Last night I was all on my lonesome for dinner, so I decided to make my favorite favorite favorite meal: Steak ‘n’ Potatoes For One. I love this meal, and I love it my way: extremely salty, buttery and garlicky. I also want to eat it all, which is why I prefer to make it when no one else is around.
Of course everything meat-related tends to be better when cooked over an actual fire, but you can whip up a very nice steak on the stovetop in minutes. All you really need is a heavy, cast-iron, ridged grill pan (I covet this Le Creuset one, as I do everything Le Creuset-related). First off, the meat. I like bone-in strip steak (very beefy and chewy) because I think it’s a nice balance of quality and price, but really it’s a matter of personal preference. I like leaner steaks, but some people go for lots of marbling (just make sure the marbling is evenly distributed).
I think when it comes to seasoning, the simpler, the better. I just rub my steaks with good olive oil, and then season them liberally with garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Get the pan nice and hot before putting on the steak, and then cook until it’s done to your liking, occasionally adjusting the angle to create lovely grill marks. In terms of checking for doneness, I just cut into the thing, but that’s not the prettiest solution…so here’s a neat trick: the Finger Test, which allows you to compare the feel of the steak to different parts of your palm. An excellent run-down of the Finger Test – with illustrations! – is HERE.
There are lots of different opinions on how to best finish a steak – lots of people recommend finishing it under the broiler, for example – but I’m not fussy, and prefer to get straight to the eating as quickly as possible, so I just remove the steak from the heat, top it with a pat of butter, and let it rest for a few minutes (erm, sometimes) before digging in.
Image via MyRecipes.com. (Apologies for stock photo; I didn’t notice that I’d forgotten to turn on the flame under the potatoes until the steak was done, so by the time I had the potatoes mashed and ready to go I’d munched on the steak to the point where it was no longer photogenic.)
