The Perfect Steak

“If I came up with a list of five meals for men and I didn’t include a steak, it wouldn’t make sense. People would be like, ‘What’s up?’” Keller tells me.

He’s got a point, and not just because everybody thinks of steak as the ultimate guy food. Seared cow meat and burly red wine really do have some incantational power to stitch a weary male soul together again, reassuring a man that he’s living right and all’s well in the universe. Anyone can learn to grill a porterhouse, but Keller recommends the classic French bistro steak — an intensely flavored cut known as the bavette or, to any good American butcher, the “outside skirt.”

The Complete Recipe:

Skirt Steak with Red-Wine Jus and Caramelized Shallots

Ingredients

10 oz “outside skirt” steak, a.k.a. bavette

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 tbsp canola oil

2 tbsp unsalted butter

1 cup thinly sliced shallots

1 tsp minced thyme

For The Red-Wine Jus

2 cups red wine

1/4 cup diced yellow onions

1/4 cup carrots,

peeled and sliced

1/4 cup sliced leeks, white

and light-green parts only

1/4 cup sliced shallots

1/4 cup sliced mushrooms

1 thyme sprig

2 parsley sprigs

1 bay leaf

6 black peppercorns

1 garlic clove, smashed

1 cup veal stock (MJ alternative: 1 tbsp Williams-Sonoma veal demi-glace)

Step 1

Combine all ingredients for the red-wine jus, except the veal stock, in a saucepan. Simmer until the wine reduces almost to a glaze. Add the stock and simmer another 15 minutes. (Alternative: Add the veal demi-glace and 2 tbsp water, then stir. No need to simmer further.) Strain through a fine-mesh strainer. The jus should have the consistency of a thin sauce. Reduce further if needed. Set aside.

Step 2

Season both sides of the steak with salt and pepper. Add the canola oil to a large skillet over high heat. When the oil begins to smoke, add the steak.

Step 3

After about 2 minutes, or when the steak is nicely seared and browned, turn it over and set the butter on top. Once the butter begins to melt, baste the steak.

Step 4

After about 7 minutes total cooking time, transfer the meat to a warm place (a cutting board is fine) and let rest for at least 10 minutes — this is key, as it allows moisture to redistribute evenly.

Step 5

While the meat rests, add sliced shallots to the skillet and cook for 2 minutes, or until soft.

Step 6

Add thyme, reduce heat, and cook gently until shallots are completely softened and golden brown.

Step 7

Season to taste with salt and pepper and cook for an additional 2 to 3 minutes to caramelize. Stir juices from the steak into the shallots.

Step 8

Spoon about 2 tbsp of jus onto a plate; top with the steak (sliced or whole) and then the shallots.

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For watercress salad recipe, go to mensjournal.com/steakside.

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Keller On…

Searing the Steak: “Heat some oil in a skillet — I always err toward more rather than less. Once it’s smoking, tilt the pan so the oil pools on one side. Then it won’t splatter when you set down the meat.

Set the skillet back on the flame and, after two minutes, or once it’s browned, flip the steak, tilting the pan again.”

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Essential Tool

 

The Fine-Mesh Strainer

No technique takes you further down the road to refinement than the straining of stocks and sauces to remove impurities. The CIA Masters fine-mesh strainer does the job perfectly and is small enough for a drawer. ($27.50; amazon.com)

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Key Skill

Basting the Steak

The recipe calls for two tablespoons of butter, but I watch Keller plop about half a stick right onto the steak, still in the pan.

“See, if I put the butter directly onto the metal,” Keller tells me, “it’ll burn and separate before I have time to do much basting.”

He’s describing precisely what happens every time I baste a steak, except that now I’m seeing the light, because Keller’s own half-stick melts luxuriously off the meat, oozing into pretty white foam. Tilting the pan again, pooling the foamy butter, he grabs a spoon and begins basting the meat. The spoon clanks repeatedly into the pan’s metal, scooping up melted butter at about the pace you’d knock on a door, if you were in a hurry: bang-bang-bang-bang.

My turn.

“Nope, the rhythm’s wrong,” Keller says. “It’s all in the wrist. Watch me.”

So I do, and then I try again, but I can hear it: I’m still clanking the spoon way too slow.

“You’re pausing each time,” Keller says. Once again, he demonstrates: bang-bang-bang.

Sweat beading on my nose, I finally understand the problem: I’m scooping and pouring. Keller wants a quick scoop-and-flick motion. I also realize why it matters: Basting is a way of preventing the butter from burning, keeping the meat moist, and heating the meat from above so it cooks evenly. The faster the rhythm, the more constant the moisture and heat.

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Next: Crowd-pleasing, time-saving, mouthwatering pork and beans.

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This article first appeared in the August 2010 issue of Men’s Journal.