French Brasserie-Style Steak Frites With Rosemary Compound Butter Recipe

There's nothing quite like steak frites, a staple dish on the menu of any French restaurant worldwide. When it's done well, with crisp, golden fries and a beautifully seared and rested steak, it is perfect in its simplicity. Like most dishes within French cuisine, however, steak frites is far more complex and nuanced than you would be led to believe when looking at the finished product on a plate. Both the fries and the steak need to be carefully tended to and timed with the precision of a Swiss watch to create the seemingly effortless dish that is served up in any traditional brasserie across France.

This French brasserie-style steak frites with rosemary compound butter recipe from the kitchen of recipe developer Jennine Rye provides step-by-step instructions for the process and timing of making this classic dish. Served with a rich rosemary and garlic compound butter for a delicious finishing touch, this recipe will have you making steak frites good enough to rival any French brasserie in no time at all.

To begin this French brasserie-style steak frites with rosemary compound butter recipe, you will first need to gather the ingredients. For the compound butter, you will want unsalted butter, a garlic clove, rosemary, sea salt, and black pepper. For the steak, you will want a sirloin steak or your preferred cut, along with olive oil and further salt and pepper, for seasoning. To make the fries, you will need baking potatoes, lots of canola oil, for frying, and plenty of salt and fresh parsley to serve.

Make the compound butter: Add the butter, garlic, rosemary, sea salt, and black pepper to a bowl.

Use a spoon to blend the ingredients together to form a compound butter.

Wrap well in cling film and place into the fridge to harden.

Remove the steak from the fridge, pat it dry, and let it warm to room temperature for roughly 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Meanwhile, begin making the fries: Slice the potatoes thinly to make fries.

Preheat plenty of canola oil in a deep fryer to 250 F.

Soak the fries in cold water for 30 minutes to remove some starches.

Drain the fries and then add them to the hot oil.

Fry for 6 to 8 minutes, until they are soft but not browned.

Lift the fries out of the fryer and turn the heat up to 375 F.

Meanwhile, cook the steak: Heat a cast iron pan over high heat.

Coat the steak with the oil and season it well with salt and pepper, to taste.

Once the pan is piping hot, place the steak into the pan. For a medium-rare steak, cook the meat for 1 ½ minutes on the first side.

Flip the steak and cook it for another 1 ½ minutes on the second side.

Remove the steak from the pan and set it on a plate to rest.

Lower the fries back into the deep fryer and cook for another 3 to 4 minutes, until they are crisp and golden.

Remove the fries from the fryer and toss with salt, to taste, and the fresh parsley.

Serve the steak and fries immediately with a slice or two of the rosemary compound butter.

It can be a bit of a minefield trying to get your head around the different cuts of steak available in the supermarket or at the butchers. And, while there are definitely better and worse choices, there is ultimately no ultimate correct option when it comes to steak — it all depends on personal preferences and what you are willing (and able) to spend.

Recipe developer Jennine Rye uses sirloin steak, which is a popular offering that you'll likely find on restaurant menus right alongside ribeye steak. Both of these cuts are full of flavor and wonderfully tender, making them excellent choices for this steak frites recipe. Classically this French dish was made using rump steak, and this cut is typically a bit less pricy than the previous two options. Hanger and porterhouse are other options available to you. Both these cuts come with an understandably expensive price tag, producing wonderfully rich and succulent steaks that would make a great choice for a special occasion.

When cooking a steak, there is no exact rule regarding cooking times, as each steak will have slightly different thicknesses and the cooking environment and equipment will differ from kitchen to kitchen. The sirloin steak used in this recipe is less than an inch thick, and recipe developer Rye pan sears the meat for 3 minutes total for a rare steak.

There are a variety of tried and tested methods by which you can accurately judge how well-cooked your steak is, and the most reliable of these is to use a meat thermometer. Simply place it into the center of your steak and take a temperature reading. 120 F to 130 F is the reading you want for a rare steak. For medium-rare, you will want a reading of 130 F to 135 F. For medium, the thermometer should read somewhere between 140 F to 145 F, and 150 F to 155 F will give you a medium-well steak.

Using a thermometer will help you to produce perfectly pan-seared steaks time after time. However, if you don't have a thermometer on hand, you can always use this trick from Chef Denis Crutchfield: Simply push a cake tester into the center of your steak for 5 seconds, and the tester place it on your lip. If the cake tester has not changed temperatures, then your steak has reached medium-rare.