Other side dish ideas to go with your steak: Roasted Potatoes, Potato Salad, Macaroni Salad, Coleslaw, Greek Salad, Macaroni and Cheese, Baked Beans, Orange Olive Salad, corn on the cob, grilled veggies, or throw your steak in this Apple Gorgonzola Salad and make a meal of it if you want to be healthy like Eric. I’m #TeamPotatoes forever. We are even heading to the lake tomorrow, the kids are super excited. It will be so nice to get out of the house! We’ve all been cooped up for way too long. Bring on the sunshine and junk food. (Oh, are lake days not synonymous with eating an entire bag of Cheetos for you? You will probably live longer than me.) Quarantine brought out all these weird traits for me. Like take shopping. I already didn’t like shopping. Any kind: grocery shopping, clothes shopping, you name it. And the shut down gave me this magical excuse to never go beyond the bare minimum of getting food. Now I have to face the fact that we are down to one roll of toilet paper and all my kids are wearing high waters because they need bigger clothes and I’ve been too lazy to shop online. (Speaking of TP by the way, I felt so lucky that we bought a giant package of it right before the shut down. We had plenty and I never dealt with crazy lines or anything. I had zero toilet paper stress. I kind of feel like I missed out on a quarantine rite-of-passage.) I’ve always been a little ho-hum about steak in general. I usually don’t pick it at a restaurant, and when I make it at home it usually comes out tough. Turns out I was just making it wrong, surprise surprise! I wanted to master making a killer ribeye steak, so I did a bunch of research and came up with my favorite way to do it! The secrets are to salt your steak well ahead of time, let it dry out uncovered in the fridge to get an amazing sear, cook it in a screaming hot cast iron pan, and to douse your steak in copious amounts of garlic butter. Copious, I say! If you are a steak fan, you might have thought that steak couldn’t get better than steak. But that was before you added butter. Trust me. It’s a game changer! (Note: this photo was taken about 5 hours AFTER I salted it. It’s completely absorbed into the steak. More about salting below!) Look at all that beautiful marbling! There are 3 grades of meat that you will see in most stores: USDA Prime (the best), Choice (middle), or Select (you really oughta marinate and slow cook that sucker.) Not every place is going to label their steaks with Prime, Choice, or Select. But if you are at a high end grocery store they will probably only be selling nicer steaks anyway. You can always ask the butcher, too.
1 pound ribeye steak, well marbled. See above for how to select the best rib eye steak. Kosher salt. Table salt can be substituted, but use less. For this recipe, you want about 1 and ½ teaspoons table salt. Vegetable or canola oil
Salted butter. Use whatever butter you have on hand, salted or unsalted. You’ll be salting to taste anyway. Garlic powder Black pepper Fresh thyme.* Or dried thyme. Fresh rosemary.* Or dried rosemary. 2 cloves garlic.* Or garlic powder. Fresh thyme.* Or dried thyme.
*Fresh herbs are a luxury, but then again, you did shell out the cash for the ribeye! Ribeye is expensive. If you’re spending this much money on a cut of meat, you don’t want to mess it up. It’s not hard, you just need to follow instructions and for heaven’s sake get a meat thermometer! First start about 24 hours in advance by salting the heck out of your steak. (You can do as little as 4 hours too). I use about 1 teaspoon kosher salt per side of steak. First the salt draws moisture out of the steak, but then it absorbs it all back in, taking the salt with it and incorporating flavor throughout the entire steak. Put it in your fridge uncovered. I know this feels weird. But this gives the salt a chance to work it’s magic and dries out the steak so that you get a really fantastic sear on the grill. Just look at that gorgeous brown! Yum. After you have seared both sides, turn the heat down to low. Now it’s time for some garlic butter. This stuff is magical. It browns the minute it hits the pan. Use a spoon to drizzle butter from the pan over the top of the steak to get all that flavor incorporated. Keep dousing it and cooking on low until your steak reaches the temperature you like (scroll down for a cooking time chart). Get a decent meat thermometer! Doesn’t it look amazing?? It only takes about 10 minutes. Don’t forget your hot pads! Aren’t you glad to be doing this outside and not in your house? Remember to take it off the heat 5 degrees below the doneness level you want. It will keep cooking off heat. I know putting cast iron on the grill is kind of an untraditional method and you might not have a skillet. I’ve provided instructions in the recipe for how to do it on the grill rack if you don’t have a cast iron pan. If you want to cook it on the grill rack, the method is basically the same. Super high heat sear, flip and sear again, turn the heat down and finish on low, then top with garlic butter off the grill. See recipe for details! First up: get yourself a decent cast iron pan. Can you make this steak in a regular pan on the stovetop? Yes, if it is a really heavy pan. Do not use your dinky no-name $10 pan that you got for your first apartment 15 years ago. It just can’t handle this kind of heat! You need something heavy. And no teflon if you can avoid it. Cast iron is preferred because it gives you the best sear of your life. It is exactly the same as cooking this in a pan on the grill: sear both sides of the meat on super high heat, then turn the heat to low and douse the whole thing repeatedly with garlic butter. It’s quick and easy! Just have a towel ready to wave next to your smoke alarm! This is why I like to do it outside on the grill! All the flavor of pan fried ribeye, none of the smoke and mess. If the steak is thicker than 1 ½ inches, you may need to increase the cook time even more. Sear the meat very well and then move over indirect heat to finish cooking until it reaches the temperature you want. *Okay, did any of you grammar ninjas catch it? Rib Eye instead of ribeye? This post uses both throughout. There’s some controversy on accepted spelling and not only that, in Australia and New Zealand, the cut is known as Scotch fillet. Who knew?
Salt. Salt first draws out the moisture, but then absorbs it back into the meat and tenderizes and flavors the entire steak, not just the outside. If you’re using table salt rather than kosher salt, cut the salt to 1 ½ teaspoons.
Searing. Place the salted steak on a plate and put it in your fridge uncovered. Yes, uncovered. This allows the steak to dry out and give you an incredible sear when you cook it.
Temperature. 30 minutes before cooking: Get your salted steak out\of the fridge and set it on the counter for at least 30 minutes. Don’t cook a cold steak, it will be overdone on the edges and undone in the middle.
Don’t overcook steak. Did I mention buying a meat thermometer? I DID.
You don’t even need any gravy, if your potatoes are creamy enough. (I’m telling you, make Shirley’s. She is the creamy queen and won’t let you down.) The butter sauce for the Ribeye is cooked so hot and so fast that it browns almost immediately, giving it this delectably deep and nutty flavor, totally distinct from regular butter. It’s SO good on top of whatever else is on your plate. I mean, have you ever just drizzled brown butter over your mashed potatoes? HEAVEN. (I even have an entire recipe dedicated to Brown Butter Mashed Potatoes.) I hope you get to try out a good ribeye steak soon! Make it for dad this weekend! He will love you! Facebook | Pinterest | Instagram
