Steak with thyme white wine reduction. A nice pan-fried steak perched on a smear of truffled mashed potatoes with a drizzle of thyme infused sauce all around. A dish fit for virtually any occasion. Fine dining at home.
Make steak with thyme white wine reduction your way
This is a bit of a guideline recipe. You can go different ways with it. Blue-cheese mashed instead of truffled. Garlic mashed works too. The baseline steak with thyme white wine reduction recipe can go a whole bunch of ways. How you like it.
Don’t want mashed? Some potatoes roasted in duck fat would be spectacular. You can plate it different ways too. Place the whole steak on top of the potatoes or slice it and nestle the steak between spoonfuls of mashed.
steak with thyme white wine reduction and truffled mashed
Ingredients
For the steaks
- 4 decent steaks - top sirloin or New York striploin cut 1 inch thick
- 1/2 cup white wine
- 1 cup veal or chicken stock
- 2 oz concentrated veal stock optional
- 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
For the truffled mashed potatoes
- 1.5 lbs yukon gold potatoes peeled and diced
- 1/2 cup milk heated
- 2 Tbsp butter
- Truffle salt or truffle oil to taste
Instructions
The potatoes
- Boil the potatoes until tender. Tender means a fork inserted into the potato meets no resistance.
- Add the butter and heated milk. Use a ricer, masher or hand mixer - whatever you are comfortable with - to mash the potatoes. You are going for a puree texture here so add more milk if needed.
The steaks
- Heat a solid frying pan over medium heat.
- Season the steaks generously with salt and pepper.
- Pan fry the steaks to desired doneness - somewhere around 4 minutes per side for medium rare. An instant read thermometer is the only reliable guideline here. Different steaks, different stoves, different pans - nobody can figure this out except you and your thermometer. Cook to 125F for rare, 135 for medium.
- Remove from pan and tent with foil.
The sauce
- Spoon off fat from pan.
- Deglaze with the white wine and reduce the wine to 1/4 cup.
- Add chicken or veal stock and reduce by 1/2. Add the concentrated veal stock at this point if you are using it. If you don’t have any please consider making some someday. It’s flavour and mouthfeel dynamite.
- Add the fresh thyme leaves. Add the accumulated juices from the steaks and simmer for another minute. Season with truffle salt or add a drizzle of truffle oil and adjust salt to taste.
To serve
- Smear a few tablespoons of truffled mash in the centre of the plate. Top with steak. Drizzle sauce around. If you have it, a little sprinkle of fleur de sel to finish is a nice touch.
Notes
Nutrition
Mexican pork ribs. Chili. Tomato. Spice. Creamy cheese grits. It comes together beautifully on the plate. A deeply flavoured, mildly spicy sauce blends with the creaminess of the grits. Meltingly tender pork ribs add a touch of richness. This dish takes Mexican cooking into fine dining territory.
The key is slow roasting back ribs in the oven before a quick braise to enrich the sauce. The slow roasting browns the ribs and contributes the always important Maillard flavour compounds (those flavours you can only get by browning your meat). With any other meat you can brown in the pot but back ribs are curved. You can’t brown them evenly.
Nice thing about this dish is you can cook the ribs ahead and be ready for a dinner party. You can prep the sauce as well. When you are ready to serve you can simply warm the sauce then add the ribs to simmer for 20-25 minutes to let it all come together while you make the grits. Takes some of the pressure off…
Credit goes to the kitchn.com for the idea to cook the back ribs initially. A solid cookie sheet and a bakers rack lets air circulate around the ribs, promoting browning.
The cheese grits are really cheese polenta. You can’t get grits up where I live. But the fine ground cornmeal works well here. You are going for rich, smooth and creamy. No grit needed.
