Steak with Mushroom Sauce

Steak with Mushroom Sauce (Steak Aux Champignons)

So what’s my secret for a perfect steak? Beyond the usual points like using a very hot pan and salting liberally, I have two tips.

1. Use a room temperature piece of meat. It prevents the problem of getting a steak with a tough, overcooked exterior and a cold, raw interior. A steak that’s straight from the fridge has an internal temperature of about 35 degrees. To get it to rare, you need to raise the internal temperature to 120 degrees. That’s an 85 degree change that has to happen quickly, so you don’t overcook the exterior. By getting the steak to about 70 degrees before you start cooking it, you only need to raise the internal temperature about 50 degrees.
2. After searing the steak, put it in a hot oven, then turn it off. With no direct heat source, the steak will gently cook to your desired level of doneness slowly. More importantly, it’s almost impossible to over cook it, since the heat is turned off. The first time I tried this method, I accidentally forgot about the steak, and it was in the oven for nearly 20 minutes. At first, I was livid because my dry aged steak was brownish-pink all the way through, but upon biting into it, I was pleasantly surprised at how moist and tender it was.

The pan sauce is just an emulsion of reduced stock and butter, but the brown fond in the pan from the steak combined with a double dose of shallots and mushrooms gives it a serious wallop of flavour that will tickle your umami tastebuds.

The blurry twirl in the back of the photo at the top of the page is a char-grilled spring onion. This is a beautiful thing that may just have the best effort-to-tastiness ratio of any vegetable dish. Just wash a few spring onions (sweet onions, picked in early spring when they are still young), and put them a few inches from the broiler until the outer layer is charred black all around. Don’t worry, you want them to look scary burnt. Put the smoking onions into a pot and cover with a lid. The residual heat cooks the onion all the way through and the smoke coming from the charred exterior infuses the whole thing with a wonderful aroma. When you’re ready to serve, just crumble off the charred outer layer and you’ll expose the smoky, caramelized onion within. Sprinkle with sea salt and a splash of olive oil and you’re good to go.

2 1.5″ thick filet mignon steaks
coarse cracked black pepper
kosher salt

1 C wild mushrooms (I used shimeji mushrooms)
2 shallots minced
2 Tbs cognac
3/4 C low sodium chicken stock
1 Tbs butter
lemon juice

Bring the steaks to room temperature (about 30 minutes). Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

When the steaks are at room temperature, start heating a cast iron skillet over medium high heat. Don’t use a non-stick pan as the high temperature you need to get it to will cause it to release toxic fumes. Generously salt and pepper both sides of the steaks and press the salt and pepper into the surface of the steaks to ensure it sticks.

When the skillet is very hot, place the steaks in the pan and allow them to brown undisturbed until they don’t stick to the pan anymore. Flip and brown for another few minutes on the other side.

Quickly put the pan in the hot oven and turn it off. Allow them to rest in the oven without opening it for 10 minutes for a rare steak, or 15 minutes for medium rare steak.

Transfer the steaks to a plate, then return the skillet to the stove over medium heat. Add a splash of olive oil and saute the minced shallots until they start getting soft. Add the mushrooms and continue to saute until they are limp and glossy and there is no liquid in the pan.

Add the cognac and swirl it around the bottom of the pan to deglaze. Add the chicken stock and raise the heat to high, boiling until it starts to thicken and there’s only about 1/4 C of liquid remaining. Push the mushrooms and shallots to the back half of the pan, then add the butter to the other half. Whisk vigorously to incorporate, then stir it all together. Squeeze a splash of lemon juice in and whisk to combine.

Serve the mushrooms and sauce over the steak.

How to Caramelize Onions
Caramelized onions are quite easy to make. Other than time and an onion, there is not much needed to produce wonderful, deeply caramelized onions. Because of the way onion cells are lined up, how you slice up the onion will have an effect on the final product.
If you want caramelized onions that almost melt in the mouth, you will want to cut thin slices longitudinally, or from the root end to the stem end. If you’d like your caramelized onion to have a little more structure and not break down so much, slice them into thin rings across the equator. If you would like smaller caramelized pieces, you can also chop or dice the onions.
Ingredients
1 large onion, sliced per your preference
2 tablespoons olive oil, butter, or a mixture of the two
Heavy pinch of salt
Optional additions for extra flavor
Freshly ground black pepper
Fresh minced herbs, or dried herbs
A teaspoon of honey, agave nectar or corn syrup
Heat a large sauté pan over medium-low heat. Add the oil/butter.
Once the butter has melted and is hot, add as many onions to the pan as will fit in a ½” layer in the pan. Sprinkle the salt over the onions. The salt helps to draw water and dissolved sugars out of the onion’s cells. When you salt the onions at the beginning, it will take longer to achieve browning because of the extra water it draws out, but ultimately, your onions will have a much better flavor and will brown more evenly if you add the salt at the beginning of the cooking process.
Cook the onions over medium low heat. Cooking the onions at a relatively low temperature, called sweating, allows all the water to release into the pan and then evaporate slowly. Sweating also ensures that your onions will be soft and caramelized all the way through, and not just on the outside.
Stir the onions every couple of minutes, and adjust the heat so you here just the merest sizzle. If your pan would not hold all of the onions, add more as the ones in the pan cook down and free up more room in the pan.
Add in your optional ingredients, if you choose to use them, and continue cooking on medium-low to low heat, stirring frequently, until the onions are soft and anywhere from honey-colored to deep brown, depending on how caramelized you want them to be.
The process can take anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes to upwards of half an hour, depending on how many onions you are cooking and your preferred level of caramelization. Don’t worry; as long as you cook them slowly and stir them frequently, you will not end up with burned onions.
Other vegetables related to onions (the Allium family) also respond beautifully to caramelization. Try caramelizing leeks, shallots or even garlic.

Reduction Sauce:  How to Prepare at Home

Remove the meat from the sauté pan; pour off all but 2 tablespoons of fat (add fat if you need to). Remove the pan from the heat; add wine to deglaze the pan while scraping any bits stuck to the pan when cooking the meat.
Place the pan back on the heat and immediately add the shallots letting them cook while the wine reduces to an essence. Be sure to keep stirring so the shallots don’t burn and the bottom of the pan is clean.
Once the wine is almost completely cooked off, add the stock. Reduce the stock by at least half and more if you want the sauce thicker.
Taste and season with salt and pepper. Many professional chefs will add pats of butter at this point to give the sauce more flavor and that velvety shine and smooth texture. This is great but it sort of defeats the purpose of making a reduction to reduce fat and calories.
Add the finely chopped herbs and serve.  That simple and delicious.