Discover the Perfect Blend of Style, Function, and Quality in Kitchen Tools and Accessories

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

Why It Works

  • Utilizing a cold-start frying approach for the potatoes is a neater, hands-off cooking approach that requires much less monitoring than conventional French fries.
  • A creamy inexperienced peppercorn sauce is good for dipping each the fries and steak slices into.
  • Cooking the sauce and the fries on the identical time ensures they’re each scorching when serving.

Steak frites is traditional French bistro fare at its most interesting, and it pulls at my American steak-and-potatoes-lovin’ heartstrings. This mix of a well-crusted flap of beef with a thatch of frites, served together with a flood of sauce, makes for my favourite type 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 spite of everything, it requires solely two major elements, plus a sauce of your alternative), there’s good cause it’s often 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 scorching. 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 one of the best elements, counting on foolproof cooking strategies, and coordinating the timing of cooking within the kitchen to ensure scorching, completely cooked meals. Right here’s my information and ideas for cooking each part to make sure nice outcomes.

The Steak

Step one when making steak frites at house is deciding on the best reduce of beef. However actually there’s no “proper” reduce of beef for steak frites, because the reduce of meat can fluctuate 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.

Severe Eats / Amanda Suarez


There’s additionally the price issue. Neighborhood French bistros, which by nature serve extra reasonably priced, 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 major strip steak. However once I cook dinner steak frites at house, I am not paying the markup one would at a restaurant. Which means I see this as a possibility to deal with myself to a wonderfully cooked rib eye or strip steak, so I’ve written this recipe for these particular cuts. Be mindful although that you should 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 observe the visible and temperature cues extra intently than the listed timing within the recipe.

Severe Eats / Amanda Suarez


For cooking the steaks, I take advantage of Severe Eats’ time-tested perfect pan-seared steaks approach. It’s easy and easy, identical to any good bistro recipe must be. The steaks are liberally salted and dropped at 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 technique to pores and skin a cat”, and once more I’ll echo which you can adapt this recipe to your individual style, and use a unique cooking technique for those who choose, akin 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 getting ready the accompanying sauce and french fries. The fries and the sauce cook dinner in about 25 minutes, which suggests your steaks will likely be resting, and in the end 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 entice steam and soften that lovely crust on the steaks that you just labored arduous 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 underneath the broiler for only a minute or two till they’re warmed by.

The Sauce

Steak frites isn’t outlined by any particular sauce. The reality is, you possibly can serve the steak and fries with a aspect of ketchup, and it’ll nonetheless be steak frites. However after the steaks are seared, the skillet is now full of scrumptious beef fats and fond, virtually screaming for a pan sauce. It will 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, ultimately, fingers into. 

Severe Eats / Amanda Suarez


The sauce is simple to arrange, and since it’s a cream-based sauce (and cream is a reasonably secure emulsion) it could possibly 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 green peppercorn sauce’s preparation, so I received’t get into an excessive amount of overlapping element right here. However I do wish to level out that after the steaks are seared, there will likely be a number 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 well-liked sauce. A traditional black peppercorn sauce, béarnaise sauce, and even beurre maître d’hôtel, are all choices.

The Fries (and Tips on how to Time This Recipe for Serving Success)

As I discussed initially, the primary problem with cooking steak frites at house isn’t cooking the person elements, moderately the problem is timing their preparation in order that the whole lot 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 through a twice-fried technique, during which potato sticks are dropped in preheated oil, eliminated to chill, then fried a second time at even greater 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 new 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 new fats.

Severe Eats / Amanda Suarez


Kenji’s French fry recipe makes use of this normal cooking technique, as does Sho Spaeth’s shoestring fries. There’s no query of these being nice recipes; they produce excellent fries each time, and for those who choose, you possibly can in fact use your most well-liked fry right here (and even tear right into a bag of frozen fries for final ease). However when getting ready absolutely from-scratch steak frites, I suggest utilizing a cold-start frying approach for the potatoes. This method 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 strategy, the approach has been round for some time (at the least 30 years), has been written about in lots of publications, and is commonly attributed to Joël Robuchon. 

On this technique, the potatoes and oil start cooking collectively at room temperature, completely defying all the foundations of deep-frying. The potatoes are dropped all of sudden into a big pot—use a Dutch oven or heavy responsibility 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 dearth of splattering). Sure, the oil will bubble, however not aggressively. Ultimately, stunning golden fries will emerge, and no, they won’t be any extra greasy than another French fry technique.

Each every now and then, 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 cooking they are going to be very, very fragile—cooked however not but crisp, and really liable to breaking. 

Severe Eats / Amanda Suarez


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

Trending Merchandise

Added to wishlistRemoved from wishlist 0
Add to compare
KitchenAid RRK150IC 5 Qt. Artisan Series – Ice (Renewed)

KitchenAid RRK150IC 5 Qt. Artisan Series – Ice (Renewed)

$299.87
.

We will be happy to hear your thoughts

Leave a reply

ShopKitchenTools
Logo
Register New Account
Compare items
  • Total (0)
Compare
0
Shopping cart