Sunday, March 02, 2008

MEAT!

Hey peoples,

I know it's been a little while so I decided to post about something simple. So the other day I was watching Tyler's Ultimate and he made a really good steak\potato dish so I decided to make it. It was a salt crusted, Ribeye over a baked potato hash brown topped with Bearnaise sauce. It looked easy to make and looked delicious.

We had some steaks in the freezer and I wandered to the store to get the stuff. I started with the steaks. The steaks were to be topped with whipped egg whites, folded with a blend of about 5 different herbs and a bunch of salt. Here is what the steaks looked like after being covered.

Steak covered in crust

I know this looks weird and perhaps a little gross, but it's supposed to insulate the steaks and make a crust on the top. While these are all set up, I started on the baked potato hash browns. This starts with the something all things should start with. BACON! Bacon cooked down with shallots!

Bacon!

While this was cooking up, I had to shred the potatoes. One of these days I need to get a food processor or a mandolin, (or both muhahah) because using a box grater takes a while to shred them. After they are shredded, I put them in a kitchen towel and squeeze out the extra water. Man, I never realized how much water was stuck in a potato. It's kinda gross, but it makes the hash browns crispier.

Once the potatoes are done, they are mixed in a bowl, with Thyme, green onions, salt, pepper, one egg white, and of course the bacon and shallot. Even raw it looks good already.

Herb'n the potatoes

Once all mixed up, it goes into the pan the bacon was in. (We can't waste any part of the bacon!)

Pouring the potatoes

Then it gets patted down and cooked until the bottom gets crispy. Next comes the hazardous part. I have to flip it over in the pan. Tyler did this all in one wrist flip, but I wasn't quite ready for that. I decided to take the safer route and put a plate over the pan, flip the thing over and then slide it back in the pan.

That was the plan to begin with, but as most plans go, this one didn't quite turn out (get it turn out). I started with the a nervous look,

"Nervous" about to flip the potatoes

Then the flip,

Uh oh...

And finally the slide from the plate and ONTO the oven! Dammit, stupid potatoes fell down.

Dammit.

So half of the potatoes get flipped and the rest go into the oven. Soon after, the steaks come out with the crust.

Baked Steaks with crust

While the potaotes finish up, I start with the Bearnaise sauce. Bearnaise sauce is basically a hollandaise sauce with a blend of shallots and reduced wine. So I start with the shallots and wine.

Bearnaise sauce

After the wine reduces, it goes into the blender with the egg yolks and then the butter!

Finishing the sauce


With the completion of the sauce, the last things to do is to free the meat,

Freeing the Meat

cut the meat,

Cutting the meat

Slice the potatoes,

Potatoes

and add the sauce,

Ta Da!

So as always, a 40 minute recipe takes 2 hours to complete, a mess on the oven, but oh soooo worth it. It was phenomenal. The only thing that was a bit off, was the crust made the meat really really salty. So next time, I gotta make sure to scrape off more of the crust and do some major blotting. But all in all, this turned out really well and I'll have to work on the potato flipping thing. If you want to see a couple more pictures, I got them on the flickr thingy.

1 Comments:

At 10:56 PM, Blogger Iris said...

Yum! The hash browns look like the perfect midnight snack.

 

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