Food We Love: Ribeye Steak

I know what you're thinking.  Why in the world would you need a whole post on cooking a steak?  It's simple right?  You season it, you either put it in a pan and fry it or you grill it. Done and done.  NOT SO FAST MY FRIEND!  Over the years, I've grown to love steak but are loathe to visit steakhouses as I don't think I found many that have been really tasteful.  So, I've tried to find a tried and true method on how to cook a steak at home and since I've been living in apartments for most of my adult life, the method I usually use involves a stove top and oven.  So, here goes!

Ingredients
1 ribeye steak (~3/4 lb)
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Soy Sauce
2 sprigs rosemary
1 lb of baby portobello mushrooms
1 tablespoon dried tarragon
1 cup of long grain rice
4 tablespoons of butter

I usually pick a good ribeye steak due to the great marbling that can be found in the cut which usually indicates a high fat content and therefore lots and lots of flavor.  I just went to my local Giant Food and picked from their selection of certified black angus ribeyes.  Not fancy but they do the trick.  Before I get into the cooking of the steak, I want to say that I'm not sure of the principles of why I cook a steak this way but I do know it's my favorite way to cook and eat a steak. You'll see what I mean as you read along.

The first thing I do is put the steak out on a plate at room temperature and preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  I cover it with olive oil (just enough to coat it) and soy sauce (about a 1 tablespoon for the whole thing).  Then a generous amount of salt & pepper and I take apart a sprig of rosemary and sprinkle it over the steak.  Next I slice up the whole packet of mushrooms into uniform slices and toss them into a bowl.  I add salt, pepper, 2 sprigs of rosemary (just the leaves take off), the tarragon and a generous amount of olive oil to cover the whole mixture.  I let both sit on the counter top while I make my rice.  By make my rice, I mean that I take the cup of rice, wash it off a bit and put it in my rice cooker.  Cover it with one cup of water, close the lid and press the cook button.

The rice takes roughly 15-20 minutes to cook so I heat up a saute pan on medium heat with about a tablespoon of olive oil.  As the pan gets nice and hot, I drop in two tablespoons of butter and let it melt.  I drop in the mushrooms and let them saute, stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes.  You need to make sure you cook them enough where the water content is taken out of the mushrooms sufficiently in order to get the maximum amount of flavor.  Stirring and flipping them around ensures that you don't burn the edges of some of the mushrooms.  As soon as the rice is done, I take half the mushrooms and put them directly into the rice cooker and stir it all around and then let that sit in there until I'm ready to eat.  I put aside the other mushrooms to heap on top of the steak.

Now for the steak.  I use a special Le Creuset cast iron pan that has ridges that mimic a grill.  I put it on the stove top, put the burner up to medium high and cover it (I use a random cover from one of my random pans).  I let it get pretty hot (heat it for about 5-6 minutes) and then melt the remaining two tablespoons of butter onto the pan.  After all the butter is melted I place the steak (use an oven mitt as the cover can get hot) onto the hot pan and cover.  I let it sear covered for about a short minute (in order to seal in the juices or at least I think that's why) on one side, flip it, cover, sear for a minute, flip it, cover, sear for a minute, then one final flip.  I like to get those groovy cross hatching that a grill gives so technically I flip and rotate.  I cover it again and place it in the oven.  I like my steak on the rare/medium rare side so I leave it in the oven for a MAXIMUM of five minutes.  For those of you with small kitchens or poor ventilation, I do have to warn you that have a pan that hot AND covered tends to create lots of smoke.  Just an FYI.

When I take it out, I should let it rest but I find that the juices don't really escape when I do that so for the most part I just put it on the plate.  I smother it with the remaining mushrooms and then put the mushroom rice beside it.  It looks kind of a like a mushroom explosion but I love mushrooms.  The steak always turns out to be juicy, moist and flavorful and I would rather just cook it my way then play a gazillion dollars at a steakhouse.  Unless of course that steakhouse is Peter Luger which is s story for another day.