Carla Makes Butter-Basted Steak with Fennel Salad

Steak with fennel.

Steak from, steak with book.

[Carla and cameraman laugh]

Mmm, I love book! The newest recipe is

steak with book.

Guys, I wrote a book and it has a steak recipe in it.

[upbeat rock music]

No, really, that's exactly what happened.

I wrote a book and it has a steak recipe in it.

[Cameraman] And, scene. [laughs]

Great video.

Roll the bumper.

Finito.

This is a giant steak.

I'm gonna cook it in a way that I've

maybe demonstrated before.

It is called the frequent turning method.

It's just a salt-and-pepper-seasoned steak.

This is one of those recipes that you make

when you have a great steak.

Something like this, which is about two inches thick.

Beautiful, marbled ribeye.

This is kind of a special occasion.

So, if you get to it and you think of it ahead of time,

salt and pepper your steak like crazy.

We did that.

I'm just gonna do it again

because something this thick, you really need

a good amount of seasoning on the surface

because think about the meat that's not just on the surface,

but going all the way down.

You need to be seasoning for the whole steak.

So, this has a really nice amount of marbling,

but then, there are these other little packets of fat,

so one of the things I sometimes do

when I get something like this is I will actually

just score the fat.

I'm just dragging the knife through the surface

of the fat itself, not down to the meat,

and then sometimes,

I'll even take the knife and just poke.

There's a little fat cap, right,

a little pocket of fat in the eye there.

That's all you have to do to the steak,

and if you think of it, season it,

put it in the fridge overnight,

put it in the fridge for a couple hours

and it will help it absorb the seasoning.

Let's cook a steak!

Alright, so I have here

a trusty cast iron pan.

I'm just gonna put enough oil

in the bottom of the pan to coat.

One of the things that I like to do

when I have a nice, fatty steak like this is,

I'll actually start it on the fat cap.

Essentially, I'm getting the fat rendering from that edge

and the fat that renders will then become

the fat that the steak is cooking in.

The deckle, which is like that strip of meat

that kind of runs around the eye,

is incredibly flavorful, has terrific marbling,

a perfect amount of chew, so I really wanna get

some action on the deckle too.

And you can see, I hope already,

that there's just more fat in the pan

and it's starting to take a little color.

You can see where I scored it.

If you wanna make a steak, if you're craving a steak,

go talk to the butcher and the recipe says ribeye,

but what do you think?

Alright, so I have nice color there,

it's starting to render, and I am noticing some smoke.

By putting the steak down on the meaty side,

it's gonna lower the temperature of the pan.

I can also

change the heat.

That would be another way to go about it.

The philosophy behind frequent turning

for big chops like this is that,

instead of hitting it really hard on one side

and then really hard on the other,

when you turn it back and forth a number of times,

you give it a chance to cook evenly

and you won't get that big, thick, kind of gray band

on either side, with medium rare in the middle.

This way, you get more of

a strip of well done, where it's seared,

and then more even heat throughout the middle.

Imagine you're sunbathing and you're like,

in order to get the most amazing, epic tan,

I need four hours of sunbathing.

If you're in the sun for two hours and then you go

and you have lunch and then you come back,

you're gonna still get tanned.

I'm getting a nice amount of fat in the bottom of this pan.

That is really important to me because, as the steak cooks,

the edges start to curl back a little bit,

so part of what happens as it naturally sort of shrinks up

because the proteins are contracting

is that there's a part of the surface

that now isn't touching the pan anymore

because it curled back.

The fat is kind of there and having

a nice, little pool of fat in the bottom of the pan

is there to bridge the gap between

the cooking surface and the protein itself.

This side looks nice, but this,

see the little gray spots there?

That's not as browned.

And now, when I turn it, I'm being a little careful.

There's a lot of fat in the pan.

If I just threw this guy over onto his second side,

get the oil splash.

Alright, just out of curiosity, I'm kinda feeling this.

It's very bouncy and springy.

I think it's still very rare,

but we don't really need to guess.

We can just use the digital thermometer

and I don't wanna go here, because the outside edge

is gonna always be hotter than the middle.

I wanna make sure that, when I get the thermometer in there,

I'm getting all the way to dead center,

so just to visualize where I'm going

and also make sure you're not in a fat pocket.

Yeah, this is...

You would think it would be higher.

65 degrees.

That's like a warm spring breeze.

And remember that the curve on internal temperatures,

it's always just very kind of gradual climb, gradual climb,

gradual climb, and then, there's a temperature that you hit

that things start going very quickly.

So, it's not gonna increase in degrees

at the same rate the whole time.

The hotter the steak gets, the faster it will rise,

so just be mindful of that.

Just because it took maybe five or six minutes

to get to 70 doesn't mean it's gonna take

the same amount of time to get twice as hot,

if that makes sense.

Holy mother.

Alright.

Let's take a temp.

Go in there.

Oh my god.

Hold on.

That's better, okay.

I was close to the bone and it was going to 125.

So, I'm gonna take this guy out.

It was right around 110, 112

and I'm using a paper towel to wipe out

some of that salt and pepper,

just 'cause I don't want it to burn.

We're gonna do the butter-basting part.

Butter is involved in butter-basting.

This garlic and the rosemary.

And most of this is gonna stay in the pan

and that's just gonna be like a little bath bomb

all over this steak.

Steak goes back into the pan.

I'm just tilting the pan up so that

I make this little butter pool

and I'm picking that butter up,

which now is gonna fuse with the flavor

of garlic and rosemary and I'm spooning it over.

And that's it.

It's just enough to finish cooking it that last few degrees.

This steak is very thick, it's very hot inside.

It needs to rest.

It has been at the beach all day.

It is exhausted.

The resting is a chance for it to finish cooking through.

There's some carry-over, but it's also a chance

for the proteins to relax again,

which will let the juices flow again,

which will mean it's juicy in the center.

I overcooked the steak.

I hate myself.

I don't wanna go back in time,

but I've overcooked a couple steaks in my life and...

And then, we can make our salad.

I have two bulbs of fennel.

I love fennel.

It is licorice-y.

It is crunchy.

It has the kinda water content that celery or cucumbers has.

I'm gonna use all of it in this salad.

Okay, so then, cutting it open.

Usually, with fennel, it's kind of like cabbage,

like that most outer layer is usually

a little bit tough and fibrous.

It is okay to just take that off and then, inside,

you can see that it's got multiple layers

that get finer and finer to the center.

It's all edible.

In fact, I think we've given everyone and each other

the impression all this time that the core is no good.

Trying to tell you right now, guys,

there's nothing wrong with the core.

It has a totally different density.

Crunchy,

firm, delicious, and so what I'm gonna get when I do this

is I get kind of like a bigger half-moon

from the outer layer and little tender, crunchy bittles

from the middle.

Crunchy bittles from the middle.

That last clove of garlic, we started with four.

Three went into the pan.

Just gonna finely grate that,

because no one wants to bite into a piece of raw garlic.

Okay, so this is white wine vin.

This is what is in the original version of the recipe.

This is a couple of

anchovy filets.

Some people hate this stuff.

You could use a few dashes of fish sauce,

if you didn't have any anchovies around.

You could omit it.

I wouldn't, but you could.

Maybe you could add a little grated parm instead,

which would have a little bit of that saltiness

and a little bit of the something something

that isn't just dairy.

Parm has a salty funkiness to it

that would be really, really nice with the fennel.

I like the 'chovy, so it's got 'chovy.

I know that the Aleppo's for the top of the steak,

but if I were at home and I were making this,

I might sometimes put a little Aleppo right in the guy.

So, I'm doing that.

And it's not really gonna be fully emulsified

and that's okay.

This is extra virgin olive oil.

I'm just gonna whisk it in.

Definitely want it to be a little bit salty

and a little bit acidic.

You're gonna have a lot of fattiness and richness

from the steak, so you want that

to veer a little bit punchy.

Actually, do we have more vinegar?

Is there more vinegar?

Maybe it's just my palate today,

but I feel like it could take more vinegar.

So, this raises an important point.

You have to taste your food.

As much as you wanna trust me,

you can't trust me and you can't trust anybody else.

When you're cooking a recipe, it needs to please you.

Pretty much any author, any recipe developer is gonna

tell you that you have to taste your food as you go.

And you have to get it to a place

where you like the way it tastes.

Now, it's got a little bit of the...

Back here, I'm getting the acidity of like, the woo!

And that's what I wanted.

So, let me make sure the steak is okay

before I add the fennel to the dressing.

Steak is rested.

Very juicy, looking really good.

The little bit of drippings, I'm gonna add to the salad,

so don't throw those out.

So, I'm gonna do the carving in a couple steps.

Just starting from the top.

Okay, so then, you can see, there's the eye,

there's the eye, there's that deckle.

Little edgy deckle there.

And then, we have the triangle below canal.

What is it? The tri-be-bone.

The triangle below the bone.

Triangle below the bone.

And then, the only hard thing about the rest of this,

slicing the steak, is finding the grain

and cutting against it, which means,

but there's proteins that are running

kind of in these strips and you need to find which way

that they're going and take a look.

So, sure, they make some meanders,

they're not perfectly straight,

but the grain is going this way.

I don't wanna cut this way, because then,

I'll end up with long, ropy fibers of protein.

You wanna cut across.

You're cutting those strands into smaller pieces.

That makes it really palatable.

There will be chew, but not chewy, if you know what I mean.

So, I'm gonna just have my knife there

and start cutting across.

Oh, so lovely.

And then, when I get here, usually,

just because there's a little ring of fat there,

I might actually cut that out,

but it does end up on the cutting board,

so what happens in the kitchen is, usually,

by this point, there's like four different people

who are totally happy to risk bodily injury

to get onto the steak.

So, this is the deckle, also has a grain to it

and I'm cutting those up into just

the perfect little Scooby Snacks.

Okay.

Have our dressing.

Mix-y, mix-y.

Okay, before I do that,

do a little flaky salt

and as soon as you cut the steak,

it's gonna start to oxidize and cool down.

This is Aleppo pepper,

which I like for just a little bit of heat.

You could do a little crushed red pepper flakes,

a little black pepper, unless you don't like it,

in which case, don't use it.

Fennel.

Gonna use the world's...

We'll salt it a little more too.

Did I even salt the dressing?

Oh my god, now that I think about it, I might not've.

No wonder it tasted a little flat.

World's greatest salad tossers,

the human hand.

I don't know if I really wanna cover that steak up.

I'm feeling very proud.

So, maybe we'll just serve salad on the side.

Butter-basted ribeye with a crunchy fennel salad,

I think is what I called it.

Just, whatever you do, if you are the human

that cooked the steak and did it properly,

then you are the human who gets the deckle

and the bone, so just let everybody know

as you sit down at the table.

So, I'm gonna take this guy

and then, I'm gonna go over here to deckle mountain

and take one of those guys

and a little bit of salad,

which I wanna get some and some.

And I'm getting a bite of salad with my bite of steak.

Mm-hmm.

Pretty big bite.

Crunchy, fatty,

rich, fresh, salty, sassy, savory.

Together, they really work out.

Who wrote this cookbook?

What?

Is this from a cookbook?

Oh my god, whoever wrote this cookbook is...

Just, really understands the classics

of the crunchy and the fatty and the juicy

and the fresh and the fronds.

I love fennel.

It's not lettuce.

It stands up and it fights back.

Oh, I'm just trying to imagine anyone watching this

not making a gross joke

because of all the times I said bone.

[Cameraman] Yeah.

So, I know that you're out there,

and I think that you're being kind of gross.

[Carla and cameraman laugh]