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Steak Smothered with Onions
Sear a juicy T-bone steak on both sides to seal the juices in, then fry, or broil it, while you're browning a heap of sliced onions in butter. When tender and golden spread onions on top of steak, till it's simply smothered. Let cook in this fashion for a few minutes, until the luscious flavors are truly married, as the French say. Then lift tenderly to a hot platter and go to it.
A sketch rather than a formula: no quantities, no times, no temperatures. The instructions below fill in the numbers a competent cook needs to reproduce it.
- Start the onions firstThree or four large onions, sliced thin, need 20 to 30 minutes over medium-low heat in butter to come genuinely golden and sweet. The steak takes a fraction of that, so the onions should be well underway before the meat goes near the fire, not started alongside it.
- Searing does not seal anythingThe idea that a hard sear traps juices was disproved decades ago; a seared steak loses about as much moisture as an unseared one. Sear anyway, for the browning and flavour, but do not extend the time on the theory that you are building a seal.
- Cook to temperatureA T-bone is two muscles of different tenderness on one bone, so judge by an instant-read thermometer in the larger strip side: roughly 125-130F for rare, 130-135F medium rare, 140F medium.
- Broiler settingsIf broiling indoors, preheat the element a full 10 minutes and set the steak 3 to 4 inches below it. A 1 1/4-inch T-bone runs roughly 5 to 6 minutes a side for medium rare.
- The smothering stepPiling on the onions and letting the whole thing sit over heat will carry the steak past your target. Pull the meat 5F short of where you want it, then heap on the onions and give it two or three minutes off direct heat, which also serves as the rest.
- Butter and heatButter alone will brown and then burn over a long onion fry. Use half butter, half neutral oil, or add the butter in the last ten minutes once the onions have softened.
- YieldOne large T-bone, around 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb with the bone, serves two generously with the onions.