Sometimes you make a dinner and you realize that it is just as good as almost anything you could order in a restaurant. This happens at our house a lot. I love making dinners that are fresh, flavorful and SC often says “Why would we go out to dinner when we can make something just as good at home.” That being said, there are always reasons to go out to dinner – a fun night out, and someone else is doing the cooking!

Saturday night we had another meal that we realized was just so good. While at Wegmans Saturday afternoon, we picked up small grass fed, organic beef tenderloins. It looked like a filet to me, but I wanted to write out the actual cut of beef that we bought – because it turned out to be so good!

As you might know, I do not cook steak or beef very often at all. While we were driving home SC asked me how we should cook the steak – and I honestly had no idea. I took out my iPhone and googled how to cook steak. I came across a great blog post that gave me a great cooking idea – you can find the actual post here: How to Cook the Perfect Filet Mignon.

We did not get home until after 7 o’clock so I really wanted to get our dinner started. Thankfully we did not have to take our steak out of the refrigerator and let it warm up a little since we were just getting home from the store. I started to pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees. I found our stainless steel chef’s pan. I thinly sliced up two shallots. I put two tablespoons of butter and two tablespoons of olive oil into our pan and turned the heat up to medium high. I seasoned the medallions with freshly ground pepper, sea salt and a tiny pinch of garlic powder. Before putting the beef into the hot pan, I put the shallots in and sautéed them for two minutes.

I added the beef and pressed them into the pan:

I cooked the meat for four and a half minutes. At the end of this time the sear on the meat was really nice, and everything smelled really great. What is better than shallots cooking in butter!?

After my timer went off, I turned the steaks over and immediately put the pan into the oven and set the timer again this time for seven minutes.

After seven minutes I took the pan out and removed the meat and placed it into a clean plate. I tented the meat with a sheet of aluminum foil and let it rest for at least five minutes. While that was happening, I cut up carrots and toasted two pieces of rosemary bread. If it was not so late I would have roasted potatoes or made a cauliflower puree, but I was hungry and we would be sitting down for dinner after 8 o’clock as it was.

At the end my plate looked great and I topped my steak with the shallots and that really made the meat taste so good:

It is so important to season your meat well. To many (including SC) I rarely use an acceptable amount of salt in my cooking (I think American’s in general use way too much salt and due to eating prepared food are conditioned to wanting and actually crave very salty food). But for this steak I was “generous” in the amount of salt I used while seasoning and it made all the difference (I still probably used less than most real chefs do when preparing food for people).

We will definitely be using this cooking method the next time we make steak. And having the organic and grass fed beef made all the difference in the world – the next time you make steak or filet at home definitely treat yourself to organic & grass fed – you won’t be sorry and you will still be spending less money buying and preparing the steak at home rather than ordering at a fancy restaurant!