Ribeye steak is a staple in our house; we eat it almost every week. Its low omega-6 content makes beef, along with fish like salmon, our favorite meat. Ribeye is a fatty cut, which fits Perfect Health Diet macronutrient ratios.
Given how important it is in our diets, you might think we’d have a lot of fancy recipes; but simple grilled or pan-fried steak is highly satisfying, and also very quick. We’ll usually have a simple seasoned grilled steak, or pan-fried steak with a simple sauce, along with vegetables and a starch on the side.
Although our steaks are usually simple, I think it’s worth a post to show what we do. We would be curious to hear what sauces our readers like on steak.
Pan-Fried Steak in Cream Sauce
This is better known as Steak Diane, after Diana the Roman goddess of the hunt; it is a simple recipe such as a hunter might use.
Here’s what we typically buy:
These are regular grain-fed, not grass-fed, steaks; grain-fed is cheaper and fattier, both of which we like, and the omega-6 content is reasonably low even in grain-fed beef.
We eat toward the lower half of our recommended protein range, which translates to between 0.5 lb and 1 lb (0.4 to 0.8 kg) meat per day. So this $20 package represents a 2 day supply of meat for 2 people. At $5 per person per day, it’s quite affordable. Certainly cheaper than restaurant meals!
Here are a few ingredients for the sauce:
Butter, cream, lemon for juice, rosemary, garlic, and bay leaves. The bay leaves are rather old and brown, but might as well use them up.
We start with some coconut oil, rosemary, garlic, and bay leaves, and two steaks seasoned with salt and pepper.
We brown them about 1 1/2 minutes per side at medium to high heat:
At that point we pull them out, carve them into smaller sizes, and return them along with the butter to the pan:
After another 2 minutes per side, the steaks are ready to remove from the pan. We then use the pan residue to make a sauce.
Normally we might add mushrooms, onions, or other vegetables to the sauce, but today we were pressed for time and just added cream and some lemon juice to the pan. It looked like this at first:
Stir it at low heat and remove as soon as ingredients are mixed; the sauce looks like this:
Note: Don’t eat the bay leaves! They flavor the sauce, but the leaves contain toxins. We removed the bay leaves before adding cream to the sauce.
We always have some rice around – we run the rice cooker once every 3 days or so – and some seasoned seaweed, kimchi, and baby carrots for vegetables when we need them. So if we’re pressed for time and don’t feel like cooking plant foods, dinner will look like this:
(Kimchi and seasoned seaweed not shown. We also put the sauce over the rice.)
Table-grilled steak
If we’re even more pressed for time and would like to relax in our living room while cooking – maybe to watch a movie or television show – then we’ll grill our steak at the table.
Cooking at the table is a tradition in Asia; many restaurants have grills built into the dining tables so that diners can barbecue their food.
The easiest way to do this is to buy an electric table grill. We got ours for $20 at an Asian supermarket. Amazon has some fancier models:
Here’s the steak cooking:
On our table grill, the heat is lower near the edges than in the center. So we usually need to pull the steak when the center part is cooked, cut off the edges, and return the undercooked edges to the grill:
Here’s the steak fresh off the grill:
Add whatever plant foods you like! We’ll typically do bell peppers as here, onions, portobello mushrooms, or asparagus.
It’s hard for a meal to get easier to prepare than this. The table grill is easy to clean also – both the grilling surface and a pan to catch drippings pull out and clean easily.
Steak Diane with Gordon Ramsey
Here is Gordon Ramsey cooking essentially the same meal:
via this link:
We use ribeye steaks as well. They’re so good, we don’t do anything but add a little salt and pepper to taste. I usually saute some veggies like mushrooms and onions or whatever else in the fridge needs to be used up — using butter with a little olive oil. Fresh tender asparagus is another favorite. It’s good however you cook it. With the steak, my husband likes a baked potato with butter or sour cream. I usually mooch a bit of that as well.
We just finished a very similar dinner, but using lamb chops instead of steak and sweet potato instead of baked potato. I sprinkled a little garlic powder on the lamb as well as salt and pepper.
Totally yummy.
Yep – hard to beat ribeye!
Looks good! I crust mine in a cast iron and finish it in the oven. What do you usually have for breakfast and lunch?
Hi stoic,
I actually do intermittent fasting, so no breakfast, and usually have leftovers with added egg yolks for lunch.
If you want breakfast, and don’t like leftovers, then some mix of safe starches (potatoes, cream of rice, puffed rice cereal) and fats/meats (eggs, sausage, yogurt) and fruits/berries might be good.
One of my favorite food bloggers just did a great article on cooking steaks. Google “Kenji steak tips” for some great advice – some of which goes against conventional steak-cooking wisdom. Cheers.
I love rib-eye. I just feel guilty eating conventional, and grass-fed is too expensive, but it’s hands down my favorite cut of beef.
That looks absolutely delicious and quick to make, which is crucial in my opinion.
Those recipes that can be made in just a few minutes are golden since I don’t like to spend a long time cooking every day.
Hi Kris,
That’s our goal — easy, fast, tasty, inexpensive recipes that are good for practical life.
We try to design all recipes to be makeable in 30 minutes, except for long-cooking things like soups and stews that don’t need watching and can be done on weekends.
Best, Paul
I’m still surprised you RECOMMEND feed-lot beef. Eating feed-lot beef will not kill anyone (well, besides ecoli contamination) but it certainty isn’t even close to ideal. Cows are supposed to graze and eat grass, not stand in their own manure being fed grains that make them sick. I, for one, have no desire to eat abused, sick animals. Gross. Posting “grain-fed is cheaper and fattier, both of which we like,” really makes me, and others in my community, question your credibility. I GET that some cant’ afford it and that is truly fine. Middle to upper class scientists/researchers can certainly afford to buy a cow share at less than $3.00lb, including the ribeye.
Hi Jennifer,
I agree that the argument for eating grass-fed, pastured beef is primarily a moral one – of rewarding producers who treat their animals well.
The health advantages of eating grass-fed beef are small. For eggs and milk, the health advantages of naturally fed animals may be greater.
Everyone has to balance moral concerns and health considerations against cost and other personal factors. We don’t take a stand on the right answer: clearly not everyone can afford grass-fed beef; and even wealthy people may prefer to eat cheaper beef and donate the savings to the food pantry. We think it’s important for our readers to know that the health consequences are not substantial when it comes to steak. We respect whichever position our readers choose.
Thanks for sharing your point of view.
Best, Paul
How long to you keep your leftover rice or do you always eat it fresh?
Like you I run the rice cooker every three days or so. Lately I’ve been mixing curry powder into the water before adding it to the rice cooker and I also stir through a chopped onion. The result is perfect curried rice that I use for my breakfast Kedgeree.
Hi GeeBee,
If you keep it long enough yeast will grow. It happens faster if the rice is moist, slower if it is cold and dry. But you can smell when that happens. Generally 4 days or less is safe.
Good, I never keep it longer than three days….I’ve read too many horror stories about food poisening from the spores growing in leftover fried rice etc.
Interesting about the smell test…..I might leave my next lot of plain rice for a few more days to see if I can detect an odour.
If you dry off any condensation that develops in the container you’re storing it in, that should enable the rice to last longer.
When eating steak such as ribeye are you supposed to eat the whole thing including the fat? For instance it’s normal to trim the big chunks of fat off the sides of the steak & set them aside for the dog. Do you recommend just eating the entire steak, fat & all?
Hi MacAttack,
I do eat all the fat, but it’s not essential. Eat to your taste. The meal will be within our “plateau ranges” for all ranges whether or not you include the extra fat — keep the fat to be at the low-carb low-protein end of our ranges, give it to the dog to be at the high-carb high-protein end of our ranges. Both are healthy.
Paul, We just finished an absolutely delicious meal of a thick rib steak braised in butter with roasted veggies and creamed, using real heavy cream, cauliflower. It’s so liberating to be able to eat the fat with a clear conscience although I admit to not being able to eat it all, what I did eat tasted fabulous.
erp, we aim to please!
I do believe our natural taste preferences evolved for a reason, and it wasn’t to make us sick. Our food should taste fabulous! If it doesn’t then we’re doing something wrong.
Hi Paul,
> “We brown them about 1 1/2 minutes per side at medium to high heat”
What’s your position on gentle vs. high heat cooking? I thought gentle cooking increases nutritional value and reduces inflammation.
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark,
Gentle cooking is always better for health.
The professional chefs almost always recommend some kind of brief searing at high heat for better taste.
So you have to balance health with taste in choosing a cooking temperature. Beef stands up to heat fairly well, if you use good oils, so a brief browning is probably OK.
does anyone have ideas for a small/compact electric appliance for cooking steaks like this? for a few reasons the kitchen in my apartment is not useful (though i would love to do the stove/burner/le creuset cast-iron griddle combo if it were.).
i was looking at the george foreman grill but it drains fat and is coated with teflon – though it looks like the table top grills suggested by paul do the same thing… thoughts? if i were to get one of these table top grills with a cover, does anyone know a good brand that’s very small? just to be able to grill 1 large steak at a time., thanks!
We have a George Foreman grill that we use when it’s too cold to grill outside. The draining fat/juice is no problem if you then use the drippings to make a gravy/sauce! 🙂