Labor Day Steak with Rice, Peppers and Mushrooms
current situation: Labor Day, crush it
Labor Day. One steak, one pan of vegetables, a bowl of rice, and no intention of doing anything else all day.
The vegetables get glazed, not sauteed. They cook down in stock and soy until the liquid has almost gone and what is left is clinging to them — which is why they look wet and dark in the picture rather than loose in a pan. Three minutes longer than feels necessary is usually right.
Mushrooms go in first and alone. They have to lose their water before anything else joins them, and if they go in with the onions they boil instead of browning.
- Feeds
- 2
- Hands-on
- 35 minutes
- Vegetables
- Glazed down
- Holiday
- Optional
What you need
The steak
- 1 thick-cut steak, 16–20 oz — ribeye or strip
- Coarse salt and cracked black pepper
- 1 tbsp beef tallow
The pan
- 8 oz mushrooms, thickly sliced
- 2 onions, in thick strips
- 2 red bell peppers, in strips
- 3 cloves garlic, sliced
- 2 tbsp butter
- 3/4 cup beef stock
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- Coarse black pepper
The rice
- 1 1/2 cups long-grain white rice, rinsed
- Salt
How it goes
1 — Rice on first and then forget it
Rinsed until the water runs clear, cooked plain, lid on, left alone. It is the bed everything else lands on and it should taste of rice.
2 — Mushrooms alone in a dry hot pan
No fat to start. Sliced mushrooms into a hot dry pan in one layer, left for three minutes. They release their water, it hisses away, and then they brown. Now add a knob of butter.
3 — Onions next, hard, four minutes
Pushed in with the mushrooms over high heat, left to catch colour on one side before being moved.
4 — Peppers two minutes, garlic thirty seconds
In they go, tossed, and the garlic last so it does not burn. The peppers should still have shape and colour.
5 — Stock and soy in, reduced to a glaze
Poured in so it hisses, scraped, then simmered down until there is almost no liquid left in the pan and everything is coated and shining. This is the step people stop too early.
6 — Steak in its own pan, hot and dry
Cast iron, tallow, three to four minutes a side depending on thickness, fat edge down for a minute. Pull at 128°F.
pro tip — Do not cook the steak in the vegetable pan. The glaze in there is sugar and soy and it will burn black under a steak.
7 — Rest ten, plate with the steak in front
Rice at the back, vegetables heaped over the rice with all the glaze, steak laid across the front of the plate. Butter stirred into the last of the pan and spooned over.
Labor Day. Crush it. LFG.