remedied - I’m back, Gordon.
[1] I didn’t want to say well, since ordering a steak well done ought to be unconstitutional.