A Professional Chef’s Cheat Sheet to Cooking Restaurant-Worthy Steak-Frites at Residence

Steak frites is traditional French bistro fare at its best, and it pulls at my American steak-and-potatoes-lovin’ heartstrings. This mixture of a well-crusted flap of beef with a thatch of frites, served together with a flood of sauce, makes for my favourite form of consuming, elegant and informal directly. 

Its origins hint again to each France and Belgium, and it’s a mainstay within the delicacies of each nations, in addition to bistros worldwide. And though it could look like a easy dish (in any case, it requires solely two major components, plus a sauce of your selection), there’s good cause it’s normally reserved for eating places: the steak should be meaty and juicy, the potatoes fluffy and crisp, the sauce wealthy and creamy sufficient for dipping, and it should all arrive on the desk piping sizzling. It’s a dish that requires some kitchen savvy to nail at house. 

The important thing to recreating bistro-worthy steak frites at house is utilizing the most effective components, counting on foolproof cooking strategies, and coordinating the timing of cooking within the kitchen to ensure sizzling, completely cooked food. Right here’s my information and suggestions for cooking each element to make sure nice outcomes.

The Steak

Step one when making steak frites at house is deciding on the appropriate reduce of beef. However actually there’s no “proper” reduce of beef for steak frites, because the reduce of meat can differ from restaurant to restaurant. Many French bistros will prioritize taste over tenderness, providing cuts like onglet (hanger steak), tri-tip, rump steak, and even flank steak, that are chewier and leaner cuts that burst with beefiness.

There’s additionally the fee issue. Neighborhood French bistros, which by nature serve extra inexpensive, on a regular basis meals, wouldn’t usually ask their diners to shell out the cash for entrecôte, or premium cuts of beef like tender, fatty ribeye or a first-rate strip steak. However once I cook dinner steak frites at house, I am not paying the markup one would at a restaurant. Meaning I see this as a chance to deal with myself to a wonderfully cooked rib eye or strip steak, so I’ve written this recipe for these particular cuts. Take into account although that you need to use any reduce of beef you favor right here, simply bear in mind that the thinner the steak, the shorter the cooking time, and also you’ll must comply with the visible and temperature cues extra carefully than the listed timing within the recipe.

For cooking the steaks, I exploit Severe Eats’ time-tested excellent pan-seared steaks method. It’s easy and easy, identical to any good bistro recipe needs to be. The steaks are liberally salted and delivered to room temperature earlier than they’re seared over ripping excessive warmth in a forged iron, carbon metal, or stainless-steel pan, flipping each two minutes to make sure even cooking and a deeply browned crust. However because the saying goes, “there’s a couple of solution to pores and skin a cat”, and once more I’ll echo that you could adapt this recipe to your individual style, and use a distinct cooking methodology if you happen to want, corresponding to our reverse-seared, butter-basted, or sous vide steak recipes. 

As soon as the steaks are cooked, set them apart on a plate to relaxation whereas making ready the accompanying sauce and french fries. The fries and the sauce cook dinner in about 25 minutes, which implies your steaks shall be resting, and finally dropping warmth throughout that point. You is likely to be tempted to tent them with aluminum foil to maintain them heat, however don’t. Tenting the steaks will solely lure steam and soften that lovely crust on the steaks that you just labored exhausting to create. As an alternative, let the steak sit untouched. After the fries and sauce are prepared, if the steaks are cool to the contact, simply switch them to a rimmed baking sheet and flash them below the broiler for only a minute or two till they’re warmed by means of.

The Sauce

Steak frites isn’t outlined by any particular sauce. The reality is, you would serve the steak and fries with a facet of ketchup, and it’ll nonetheless be steak frites. However after the steaks are seared, the skillet is now stuffed with scrumptious beef fats and fond, virtually screaming for a pan sauce. It could be a disgrace to let all these tasty browned bits caught to the underside of the skillet go to waste, so I encourage you to arrange a pan sauce with this recipe. My favourite to accompany steak frites is a inexperienced peppercorn sauce, which I’ve included on this recipe. It delivers a peppery chew, intensely meaty aroma, and it has the best food-coating creaminess, excellent for dipping your slices of steak, fries, and, finally, fingers into. 

The sauce is simple to arrange, and since it’s a cream-based sauce (and cream is a reasonably steady emulsion) it may simmer away with out greater than the occasional stir till completely thickened, with little threat of the sauce breaking. I’ve written at size concerning the inexperienced peppercorn sauce’s preparation, so I gained’t get into an excessive amount of overlapping element right here. However I do need to level out that after the steaks are seared, there shall be a variety of rendered beef fats left within the skillet. You need the flavorful beef fond and a little of the fats for the bottom of the sauce for taste, however an excessive amount of will flip the sauce greasy. So earlier than beginning the sauce, pour off all however 1 tablespoon of that fats. 

If inexperienced peppercorn sauce doesn’t enchantment to you, simply swap in your most popular sauce. A traditional black peppercorn sauce, béarnaise sauce, and even beurre maître d’hôtel, are all choices.

The Fries (and Easy methods to Time This Recipe for Serving Success)

As I discussed initially, the principle problem with cooking steak frites at house isn’t cooking the person parts, quite the problem is timing their preparation in order that all the things is prepared on the identical time. For that to occur, you have to to multitask and cook dinner each the sauce and the fries on the identical time. 

Conventional fries are sometimes ready by way of a twice-fried methodology, during which potato sticks are dropped in preheated oil, eliminated to chill, then fried a second time at even increased warmth till crisp. Strategies like this produce glorious outcomes, however they don’t seem to be easy: They require near-constant temperature monitoring, repeated actions like scooping fries out and in of the recent oil a number of occasions (to not point out a number of batches in lots of circumstances), and unavoidable grease splatter when the moist potatoes hit the recent fats.

Kenji’s French fry recipe makes use of this common cooking methodology, as does Sho Spaeth’s shoestring fries. There’s no query of these being nice recipes; they produce excellent fries each time, and if you happen to want, you may after all use your most popular fry right here (and even tear right into a bag of frozen fries for final ease). However when making ready absolutely from-scratch steak frites, I suggest utilizing a cold-start frying method for the potatoes. This system makes use of half the oil, skips the double frying, and nonetheless achieves crunchy fries with deep potato taste. (It additionally minimizes mess and any scary splattering.)

I can’t take credit score for creating the tactic, the method has been round for some time (at the very least 30 years), has been written about in lots of publications, and is commonly attributed to Joël Robuchon. 

On this methodology, the potatoes and oil start cooking collectively at room temperature, completely defying all the principles of deep-frying. The potatoes are dropped suddenly into a big pot—use a Dutch oven or heavy obligation forged iron pot for higher warmth retention—with solely 6 cups of oil (that’s about half the quantity for normal deep frying recipes) and introduced as much as a bubble over excessive warmth. Because the oil temperature slowly rises, the potatoes will, in impact, poach in fats and their extra water will gently evaporate (therefore the shortage of splattering). Sure, the oil will bubble, however not aggressively. Finally, stunning golden fries will emerge, and no, they won’t be any extra greasy than some other French fry methodology.

Each once in a while, use a thin-bladed spatula or cooking chopsticks to ensure they don’t seem to be sticking (their starch tends to trigger this). Work the cooking utensil gently between the fries. Be very cautious: at a sure level about midway by means of cooking they are going to be very, very fragile—cooked however not but crisp, and really vulnerable to breaking. 

To assist mitigate fry-breakage, I add one extra preparatory step that may be executed nicely upfront: I briefly blanch the uncooked, reduce potatoes in water and vinegar, as Kenji does in his French fry recipe. This temporary boil in acidulated water units the potatoes pectin and rinses off extra starch, minimizing the danger of the fries sticking as they cook dinner. If blanching the fries appears too fussy, you may skip this step, simply know that the potatoes shall be extra vulnerable to sticking collectively and breaking when frying.