My parents are quirky and ironic: they don’t eat beef, but one of their favourite places for dinner is The Keg, a steakhouse. My dad will inevitably want to order the prime rib, because he thinks they’re pork ribs, but better, because they’re “prime.” We all laugh about it, but really, why do they chose The Keg when they don’t eat beef?

My dad honestly doesn’t mind not eating beef, in fact he’s pretty adamantly against it, but my mom, on the other hand was taken along for the ride and I think she sometimes misses it even though she was never an avid beef eater.

My parents haven’t eaten beef for over 20 years now and I’ve just recently started, so cooking beef is rather new to me. It’s an alluring, mysterious meat that I haven’t had much experience with, so I was a little nervous cooking up the pan-roasted dry-aged rib eye.

It’s a simple process: season, sear, roast, baste, rest, slice and eat, but when you’re working with a piece of meat you’re not entirely familiar with, you want to be sure you’re doing it justice. Thankfully, Chang’s recipe is clear, concise and basically perfect.

I didn’t end up buying a 2 to 2 1/2 pound steak, so I cut the cooking time a bit to ensure medium-rareness. The searing time stayed the same, but instead of 8 minutes in the oven, I left it in for 6. Be warned, cooking this steak is going to set off some fire alarms, so make sure your exhaust fans are on and you have some windows open. I forgot and we ended up enjoying our steak in a blue haze.

If you’ve never basted a steak with butter, I recommend it, especially aromatic butter that has been infused with thyme, garlic and shallots. It’s magical: the butter coats and flavours the meat with deliciousness. This steak makes me want to compare it to rainbows, unicorns, and all things right with the world, it was that good.

This was ultimately, the best steak I’ve ever cooked, even if its the only one I’ve done. Mike can attest to its perfection. So can Julia at I (Heart) Momofuku. It might have been the quality of the meat, or the method, but it was one damn good piece of meat. Juicy, tender, beefy. If all beef tastes the way this rib-eye does, I was missing out on beef all this time.

Tags: rib-eye, ssäm bar recipes

