Welcome back, Batman fans! In case you didn’t catch last week’s post, my husband is Batman. Last month was his birthday, so I made a three-course meal of some of Batman’s favorites. Our starter course last week was a cast iron skillet of Alfred Pennyworth’s comforting Mulligatawny Soup. This week we’re joining Bruce Wayne in the kitchen for a deceptively simple steak dinner packed with brave and bold flavors.
Click here to skip to the recipe for Bruce Wayne’s Seared Ribeye.
Neither Red nor Gray…
Steak is an established favorite of Bruce Wayne’s in the Batman comics. Cooking a tender slice of beef relaxes the caped crusader as evidenced below:
I’m with Bruce on this one. You either cook a steak or you don’t. There is no try. It would probably help if he let the meat rest before slicing right into it. I’m not going to judge too heavily, though. Learning to cook is a process, and like Batman’s done through his whole career, we should learn from our mistakes. So what’s the right way to get the perfect sizzle? In my experience, I’ve found nothing more delicious that crusty, uniform sear one gets from a cast iron pan with butter.
The only drawback to any traditional steak cooking method though is that it can be a guessing game to figure out the level of doneness. That’s why I’m going to pull another trick out of Bruce Wayne’s book and incorporate technology into the process.
See that? That’s a sous-vide machine. The machine circulates heated water at low temperatures to slowly cook sealed food to a uniform temperature without overheating it. As a result, you get a perfectly-cooked piece of meat with evenly-distributed juices. The meat gently stews in own juices without losing them – slowly rendering the fat and keeping the meat constantly moist without boiling it.
Sure it reduces your time at the stovetop to the 2 minutes you spend searing the steak. But it allows you time for prepping your sides, having a drink, relaxing with a book, and showering off the stench of Gotham’s criminals while not heating up the rest of your house. It also lets you have something ready in two minutes when Atlanta’s traffic and 90-degree weather makes your spouse’s home arrival time unpredictable.
You can find sous-vide units for a wide number of price points all over Amazon (you can find my model here). But if you want to try the recipe before you invest in the equipment (I understand that we all don’t have Bruce Wayne’s bank account), Martha Stewart’s website also offers a tutorial on a cheap, DIY stovetop method.
A Taste of Wayne Manor
I could just tell you how to cook a damn tasty steak and be done with it, but I wanted to specifically incorporate flavors that embody Bruce Wayne’s history and personality. That said, I also sought ingredients that enhance the taste of the beef rather than mask it. The first thing to do was to mix up a marinade fitting to what would be in Alfred’s kitchen.
“Douse it red wine,” you may say. This time I’ll have to disagree with you. The only time we really see Bruce Wayne drinking is in Frank Miller’s work. Otherwise, he opts for a ginger ale at his parties. Wayne Manor’s cellars are to distract Gotham’s elite. Batman needs to be on his game.
Other than a bubbly beverage masquerading as champagne, the ginger ale also tenderizes the ribeye, soaking the meat with corn syrup, which will later caramelize while searing. I then added a few other items that may already be in the fridge: soy sauce and sesame oil since Master Bruce has a taste for Asian food since his martial arts training in Japan, minced garlic, and even a bit of that grainy mustard that Alfred puts on his sandwiches.
To carry on with the “what’s in the fridge” angle, I threw together some compound butter as a flavorful topper. Compound butter is the fancy technical term for “butter with stuff in it.” So into my buttery canvas, I blended green onion for memories of Japan, sundried tomatoes for acidity, and white cheddar from Alfred’s Welsh Rarebit.
Fat like butter and cheese are flavor carriers, and acidic elements like tomatoes are flavor enhancers. Everything about this dish is specifically designed to hit your tastebuds like the Batmobile on a high-speed car chase with the Joker.
I think I’ve explained this dish enough, though. You want to eat like a crime-fighting, cave-dwelling billionaire, right?
recipe
Bruce Wayne ‘s Perfect Sizzle
Bruce Wayne's Seared Ribeye
Equipment: Sous vide machine, stock pot, 2 chip-clips, 2 quart-size freezer bags, measuring cup, cast iron skillet, tongs.
Ingredients:
- 2, 8 oz. ribeye steaks
- 1/2 cup ginger ale
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 2 teaspoons grainy mustard
- 2 teaspoons minced garlic
- 1/8 cup sundried tomatoes, chopped
- 1-2 green onions, sliced with white and green parts separated
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter or ghee
- 2 tablespoons grated white cheddar
- kosher salt
Instructions:
48 hours before serving:
- Mix the ginger ale, soy sauce, sesame oil, grainy mustard, and minced garlic in the measuring cup with a spoon.
- Place each steak in a separate freezer bag and pour half the marinade into each bag. Seal the bags and refrigerate 48 hours, flipping the bag halfway through.
2.5 hours before serving:
- Set up your sous vide cooking unit according to manufacturer’s instructions. Set the temperature to 125 F.
- When it comes to temp, lower each opened steak bag into the water one at a time, letting the water push the air out of the bag. Seal the bag closed when everything below the zip line is under water. Be careful not to get water inside the bags. Secure the top of the bags to the pot using chip clips. Cook for at least 2 hours.
- Add the sundried tomatoes, the sliced white onion, the cheddar, a tablespoon of the butter, and a pinch of kosher salt to a separate dish. Mix thoroughly with a fork, cut in half, then carefully form each half into a disc. Cover the dish containing the discs with plastic wrap and refrigerate until serving.
10 minutes before serving:
- Heat the cast iron skillet on the stovetop on medium-high heat until hot.
- Remove the bags from the sous vide pot and drain the juices into a separate container.
- Dry both sides of the steak with paper towels, then season the steaks heavily with kosher salt.
- Melt the remaining butter in the skillet then add the steaks with a pair of tongs. Sear the steaks for 1 minute on each side, then place on a separate plate to rest for 5 minutes.
- Plate the steaks and top each one with a disc of compound butter. Garnish with the sliced green onions before serving.
