Porcini Crusted New York Strip
Porcini Crusted New York Strip presses ground dried porcini and herbs onto strip steaks for a deeply savory crust, then sears and butter-bastes them.
Dried porcini mushrooms look like something you might find in an envelope labeled “forest evidence,” but grind them into a powder and they become one of the easiest ways to make a steak taste dramatically more savory. Their concentrated mushroom flavor is loaded with umami, and on a New York strip that means the crust tastes beefier without covering up the actual beef.
The porcini powder gets mixed with kosher salt, black pepper, garlic powder, and fresh thyme, then pressed onto every side of 12- to 14-ounce strip steaks. A heavy skillet over medium-high heat gives that coating three to four minutes per side to brown and adhere. Butter goes in near the end for a short baste, helping the mushroom-herb crust darken while the steaks come into the 125–135°F range. Because porcini powder can go from toasted to bitter if you incinerate it, this is one of those times when “hot” and “surface of Mercury” should remain separate settings. Rest the steaks for eight minutes before serving. There is no sauce here because the crust is already doing that job: earthy mushroom, thyme, garlic, pepper, browned butter, and the concentrated beef flavor of strip steak. It tastes elaborate, but most of the cleverness happened in a grinder before the skillet ever got hot.
