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.
First up, we have the simplest option. Cooking a ribeye steak in a cast iron skillet, with a side of Ziti carbonara.
The Steak:
– Buy some ribeye, with a little bit of marbling… but to taste. Personally, I don’t like a lot.
– Bring it up to room temperature, with a generous helping of salt. Ideally, Kosher salt or Sea Salt… large grains are the key.
– Let it sit for ~60min
– Heat the oven to 500 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 let it rest for 5min.
The carbonara:
– Boil some water, with salt and Italian Seasonings in it… generous helpings of both!
– Boil your choice of pasta until it’s almost al dente (firm, with a tiny bit of white inside when you bite it)
<In parallel>
– Cook up bacon! Then chop it!
– Whisk together an egg, with some parmesan and the chopped bacon… maybe with a tiny bit of bacon fat
– Take a bit of the pasta water, and toss it into a skillet. Then add the pasta, and the whisked ingredients.
– DON’T Put the skillet directly over heat! Just warm it using the boiling pot of water as a double-boiler.
– Carefully heating the skillet (I use a wok), mix and mix and stir the pasta / egg / bacon mix until the sauce is thickened. You don’t want to actually curdle / scramble the eggs… just kinda solidify them.
The finished set:
– Serve the two together, and enjoy with a glass of red wine, whiskey, beer, or any other beverage you may so choose.
