Steak Frites in the Comfort of Your Home

Steak Frites is a classic French meal of steak and french fries. It sounds simple–and it can be–but the crispy potatoes and rich juicy steak come together into something that feels very special and fancy!

A well-known chef recently wrote an article espousing the ease and simplicity of creating steak frites for your loved one. According to this expert, one can whip up this meal for a group in a short 40 minutes! In that 40 minutes, one needs to cut up the potatoes, soak them in ice water, drain them, dry them, fry them, and then drain and set them aside. Once the fries are set aside, go ahead and cook your steaks by browning them on the stovetop before finishing them under the broiler. While the steaks broil, go ahead and refry those fries to crisp them up!

We don’t know about you, but just typing that description left us feeling a bit anxious! Imagine watching a steak under the broiler trying to make sure it doesn’t burn while deep frying a batch or two of fries!

Our recipe keeps the essence of steak frites while eliminating all those carefully timed steps!

We aren’t against fried foods–in fact, we enjoy them very much! But deep-frying is not something we casually pursue at home. The attention to detail and the mess is a lot! So, our frites (or fries) are baked! The key to crispy baked fries is to use enough oil and to bake them at a high temperature. We preheat a baking sheet along with the oven, so as soon as the fries hit that baking sheet they are sizzling.

So the fries are covered, how about the steak part of steak frites?

The secret to a fancy steak

What kind of steak for steak frites?

The kind of steak used for this dish varies depending on the region of France. When eating Steak Frites, we’ve experienced steaks as varied as rump steak to porterhouse. Our recommendation is to use the best steak you can find in your price range as well as your local market. After all, any steak that is prepared well is a good steak! For this recipe, we’re using a sirloin steak. If you are using a different type of steak and need specifics for cooking it, we’ve found Meat: Everything You Need to Know by Pat LaFrieda and Carolynn Carreño to be the best resource for specifics on cooking meat.

A good steak doesn’t need a lot of seasoning. This advice coming from a spice shop may be a surprise, but we really do believe in most cases less is more.

Our steak is simply seasoned with a good flake salt and freshly ground pepper. SpiceTopia’s Four Peppercorn Blend is perfect for steak as the richness of the meat can do with a little bit of extra sharp and fruity peppery flavors. Our Four Peppercorn blend which we blend right in the shop is a mix of:

• Tellicherry Pepper. Tellicherry pepper is a specific type of black pepper. It’s strong, earthy, slightly spicy bite is familiar to most.
• Green pepper. Green pepper is unripened black pepper. It has a fruitier, more mild taste than black pepper.
• Pink pepper. This pepper is not related to true peppercorns, but rather are the fruit of the Peruvian or Brazilian pepper trees. Pink Peppercorns bring a tart fruitiness to the blend.
• White pepper. White Pepper is black pepper that has had its outer layer soaked off. It is often used in dishes where black pepper may be visually unappealing. It is considered spicier than black pepper and adds a nice kick to steak and other rich dishes.

If you were to open our fridge, you’d see that our view of less is better does not apply to condiments!

And that spice friends is where we really add flavor in this recipe! Our condiment of choice for Steak Frites is a compound butter flavored with citrus and Dill Weed.

It’s a classic French way of flavoring simple dishes and is perfect for this dish!

If you’d like to learn more about the magic that is Compound Butters be sure to check out our Compound Butter Post.

So Let’s Get Cooking