Deconstructing the Dish: Chateaubriand For Two

Step one is we start with that nice center cut piece of beef tenderloin. This is about 22 ounces. We season it with kosher salt on all sides and fresh black pepper. Let's roll it around. All right we've got our cast iron pan here nice and hot. Just add a regular vegetable oil. You could use canola oil, soybean oil, something with a high smoking point. Olive oil is no good. We get our beef right in there. See that pan is nice and hot. You get a nice sizzle. That's going to help to sear it real well. Get that caramelization on the outside. Basically at this point we've got a nice hot cast iron pan and what we're doing right now you see the smoke coming out of the pan. We're caramelizing the proteins on the outside of the steak. This is going to help to develop a char on the outside. It's going to give it a crunch but it's also going to give it a ton of flavor and that's really what we're after right now. Just developing flavor on this beautiful piece of beef tenderloin. You see here now we'll start to turn it. You see that nice beautiful brown color right there. We're going to get that seared all the way around on all sides. Here we go. We're just about done searing now. You see that pan is really really hot. That's why I choose to use cast iron because that cast iron holds the heat better than your standard stainless or aluminum pan. Now at this point I just sear the two outer sides if you will briefly. Just give it a quick tap. Now this is where we add our butter. You see it almost has a crispy shell on the outside. Say that's probably the equivalence of about one stick of butter. We've got some garlic cloves that we peeled. We're just going to crush them. Get that into the butter. Fresh thyme and we've got some chopped shallots going in. Now you hear the herb sizzling in there. All that flavor is just getting right into the butter there. Now we'll just put that on top there and we'll start our basting process. You could smell that thyme and garlic just infusing into the oil right now and that's it. After you get it nice and brown like that, we've been basting it for a few minutes now. We're going to get a resting rack. We'll put the beef on a rack. You want to make sure because now it's going to go in the oven. You want to make sure that it's on a rack so that it cooks evenly. We'll add the aromatics so that'll continue to add flavor to it and we'll go right into the oven. Now after 20 minutes, we take it out. We're going to let the meat rest for a good 10 minutes or so. What that's going to do is that's going to help just let the moisture and all the different molecules in there just relax so that when we go to slice it, it'll be well rested and it should be evenly cooked all the way around. See there, that's a beautiful medium rare. Like I said, that resting, that 10 minutes that we leave it to just cool down a little bit is what helps it to keep that even cooking all the way around. If you don't let it rest, some of that moisture and that redness is going to bleed out and it's not going to have that even red color all the way through. So very important that you let that meat rest. Add a little sea salt on top. I have a red wine reduction sauce that I made earlier which we're just going to spoon around and garnish with some of that thyme. And then traditionally in steakhouses, we like to garnish with watercress as well. So I have a little watercress here and we'll just do a little green around and that's it. Chateaubriand for two, basted with thyme, garlic, shallots and butter.