Côte de bœuf au four

The cut of beef you see below is called une côte de bœuf in French. It's a rib steak — what would be called a rib-eye steak or entrecôte if it didn't still have the rib bone attached. We cooked a rib steak in the oven for lunch a couple of days ago.

The label on the package specifies that the beef is « Type : Laitier », « Catégorie : Jeune Bovin », and « Origine : France ». It also identifies the slaughterhouse where the animal was butchered, and of course the day on which it was packaged, the date by which it should be consumed, and its weight (just over one kilogram, in this case).

We cooked it in the oven. I set the temperature at about 230ºC (about 450ºF) with bottom heat only and the convection fan going. I set a heavy steel frying pan on the bottom rack of the oven and let it heat up until it was burning hot.

When the pan was ready and the oven was up to temperature, I seasoned the steak with salt and pepper. Then I drizzled some vegetable oil into the hot pan in the oven and put the rib steak in to sear the meat on one side, about 5 minutes, in the hot oven.

At that point, I turned the steak over to sear on the other side for five minutes before turning the oven down to 200ºC (395ºF). I let the steak cook for 20 minutes or so at that temperature. We wanted the meat to be medium rare.

Medium rare is what we got. It was tender and juicy — really delicious. We ate it with some sauteed mushrooms, some lima beans (a.k.a. butter beans or baby lima beans) that I brought back from the U.S., and some bread from the village baker — washing it all down with some red Loire Valley wine, of course.

I don't know how beef could be much better than this steak was. And it cost us 9.95 € per kilogram, or just less than $5.00 U.S. per pound at today's exchange rate.