We’ve had some notable failures cooking steaks, but it worked out last time and I’m recording what we did. The approach is from Bittman’s How To Cook Everything.
Steaks, cut 1 1/2 inch thick
Kosher salt
Pepper
Preheat oven to 500.
Pat steaks dry.
Once the oven is at at temperature, place a cast iron skillet on the stove at medium high and allow to heat for five minutes.
Sprinkle steaks with kosher salt and a very little ground pepper.
When cast iron skillet is hot, sprinkle skillet surface with kosher salt. Add steaks and immediately place in the bottom of the oven. The pan goes directly on the oven bottom, not on a rack.
Roast for 3 minutes. Flip steaks and roast for an additional 4 1/2 minutes.
Allow steaks to rest five minutes before serving.
Although the cooking times are longer than Bittman’s, this gave us very rare steaks. I imagine results may very depending on your oven and stove.
We used filet mignon, but Bittman suggests this technique is reasonably cut agnostic.
We made a pan sauce to accompany. Jeff finds it obnoxious to rush around trying to get a sauce together in the list moments before sitting down to dinner, so we did this in parallel.
For the pan sauce we sauteed 1 lb sliced mushrooms in butter with salt, removed the finished mushrooms from the pan, and divided: 3/4 to eat as a side, 1/4 reserved for the sauce. In the now empty pan, we sauteed one diced small shallot in butter over medium low heat. When shallot was lightly browned, we added one cup of red wine (cabernet sauvignon), brought to a boil, and reduced to a low simmer. Finally we stirred in 2 Tbsp of butter and the reserved mushrooms, with salt and pepper to taste. We reduced the liquid by about half before serving. (Actually we reduced too far and added a bit more wine, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.)