$412 vs $29 Steak Dinner: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients

The only reason I'm doing it this way, I don't know.

I have no idea why I did it this way.

I've never done it before.

[bright invigorating music]

Hi, I am Frank.

I'm a professional chef

and these are my $412 steak dinner ingredients.

[bright invigorating music]

Hi, I'm Lorenzo.

I'm a home cook

and these are my $29 steak dinner ingredients

[bright invigorating music]

Hurts every single time right here.

Why?

I mean every time.

As always, I can make this work.

[bright invigorating music]

It's so much stuff.

It's so much stuff, Frank.

[bright invigorating music]

So, I had planned on making a Chateaubriand

with a tarragon bearnaise,

cream spinach and Pommes boulangère.

Is this fraiche?

That is a lot of French.

Let me break it down for you.

I had a beautiful cut of meat, a Chateaubriand.

It's a large piece

of meat from the center of the Tenderloin.

It's the priciest piece of the cow.

Wow, that's a wonderful cut of meat.

I was gonna whip up a tarragon bearnaise sauce,

made with fresh tarragon, tarragon vinegar,

and a splash of vermouth.

Ugh, vermouth.

[Frank] For the side, I had honey gold potatoes.

I like these potatoes.

All ready to make a Pommes boulangère.

And finally, for a touch of green,

I had some fresh spinach, aged Parmesan

and creme fraiche to make a creamy spinach.

I am opting out.

[Lorenzo laughing]

With Lorenzo's ingredients,

we have things that are a little simpler,

something you'd find in your pantry

or your local supermarket.

With a little technique and a splash of love,

we're gonna make it even better.

Chef Frank, I thought we were friends.

If I had to guess, I'd say this cost about 35, $37.

Oh, 29, really?

Okay.

If I had to guess, 325, 412.

Hey, might as well.

[bright invigorating music]

This is Chef Frank's recipe book in the garbage.

No, just kidding.

I do have some instructions.

First things first, let's start with the steak.

So, Lorenzo, the first thing you need to do

is prepare your Chateaubriand

Basically, I'm giving you a whole filet mignon.

We have to trim off any chains.

Trim off both ends and trim off some silver skin.

The silver skin is some connective tissue

that is super tough.

You gotta make sure you get under it with a knife

and kind of like shave along

so you don't get too much meat with it.

Okay, be careful not to move a lot of meat

'cause that was wrong.

I am slicing off the tenderloin tip.

I have to do the same here on this side.

It just looks expensive.

Filet mignon is the most expensive

and most tender cut of meat you can buy.

The Chateaubriand is the best part of that filet mignon.

Basically, it comes from the inside of the cow

and the back of the animal.

The muscle doesn't get a lot of use,

so it's super tender and soft.

Okay, I'm in the next part of prepping my Chateaubriand.

I stole this from my cat.

[Lorenzo laughing]

So, Lorenzo, what you're gonna do

is tie it with some butcher twine

so that the roast is nice and evenly sized, right?

It's gonna cook even that way.

It's gonna look a lot better as well.

Not bad, right?

I must season it before I sear it.

I have one of my favorite things that I've learned here

is to use tallow.

I gave you beef fat because that's gonna add

to the richness and the beefy flavor of the steak.

Ready, here we go.

[meat sizzling]

Brown is important, not gray.

I have to do the ends as well.

Woo, chihuahua.

Once we get that nice brown exterior,

we're gonna add some butter, we're gonna add some garlic

and thyme to the pan,

just to add to that richness and flavor.

At this point, the Chateaubriand goes into the oven

just to finish cooking.

Lorenzo had planned on making a flank steak

with a baked potato, some mushrooms and some onions.

I'm gonna make a flank steak and duxelle roulade

with mushroom butter and pommes darphin.

So, I have my dehydrator right here.

I'm gonna take these mushrooms

and turn them into my mushroom powder.

I'm gonna use this mushroom powder

throughout the whole dish.

So, it's a super important component.

All I really gotta do now is slice our mushrooms.

Mushrooms are mostly water,

so these are gonna really shrink up to almost nothing.

And what we're gonna do is take this tray,

basically set it and forget it until those mushrooms

are crisp and dry.

I am preparing my potatoes,

to transform miraculously

into Pommes boulangère.

Basically Pommes boulangère translates to bakery potatoes

or the baker's potatoes.

Potatoes and butter, how can I go wrong?

I have butter, I have a dish.

I'm gonna butter the dish.

Okay, now you holy moly, I have to be very careful.

The main thing here

to watch out for is when you're slicing those potatoes

on the mandolin, don't cut your fingers.

Oh, I see.

The palms thing is a little safer.

Ah, that is safer.

I'll do one more and stop.

Three hours later.

[Lorenzo laughing]

It's been about four hours,

my mushrooms are dehydrated.

We can take them out.

They have some snap to them.

[mushroom crunching]

It's time to grind them into a powder.

I like to use a coffee grinder for this, believe it or not.

Lid on.

[mushroom grinding]

I let it go.

I got a little special little jar here.

And here's my dehydrated mushroom powder.

I'm gonna use this throughout the dish,

including the mushroom duxelle

which we're gonna make right now.

Lorenzo gave me two types of mushrooms,

a cremini and a white button mushroom.

They're pretty much the same mushroom except for the color.

These are something you don't want to throw away.

Mushroom stems have a ton of flavor.

I use 'em for stocks, sauces, fillings.

And in this case,

I'm gonna use it for something super special later.

I'm gonna start out by puring my mushrooms for our filling.

Let it go.

[mushroom grinding]

So, it's just starting to get to be a puree,

it's getting a little liquidy,

and that's what I want right here.

And that's our mushroom puree for the filling.

Okay, I'm tired, but I think I have about three pounds.

All set.

Next I have to fry these up.

I have my mushroom puree.

It's time to make the duxelle

or the stuffing for our roulade.

First things first.

Heat up the pan and add some tallow.

So, we'll be frying for some time.

Salt and pepper first.

So, I'm adding leeks, the garlic,

and then a little bit of thyme.

I'm gonna add my onions first.

I'm gonna add a pinch of salt here.

Our onions start to get a little soft.

We can add our garlic, a little bit of pepper.

They're smelling really good.

I can add my mushrooms now.

Try not to splash it all over yourself.

No, this is not dog food, it is the food of the gods.

I'm gonna turn it off.

Now I get to, I guess shingle, the potatoes in my casserole.

I guess the bottom doesn't matter too much,

but I might as well practice making it pretty.

I'm gonna add some more salt.

I'm gonna add a little more pepper.

So, you can see

that I'm getting a ton of moisture coming out,

but it is gonna take about 45 minutes to cook down.

Food is love and sometimes good things take time.

So, our duxelle has been cooking for about 45 minutes.

It's really nice and reduced down.

There's no liquid.

If I pull it away,

you don't see any liquid weeping out and that's what I want.

It's gonna be a nice rich mushroom flavor.

Before I take it off and cool it,

I'm gonna add a little bit of our mushroom powder

that we made earlier.

That mushroom powder is gonna dry it out just a little.

And it's also just gonna amp up the mushroom flavor.

I have reached the finale of my frying of my potatoes.

This is actually gonna be the last layer

I am shingling.

I'm gonna put it on here to Cool.

I'm gonna spread it out nice and thin.

So, I'm just gonna throw this in the fridge,

let it cool completely before we can stuff our roulade.

Now I have heated veal stock

and I am supposed to pour this into this baking dish.

I'm gonna add some pepper and some salt,

and I'm going to dollop some butter.

When you hear dollop, that's finger dollops.

My the potatoes are ready.

I've covered it with the aluminum foil.

I'm going to put it in the 350 oven for it, I don't know,

half an hour and see what happens.

I think half an hour is safe, but we'll check on it, okay?

It's time to prepare the steak.

Lorenzo gave me a flank steak.

And what I'm gonna do with this flank steak

is I'm gonna make a roulade.

Flank steak's, one of these cuts that could be really tough

if you don't treat it right,

but I think it's a wonderful piece of meat.

I'm gonna open it up or butterfly it, pound it out lightly

and then we're gonna roll it up.

And that's basically what roulade.

It's a roll.

Alright, I think that's pretty good.

It's nice and even.

And so what I wanna do now is season up.

We don't want it to go unseasoned, it's a piece of meat.

It tastes good with salt and pepper.

But we're also going to add some of our secret ingredient

that we made earlier.

It's gonna give a huge spike of umami to this.

And now we can put our duxelle in.

I know that it doesn't look great,

but it has a ton of flavors.

Here's the grain of the meat.

I'm gonna roll this up,

and that's our roulade.

And what we do now is we're gonna get our butcher twine.

Pull it not too tight,

tie it up,

get rid of your little ends.

I'm gonna do about four or five of these.

It doesn't need to be super tight,

it just needs to hold everything together.

We're tied up.

My roulade is prepped and ready to cook.

Drum roll, please.

Wow, it looks good.

My Pommes boulangère is for tender.

I'm gonna let it cool and hopefully it settles

and kind of stays compressed and nice.

It's been a lot of work when we're finally here

and we're gonna cook this flank steak.

Let's get some oil in the pan.

And while that oil's in the pan heating up,

add salt and pepper,

and then we're gonna add a little bit

of the secret ingredient mushroom powder.

And now the mushroom powder's gonna give us

a little bit of color.

It's also gonna give us a ton of flavor.

We're gonna drop this in top side down.

[meat sizzling]

Just leave it alone.

Let it brown.

We're gonna give it like a minute or two to get some color.

And then we'll flip it on all sides.

So, you can see that it's seared off really nice.

It's not finished cooking.

We need to throw it in the oven for a little while,

to get a nice interior temperature

of about medium, medium red.

I am making bernaise sauce.

What is bernaise sauce?

[Lorenzo laughing]

It's just a close cousin to a Hollands.

It's just flavor, a little different.

And it has some herbs folding at the end.

First thing you want to do for your bernaise

is get a reduction on,

we're gonna have some shallots, some vermouth.

[Lorenzo vocalizing]

It's good.

And some tarragon vinegar.

We reduce that down,

so that we can add that to some egg yolks.

Well, look you there,

absolutely reduced to almost nothing.

A couple tablespoons of heavy cream.

And I'm gonna strain it.

I have to let this cool all the way through

before I complete

the bernaise sauce.

Lorenzo gave me some russet potatoes.

And instead of just making

like a plain old roaster mashed potato,

I'm gonna make pommes darphin.

So, basically what you do with a pommes darphin

is you get potatoes, you peel them.

You're gonna slice them into long matchsticks

on the mandolin,

we put them into a bowl with some butter and some salt

and toss it together.

And then what we're gonna do

is cook it in a small frying pan,

and really kind of shove as many potatoes

into the pan as possible.

All those ends get tucked in.

You can always drain excess butter off,

but I do want to get some nice buttery flavor in there.

So, I like to put a couple of dots on top.

Now is the challenge to flip this baby, right?

So, this is what I do.

I like to take a plate,

put it on top

[plate flipping]

and flip it out.

We have a nice brown on top.

And then what we do is we try and really be careful

to get it back into the pan.

We want to continue to press down

to make it a nice flat potato cake

Our pommes darphin is done.

I'm gonna put it onto this rack

and just let it sit until we're ready to use it.

This is my reduced sauce that was cooled.

Three egg yolks,

and I'm just gonna mix this together.

I'm using mushrooms a lot in this recipe.

I happen to have a bunch of these leftover mushroom stems

and I'm gonna use them to make a jus,

or a very like light kind of brothy sauce for our roulade.

I have a pot on kind of medium high heat.

I'm gonna add some oil to that pot, right?

It's just a neutral oil.

And then I'm gonna add my onions,

put a little salt, help draw out some moisture.

Now I'm gonna place you on my double boiler

and I'm gonna stream in my butter.

I am basically emulsifying the butter into the egg yolks

while cooking the egg mixture slowly.

That looks good.

I need to season though.

I need some pepper and salt.

I can add my garlic and my parsley stems.

And then we can add all of the mushroom stems in.

Because it's gonna be a finished sauce,

I'm gonna add a little salt to it.

I'm gonna add a little black pepper to it.

And just a touch of that mushroom powder,

to touch more oil.

And then we can add our water.

And what I'm gonna do is let this come to a boil

and then slowly simmer till it reduces at least by a half.

When we reduce the volume of liquid,

we're increasing the flavor of the actual liquid.

This is called a bain-Marie,

and I am going to strain my bearnaise sauce in this.

So, this container is actually gonna keep

the sauce nice and warm.

And what I'm gonna do is put it in a warm bath.

I'm gonna finish seizing it with a touch of lemon juice.

I reduced my jus down a little.

It looks really good.

I'm gonna hit it with a little salt and pepper right now.

The jus is done,

it's gonna be an amazing sauce from my roulade.

So, I've done a lot of mushroom so far in this dish,

but I do have one last mushroom thing to do.

And that is a mushroom and garlic compound butter.

It's simple, but it's going to amp up

that mushroom flavor that we're looking for.

First step, we put our butter in the bowl.

We're gonna take some chopped garlic,

we're gonna add some black pepper, a nice pinch of salt.

Pop open our mushroom powder.

Give a nice amount of that mushroom powder in there

and give it a stir.

I'm gonna get a nice piece of parchment paper.

I'm gonna take this,

and I'm gonna kind of spread it out into a log.

We take the parchment, fold it over the top.

I'll take this tray, put my finger on the bottom piece

of the parchment and give it a squeeze.

I'll do it one more time.

Hold the bottom piece of the parchment, and push.

Roll it up,

twist your sides.

I like to go the opposite direction,

one way this way, one way that way.

And we have our log of mushroom butter.

I'm gonna just throw this in the fridge

and let it get solid.

We are at the cream spinach portion

of the ingredients book.

I am just gonna take this entire field

of spinach

and put it in the water.

We're blanching our spinach

so that we can get most of the moisture out.

After we blanch it, we're gonna ice it down till it's cold,

and then squeeze as much of that water out as possible.

Once our spinach is squeezed out,

it's time to make our cream spinach sauce.

Butter first.

I can actually add the Shallots if they're ready,

my garlic.

I will do my cream cheese.

This is creme fraiche.

Now I am going to add my heavy cream.

Let's do a little salt, [vocalizing]

pepper.

Add our chopped spinach back in.

And then right before we finish,

we'll add that Parmesan cheese.

Cream spinach.

Voila!

So, Lorenzo gave me some onions.

I've decided that I'm gonna make fried onions.

I'm just gonna start by putting some of the onions in.

The onions have been in the oil for about five

to seven minutes.

They're done.

Get them out.

And you wanna season 'em really well right now

while they're sitting on the tray.

I am ready to take my Chateaubriand out of the oven.

Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy.

A lot of times when you cook a piece of meat,

the juice is squeezed towards the center

and if you slice it right away, all the juice leaks out.

If you let it rest,

those juices redistribute and get you a nicer piece of meat.

I am just gonna let it rest,

but I'm gonna do so with a little foil tent on it.

Once my roulette is done resting, it's time to plate.

[bright music]

I have all my components out in front of me.

The first thing I want to do is take my Pommes darphin.

I'm gonna do two nice slices.

Why am I using a knife?

I should just grab scissors.

You can see that my roast

has a really great shape to it because we tied it up.

Ah, no, just kidding.

I am going to slice this up.

[Frank] I think it's beautiful.

The meat is lightly pink.

It looks so inviting.

You can see that mushroom kind of like spiral

in the middle, and that's exactly what I wanted.

Let's give this a few slices.

Try not to crush it so that the mushrooms pop out.

Two nice slices.

My creamed spinach.

I think it'll make a little have circle here.

We don't want to cover up all the beautiful work

we've done on the steak.

So, the sauce just kind of go at the bottom of the meat.

I just wanna show that there's tarragon in there.

I've got my pommes boulangère,

boulangère, boulangère.

I like to put my potatoes on the plate

and rest the steak up on the potatoes

because we want to really show

that beautiful cook on the meat.

And this is my take on Chef Frank's steak dinner recipe.

I'm just gonna do a nice thin slice of the butter.

Cut this in half and put just a little dollop there,

a little dollop there so it melts.

Pull over my mushroom jus, right in the center here.

Some of our onions on top.

And then we're just gonna take a couple

of little parsley leaves

and strategically place them around.

That is my flank steak roulade with duxelle,

mushroom butter and pommes darphin.

I want to bite into it already.

Let's get going.

Chef, get in here.

[bright music]

Chef Frank. Hi buddy.

How're you doing? What's up my boy?

Good seeing you.

Oh, my gosh. Nice to see you.

Ooh, look at that. Wow, wonderful.

Beautiful.

Oh, my God.

I went a little crazy with this one.

This looks spectacular.

Look at that cook. Really?

Lorenzo, can we try yours?

Absolutely.

We're going first.

Let's go. Yes.

This is a couple of biter I think.

I don't think we can get away with just doing one.

Okay, you twisted in my arm.

Oh, dude, the cook on the filet

is absolutely stunning and perfect.

You can see it's pink all the way around.

Mm-hmm. And the sauce like,

look at the thickness and the coating ability of the sauce.

Potatoes are amazing.

We want classic French.

You went fancy.

Yeah, fancy French.

We gotta stop eating 'cause now we have to try my plate.

What?

Yeah, we gotta try my plate.

No man.

Honestly-- I keep eating,

I'll try yours though.

Can someone bag dish?

I know it's a steak dish.

Yeah. But it's mostly mushrooms.

Do you wanna give it a taste?

Yes.

Okay.

Oh, wow.

That's so good.

The combo is just over the top, delicious.

One thing adds on and saturates the other.

And boom, boom. And they all mesh.

Totally.

And make something delicious.

Chef Frank, Proto, gosh, dang it.

Yet hit it outta the park.

Mm-hmm.

I love it.

Lorenzo, it's been amazing.

I'm so happy that I got to not only just like meet you--

Yeah. Become friends.

I don't have any words.

I'm outta words.

I'm gonna cry.

No cry.

Wait.

I'm okay.

[all laughing]

That was so nice.

Wait, come on.

Let's bring it in.

Gimme hugs,

and then we'll have some champagne.

You're a good man.

[Frank laughing]

Woo.

Let's go.

[tossing up glass]

Yeah.

I was chucking.

I was sure, I don't know why I thought it was a beer

and I started chucking it.

They are good old days.

For the good old days.

Thanks guys.

[Frank] All days.

[audience clapping] Thanks.

Oh.

That was fun.

That was really fun and delicious, eat up you guys.