Ribeye with Fried Onions, Blistered Tomatoes and a Smashed Potato
current situation: ribeye, fried onions and tomatoes in soy au jus with baked potato
The onions and the tomatoes are cooked in the au jus, not beside it. They come off the plate as one thing — dark, soft, glossy — and they end up spilling over both the steak and the potato, which is the entire idea.
Cherry tomatoes go in whole and stay whole until they burst on their own. Cut them first and you get a sauce; leave them and you get little bags of hot sweet juice that pop when you bite them. Those are what cut the salt in the jus.
Spring onion over everything at the end. Not optional — it is the only fresh thing on the plate.
- Feeds
- 2
- Hands-on
- 35 minutes
- Potato
- 1 hour in the oven
- Onions
- 20 minutes, slow
What you need
The steak
- 2 boneless ribeyes, 1 1/2 inches thick
- Coarse kosher salt and cracked black pepper
- 1 tbsp beef tallow
The onions and tomatoes
- 3 yellow onions, sliced
- 2 cups cherry tomatoes, left whole (from my garden)
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 cup beef stock
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- Coarse black pepper
The potatoes and the top
- 2 large russet potatoes
- Oil and coarse salt for the skins
- 2 tbsp butter
- 3 spring onions, sliced
How it goes
1 — Potatoes in first, naked on the rack
Oiled, salted, pricked, straight onto the oven rack at 425°F for an hour. No foil, so the skins go dry and papery and split properly when you press them.
2 — Fry the onions down slowly
Butter, onions, low heat, twenty minutes. Stirred occasionally. They should be properly brown and sweet before anything wet goes near them.
3 — Tomatoes in whole, left alone to blister
Heat up, tomatoes in among the onions, and then do not stir for three or four minutes. They take colour on one side and some of them split on their own. Those are the ones you want.
pro tip — Resist pressing them. A burst tomato releases its juice into the pan; a blistered whole one keeps it until the plate.
4 — Stock and soy in, reduced by half
Poured into the hot pan so it hisses, scraped, and simmered until it is thick and glossy and clinging to the onions rather than sitting under them. Plenty of pepper. Off the heat and kept warm.
5 — Sear the steaks in a separate pan
Dry, salted, peppered, into smoking tallow. Three minutes, flip, two to three more, fat edge held down. Pull at 128°F and rest ten minutes on the serving plate.
6 — Smash the potatoes open with your hand
Press down on each one with the heel of your hand until the skin splits and the inside bursts up. Butter straight into the break while it is still steaming.
7 — Spoon the pan between them
Onions and tomatoes with their jus heaped into the gap between the steak and the potato so it runs into both. Spring onion scattered over the whole plate.
Current situation. Nothing left on the plate but pepper. LFG.