One evening while out with my girlfriend we stopped to see one of her friends who works as a bartender for a corporate steak house. You know the type of place where you can get a wedge salad, giant cut of prime rib with a side, and dessert for about $35.00. This is exactly what I had ordered, because it is exactly what I want when I am at a steak house. This lead me to start thinking about the particular market that I am in, and all of the times that my family and I would go out to celebrate an occasion, we would more than likely wind up in a similar style of restaurant. Once I realized that I was missing the quintessential “Big Steak Option” from my menu, well let’s just say “the gears started turning”

I decided that I wanted to use rib eye, because to me it seems to be the Cadillac of steaks (masculine and classy, but not obnoxiously flashy). I like to use “Rain Crow Ranch” a.k.a . American Grass Fed Beef, whenever possible. The only down side that I find to using grass fed beef is the lack of intramuscular fat or marbling as it is known in the industry. So to give the meat a shot in the arm I used a cold smoking technique. One that I am very fond of, I first learned this technique while at Fox and Obel working for Jason Handelman. Jason picked this technique up at Union Square Café while working for Michael Romano, and native St. Louis-en Danny Meyer. This allowed us to impart a smoky flavor without cooking the meat. Once this was done we chilled out steaks, rubbed our marinade over them and vacuum sealed them.

The set for the dish was fairly easy to conceptualize. All that I had to do, (or all I ever do with steak dishes for that matter) was think about the classic steak house. So I decided on loaded potatoes, (mini Yukon creamers that are treated just like a twice baked potato) local broccoli that I was able to get courtesy of Eat here St. Louis, caramelized onions, and finally sauce béarnaise.

The “béarnaise” was whole other thing entirely. I wanted to have béarnaise, but I wanted to up date it. I became curious about what would happen if we aerated it, and what would be the most effective way to achieve this. Infusing nitrous oxide seemed to be the logical choice, but we would need a stabilizer, or at least an alternative. I had researched an “egg less” béarnaise, but I did not want to go this route, because I did not want to loose the integrity of the béarnaise. I had my lead cook make a traditional béarnaise; we relied on our old fried methocel to do the trick. Once temperature stable we passed the sauce through a chinoise (so it could pass through the isi canister), once aerated we topped the sauce with the traditional garnishments of béarnaise (chopped tarragon, cracked black peppercorns, and minced shallots). The final result was exactly what I was after, light, delicate, fluffy, but rich and decedent as a béarnaise should be.

This dish ended up being a huge success, and why wouldn’t it be. After all who doesn’t love a good steak? Especially when served with “classic accompaniments”.