Perfect Steak Frites

Steak frites is classic French bistro fare at its finest, and it pulls at my American steak-and-potatoes-lovin’ heartstrings. This combination of a well-crusted flap of beef with a thatch of frites, served in combination with a flood of sauce, makes for my favorite kind of eating, elegant and casual at once. 

Its origins trace back to both France and Belgium, and it is a mainstay in the cuisine of both countries, as well as bistros worldwide. And although it may seem like a simple dish (after all, it requires only two main ingredients, plus a sauce of your choice), there’s good reason it’s usually reserved for restaurants: the steak must be meaty and juicy, the potatoes fluffy and crisp, the sauce rich and creamy enough for dipping, and it must all arrive at the table piping hot. It’s a dish that requires some kitchen savvy to nail at home. 

The key to recreating bistro-worthy steak frites at home is using the best ingredients, relying on foolproof cooking methods, and coordinating the timing of cooking in the kitchen to guarantee hot, perfectly cooked food. Here’s my guide and tips for cooking every component to ensure great results.

The Steak

The first step when making steak frites at home is selecting the right cut of beef. But really there’s no “right” cut of beef for steak frites, as the cut of meat can vary from restaurant to restaurant. Many French bistros will prioritize flavor over tenderness, offering cuts like onglet (hanger steak), tri-tip, rump steak, or even flank steak, which are chewier and leaner cuts that burst with beefiness.

There’s also the cost factor. Neighborhood French bistros, which by nature serve more affordable, everyday food, wouldn’t generally ask their diners to shell out the money for entrecôte, or premium cuts of beef like tender, fatty ribeye or a prime strip steak. But when I cook steak frites at home, I'm not paying the markup one would at a restaurant. That means I see this as an opportunity to treat myself to a perfectly cooked rib eye or strip steak, so I’ve written this recipe for those specific cuts. Keep in mind though that you can use any cut of beef you prefer here, just be aware that the thinner the steak, the shorter the cooking time, and you’ll need to follow the visual and temperature cues more closely than the listed timing in the recipe.

For cooking the steaks, I use Serious Eats' time-tested perfect pan-seared steaks technique. It’s simple and straightforward, just like any good bistro recipe should be. The steaks are liberally salted and brought to room temperature before they’re seared over ripping high heat in a cast iron, carbon steel, or stainless-steel pan, flipping every two minutes to ensure even cooking and a deeply browned crust. But as the saying goes, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”, and again I’ll echo that you can adapt this recipe to your own taste, and use a different cooking method if you prefer, such as our reverse-seared, butter-basted, or sous vide steak recipes. 

Once the steaks are cooked, set them aside on a plate to rest while preparing the accompanying sauce and french fries. The fries and the sauce cook in about 25 minutes, which means your steaks will be resting, and ultimately losing heat during that time. You might be tempted to tent them with aluminum foil to keep them warm, but don’t. Tenting the steaks will only trap steam and soften that beautiful crust on the steaks that you worked hard to create. Instead, let the steak sit untouched. After the fries and sauce are ready, if the steaks are cool to the touch, just transfer them to a rimmed baking sheet and flash them under the broiler for just a minute or two until they’re warmed through.

The Sauce

Steak frites isn’t defined by any specific sauce. The truth is, you could serve the steak and fries with a side of ketchup, and it will still be steak frites. But after the steaks are seared, the skillet is now filled with delicious beef fat and fond, practically screaming for a pan sauce. It would be a shame to let all those tasty browned bits stuck to the bottom of the skillet go to waste, so I encourage you to prepare a pan sauce with this recipe. My favorite to accompany steak frites is a green peppercorn sauce, which I’ve included in this recipe. It delivers a peppery bite, intensely meaty aroma, and it has the ideal food-coating creaminess, perfect for dipping your slices of steak, fries, and, eventually, fingers into. 

The sauce is easy to prepare, and because it’s a cream-based sauce (and cream is a fairly stable emulsion) it can simmer away without more than the occasional stir until perfectly thickened, with little risk of the sauce breaking. I’ve written at length about the green peppercorn sauce’s preparation, so I won’t get into too much overlapping detail here. But I do want to point out that after the steaks are seared, there will be a lot of rendered beef fat left in the skillet. You want the flavorful beef fond and a little of the fat for the base of the sauce for flavor, but too much will turn the sauce greasy. So before starting the sauce, pour off all but 1 tablespoon of that fat. 

If green peppercorn sauce doesn’t appeal to you, just swap in your preferred sauce. A classic black peppercorn sauce, béarnaise sauce, or even beurre maître d'hôtel, are all options.

The Fries (and How to Time This Recipe for Serving Success)

As I mentioned initially, the main challenge with cooking steak frites at home isn’t cooking the individual components, rather the challenge is timing their preparation so that everything is ready at the same time. For that to happen, you will need to multitask and cook both the sauce and the fries at the same time. 

Traditional fries are often prepared via a twice-fried method, in which potato sticks are dropped in preheated oil, removed to cool, then fried a second time at even higher heat until crisp. Methods like this produce excellent results, but they are not simple: They require near-constant temperature monitoring, repeated actions like scooping fries in and out of the hot oil multiple times (not to mention multiple batches in many cases), and unavoidable grease splatter when the wet potatoes hit the hot fat.

Kenji’s French fry recipe uses this general cooking method, as does Sho Spaeth’s shoestring fries. There’s no question of those being great recipes; they produce perfect fries every time, and if you prefer, you can of course use your preferred fry here (or even tear into a bag of frozen fries for ultimate ease). But when preparing fully from-scratch steak frites, I propose using a cold-start frying technique for the potatoes. This technique uses half the oil, skips the double frying, and still achieves crunchy fries with deep potato flavor. (It also minimizes mess and any scary splattering.)

I can’t take credit for creating the method, the technique has been around for a while (at least 30 years), has been written about in many publications, and is often attributed to Joël Robuchon. 

In this method, the potatoes and oil begin cooking together at room temperature, totally defying all the rules of deep-frying. The potatoes are dropped all at once into a large pot—use a Dutch oven or heavy duty cast iron pot for better heat retention—with only 6 cups of oil (that’s about half the amount for standard deep frying recipes) and brought up to a bubble over high heat. As the oil temperature slowly rises, the potatoes will, in effect, poach in fat and their excess water will gently evaporate (hence the lack of splattering). Yes, the oil will bubble, but not aggressively. Eventually, beautiful golden fries will emerge, and no, they will not be any more greasy than any other French fry method.

Every now and again, use a thin-bladed spatula or cooking chopsticks to make sure they are not sticking (their starch has a tendency to cause this). Work the cooking utensil gently between the fries. Be very careful: at a certain point about halfway through cooking they will be very, very fragile—cooked but not yet crisp, and very prone to breaking. 

To help mitigate fry-breakage, I add one additional preparatory step that can be done well in advance: I briefly blanch the raw, cut potatoes in water and vinegar, as Kenji does in his French fry recipe. This brief boil in acidulated water sets the potatoes pectin and rinses off excess starch, minimizing the risk of the fries sticking as they cook. If blanching the fries seems too fussy, you can skip this step, just know that the potatoes will be more prone to sticking together and breaking when frying.

Let the fries gently bubble away in the pot for about 25 minutes. As they near their end stage of cooking, they’ll no longer look like one giant potato raft, but singular golden fries will emerge. 

Are these fries better than a traditionally prepared French fry? No. Will some of the fries break apart in the process? Probably. But they’re really good, very crispy freshly fried potatoes that require just one pot, one cooking session, no double frying, no electric deep-fat fryer, and no thermometer.

The best part: The cold-start fries cook in the same amount of time as the green peppercorn sauce does, about 25 minutes. You can cook the sauce and the fries side by side with a low risk of messing them up, and they’ll both be ready at the same time, guaranteeing a hot, bistro-worthy meal.