Steak Frites

Here’s my favorite French bistro dish. And you can do it at home very easily.

The name means steak and fries. (In French, French fries are pomme frites. Now pomme by itself means apple, and this is not fried apples. Potatoes are pommes du terre, or apples of the earth. But who wants a name a foot long?)

In the photo, I’ve used a New York steak, also called New York strip. It is also the tenderloin part of a sirloin steak (the smaller part of the sirloin is the filet — T-bone steaks have the tenderloin part but almost no filet). In my opinion, the New York cut is the best tradeoff between filet mignon (tender but not as tasty) and rib steak (tastiest of all, but with more fat and gristle). Take your pick.

Make a small salad, get the French fries under way, and season the steaks with either a prepared mix like Montreal Steak Seasoning (in the photo), or just salt or garlic salt and pepper.

You can cook the steaks either on a grill or in a skillet. Four or five minutes on each side will get you medium rare, but you should stop grilling before your desired temperature is reached. If you have an instant-read thermometer, 135 degrees is a good place to stop, since the hot steaks will keep cooking by themselves until they are medium rare or medium (if you wait longer).

If you want sauce on the steak, there are many possibilities: bottled sauce, such as A1 and Worcestershire, pan sauces that you make in the pan after frying the steak, such as my Rooster Sauce, or a mixture of butter and garlic or butter and pesto. You’ll see many sauces you can try just by watching the cooking publications.

Please check out the Cooking Dude recipe for French Fries here!