Hot Cast Iron Steak

I’ve noticed that food or more to the point, the cooking of a meal is wrapped in a story. Taste and smell inevitably evoke memories, and this is that kind of recipe post. Please bear with us on this.

Twenty years ago we spent summers exploring all parts of the Pacific Northwest in a 1982 Westie with a pack of border collies. During one of these jaunts, I discovered a 10-inch lodge cast iron skillet in a secondhand store and added it to the camping kit. There it stayed until getting pushed to the back of a cupboard. All but forgotten.

In retirement we found a local butcher shop and discovered beef doesn’t have to be buried in a sauce, ground up, or cooked for hours to be edible. Yes, it was a bit more per pound, but we’re not eating 24 ounce t-bones.

The initial method I thought to employ was fire … coals to be more precise. This proved less than ideal. With some research it became clear that steak needs to be seared on a hot griddle, and by hot, I mean five hundred degrees fahrenheit. This ‘research’ also pointed out how hot the cast iron skillet had become in culinary circles, the holy grail of steak cookware.

A cast iron skillet is critical.  You really should own one. You can find designer models for hundreds of dollars, or you can pick up the classic Lodge brand for about forty bucks. I had that five dollar thrift store find sitting under a dutch oven in my kitchen. Sorry, I don’t think you can even find them at Goodwill anymore. Amazon has Lodge but so will your local sporting goods or Ace Hardware.

Cooking a great steak will require something more than just a cast iron surface. There is the steak itself and here you need to spend a bit more. Fred Meyer’s shrink wrapped family pack may seem like a bargain, it’s not. Regardless of what method you employ, it’ll hit the plate tasting like the material it was sitting on.

Find a meat market, talk to the butcher and ask for a rib eye about an inch and a half thick in the 10 to 12 ounce range (for two people). This is not the time to look for lean. Rather, you need to have lots of whitish flakes running through the meat.

1. Next, grab a pack of fresh thyme, some garlic, two or three shallots and a couple of handfuls of mushrooms. A red wine would be nice something in the Pinot Noir or Cabernet family.
2. Unwrap that piece of beef set it on a plate and sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper. It is all right that it sits on the counter while you complete the prep.
3. De-stem and slice the mushrooms, about ¼ inch thick and transfer to a bowl. Peel the shallot and slice it about half that thick. Mince up three cloves of garlic. Drop the garlic and shallot into another small bowl, and cut a two tablespoon cube of butter on top then add a half dozen springs of fresh thyme.
4. A surface read thermometer is handy, but you can do this by eye if you’re careful and have a good range hood fan. Set an empty skillet on the burner, turned to high. After about 30 seconds, pour in two or three tablespoons of olive oil. Just enough to coat the bottom of the pan. When the oil starts to shimmer, set the steak on its surface, reduce the heat slightly and start a five minute timer.  With a surface read thermometer you are looking for a temp of about 470.
5. After 5 minutes, add the bowl of shallots, garlic, butter and thyme to the pan, turn the steak and restart the timer. You might turn the heat down a bit here as well. You can also use a spoon to baste the steak with the herb/butter juices you’ve just created.
6. At the end of the second 5 minutes, turn the burner to low, pull out the thyme sprigs, move the steak to a plate and cover it with foil. Add the mushrooms to the pan, and if necessary another tablespoon of butter. At this point you can deglaze the pan with a nice red wine and a dash or two of Worcestershire Sauce. Continue to sauté the mushrooms until cooked.
7. Uncover the steak and pour the juices over the mushrooms to add to the sauce and turn off the stove. Move the steak to a cutting board and cutting across the grain make ¼ inch slices. Divide the mushrooms between two plates and spread the slices over the mushrooms and enjoy.