Pan Fried Steak with Mashed Potatoes

In addition to going out for food, we also enjoy attempting to make our own food! In Toulouse, we decided to begin our foray into cooking our own meals outside of something microwaved or reheated. As a side note, one must be warned that our kitchen equipment was severely limited as we couldn't just go out and rebuy all the kitchen tools we have at home in Canada! Basically all we had to work with was a single pan, one pot and two electric burners.

The first question we asked ourselves after deciding that we wanted steak was - how will we do this without a grill or an oven? After some research we realized that we could do this with a pan, but we were worried that the electric burner would not reach high enough temperatures to seal in the juices of the steak. However, despite our concerns we decided to go ahead and we bought two entrecotes and began our preparations.

We began by leaving the steaks at room temperature for around 45 minutes so that they would cook better, and then following a quick marinate of salt and pepper, the steaks were lightly brushed with olive oil to prevent sticking on the pan. After heating the pan on maximum temperature on the small burner, we crossed our fingers and hoped that the electric burner and cheap pan would cook our steaks properly.

After quickly cooking the steaks for no more than a minute on each side, we took them off and let them sit to allow the juices to settle. To our surprise, the steaks almost looked like they had been cooked on a grill - just without the grill marks. We quickly finished off our steaks with a quick deglazing of the pan using a red wine and then we topped our steaks off with the sauce from the deglazing as well as some mushrooms. Y served her mashed potatoes beside the steaks and we were in business!

Our meal!

Verdict:
After cooking our simple, yet delicious meal we decided that cooking steak at home is something that people do not enough! Other than cooking the mashed potatoes and letting the steaks sit at room temperature, the entire time it took to marinate and cook the steak, the mushrooms and the sauce was under 10 minutes.