Warning: This is a cooking post, and involves meat. If you’d prefer not to read about, or see photos of, carnivorous dining… please pull back now.



My friend Lea hasn’t cooked steak before.

I know, I know… heresy, right? But bear with her – At one point, I hadn’t cooked steak either.

At one point, I thought salting a steak was silly. I thought… forgive me… I thought that putting BBQ sauce on a steak was delicious. And it was! By my right hand, it was delicious! Simply because I didn’t know what glory I was destroying in search of that sweet tangy deliciousness!

I once… Once, I even marinated a steak in vanilla extract. Forgive me, cow-who-sacrificed-for-that-horror.



I feel bad admitting those transgressions, but I have to be honest. At least Lea knows what she doesn’t know, unlike a rash and foolish younger version of myself.



So, I present these recipes for cooking steak.



Next up, we have a rather complicated option – I’ve heard it called Steak Au Poivre, but it doesn’t really involve pepper… so let’s just call it “Steak in a flambé sauce”.


The Steak:
– Buy a small filet, maybe half a pound maximum.
– Bring it up to room temperature, with a generous helping of salt and sage. Ideally, Kosher salt or Sea Salt… large grains are the key. Go gentle on the sage, but doing skimp – this adds an excellent desert flavor, which goes great with the sweeter sauce.
– Let it sit for ~60min
– Heat the oven to 450 Deg.F, and heat up your cast iron skillet ’till it’s smoking.
– Add some butter to the skillet, and toss the steak in, searing it for 30s per side. If you’re feeling fancy, use a kitchen blowtorch to sear the edges. Add more butter as necessary to keep the pan “wet”.
– After both sides are seared, flip once more and toss the whole skillet into the oven for 2min and 30s, approximately.
– Flip the steak, and let it cook for another 2.5min.
– Take it out, remove from the pan, and cover the steak to keep it warm and let the residual heat continue cooking it.

Next up is the sauce…


The Sauce:
– Starting with the butter and steak drippings in the pan from the segment above, CAREFULLY add in a quarter-cup of cooking brandy. Make sure you’re not under anything flammable, and that you have something to smother the flames if things get out of control. Then, light the evaporating brandy up!
– Continue cycling, until you’ve flambe’d approximately 1cup of brandy. Add extra butter if the pan gets even remotely dry!
– Add in some heavy cream, approximately 1 cup, and begin whisking constantly. Never let it burn!
– Toss the steaks back into the pan, while still whisking the sauce constantly. Flip as needed, until the sauce has a nice dark-ish brown coloration and the streaks are medium rare.


The finished set:
– Serve with steamed broccoli, potatoes, or your sides of choice.
– Serve the steaks with a bit of sauce on top, and the remainder on the side… and maybe with a glass of nice red wine.