Going back in time a hundred years or so to make something amazing.  I wanted to make a chateaubriand for quite some time now but I didn’t want to make it with a bearnaise sauce as has been suggested by every modern book I have seen.  I decided to look at my Escoffier book and that lead to this Colbert Butter Sauce.

It’s a compound butter with meat glace.  The base compound butter for it is a Buerre Maitre D’Hotel which consists of butter, parsley, and lemon juice. I added a little dijon mustard to the mix  because it was suggested by the book.

The piece of meat was about a pound and I had placed salt and pepper on it a week earlier then placed it in the refrigerator.  I was ready to cook it so I removed it from the refrigerator then let it rest until it was at room temperature.  I placed a cast iron skillet on the stove then set it as high as it can go.  A little clarified butter in the skillet then I seared each side of the meat for about 2 minutes then threw the skillet in the oven 425F to cook to desired doneness.  There are other methods to cooking a steak like this that I will be exploring soon, SOUS VIDE, but first I wanted to make sure the dish worked before I take more time to cook this.

The potatoes were cooked in whole butter with white wine vinegar, salt, fresh tarragon, and black pepper until tender.

The steak was out of the skillet so I started to build my colbert butter sauce. First, I through in some clarified butter with a minced shallot. I toasted the shallot then deglazed with white wine.  I could have done red but I didn’t want to overwhelm the sauce or discolor it. I just need some flavorful liquid to deglaze…..wine is an easy choice.  Once the wine was almost gone I tossed in the Beurre Maitre d’Hotel then added some glace de viande and tarragon to make it a Colbert Butter Sauce.

Parsley is fried in 3 seconds then topped with salt, pepper, and lemon. (For recipe click here).

The meat that was resting is sliced thin then everything is plated as shown.

Eric