Not a Chef
Last night I chose to cook steaks. Something in my brain glitched and made me think that I could make this:
And even though I enjoy my steak well-done, like a trashy uncivilized imbecile, I was excited about all that butter and thyme. And the accompanying baked potato, of course.
I read the recipe over 6 or 7 times, trying to absorb all of the steps like my arteries would be absorbing the butter later.
Thick-ish steak, check.
Room temperature, check.
Patted dry, check.
Well-seasoned with salt and pepper, check.
Hot-as-fuck oil, check.
Seared beautifully for 2.5 minutes on the first side… flip and baste, baste, baste with the buttery oily thymey smashed-garlicky goodness.
Thermometer wedged at a jaunty angle into the first steak. Baste, baste, baste, sizzle, sizzle, sizzzzzzzzzzleeeeeee
The first steak was supposed to reach an internal temperature of 126° F in about 2 more minutes. It didn’t. It kept merrily cooking, Christian basting as I re-read the recipe. 2 more minutes went by. 110°.
Burned garlic. Thyme burned to a crisp.
2 more minutes and the steak still being basted with blackened death liquid. The thermometer reads 119°, and I get the side eye when I ask him if it’s in far enough. Nothing like a little cooking failure humor, am I right, ladies???
At the 126° mark, Christian whisked his steak away, blackened on the bottom, and I poured out the black sludge to start in on my steak.
More oil, more butter, more garlic, more thyme. I turned the dial from high to 6, knowing I would still have a burned mess at the end of this next round. You know that feeling of resigning yourself to go through with something even though you know the outcome will be grim?
That was me cooking my steak.
Minutes upon minutes later I plunked it onto the plate next to a hearty pool of A-1 sauce, felt my way to the table through the smokey haze, and cut on into the meatiest part of the brown slab. As if overcooking my meat wasn’t heinous enough, I tend to eat the pieces with my fingers so I can navigate around any fat.
While what I ate was a somewhat delicious, Christian may have likened it to a shuttle tile upon re-entry.
Please do conjure up this image:
A middle aged woman sitting in a foggy haze, windows open and fans spinning despite the cold fall evening, hands clutching half-gnawed meat bits in stubborn defiance and ravenous hunger.
Suffice it to say, my results varied somewhat from Nagi the food blogger’s, but I thoroughly enjoyed coating my kitchen surfaces in grease, imbuing my home with the smell of burnt failure, and waking every hour throughout the night to gag a little at the smell.
P.S. The fans and windows and Trader Joe’s home spritz did nothing to dispel the greasy, burned, meaty odor, and my house still smells like this 15 hours later.
P.P.S. Let me know if you want to hear the part about the hot oil shooting into my eyeball when I tried to make blistered green beans.
Yes please tell us about the hot oil shooting into your eye! Oh, the cooking fail. I hate those. I used to have this self-humiliating tendency to make a dessert for the FIRST time ever, then take it to a family holiday function. I should have known I should always always do at least one test run. But no, here I go, cocky as all get-out. A chocolate cheesecake that tasted more bitter than sweet. One of the husband’s says in disgust after tasting it, “who made this?!” I say “I did”. “Oh” he says, “I thought my wife did”. So burn on me and burn on his wife and he was trying to shame her in front of everyone, but it went terribly wrong. What a douche. Lol, not Lol. 🙂