Steakhouse Dinner

We love to make our own steakhouse dinners at home, so when we rented a house in Tahoe last weekend with a few friends, we thought it would be the perfect Saturday dinner! It was Sarah’s birthday weekend. What better way to celebrate than with good friends and a rib roast?

We always start planning our steakhouse dinners by finding the best meat. We typically go for New York Strips and Ribeyes. When we make steak for two, we usually buy an individual steak and split one. For a dinner party like this though, it’s easier to buy a roast. You can put it in the oven, set a timer, and forget about it rather than trying to grill 6 steaks to your guests’ preference. A good rule of thumb when selecting a rib roast or Cote de Boeuf is to get one rib per 2 people. We were serving six, so our butcher cut a three-rib roast.

If you’re looking to make your dinner even more luxurious, start with shrimp cocktail and martinis. Instead of buying pre-boiled cold shrimp at the grocery store, toss shrimp with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast the shrimp in the oven on a sheet pan. You can make your own sauce, but we love to make it easy and serve our shrimp cocktail with a really good pre-made sauce like this, this, or this,

For this dinner, we decided to start with wedge salads. It’s funny how much everyone seems to love such a simple salad. We started the evening with pink bubbles and served bold red wine with dinner. Along with the steak, we served some of our favorite easy sides –  smoked gouda mashed potatoes and creamed spinach.

It’s important to allow your meat to rest after you take it from the oven. We always have issues when carving meat with the juices going everywhere, so when we saw this concave cutting board from JK Adams (c/o) we knew we had to have it! Sure enough, it kept the mess contained and didn’t spill over the sides of the board and made for the perfect way to carve the roast table-side. (It’s currently on sale here.)

We didn’t have a proper set of steak knives in our house, so when we tried these Shun Premiere steak knives (c/o) we were blown away. Everyone at the table was amazed at the difference a super sharp steak knife makes! Not only are they beautiful, but they cut through meat like butter!

Since we were celebrating Sarah’s birthday, we finished this dinner with birthday cake. Madeline and Mclaren surprised Sarah with (her favorite) Italian Rum cake. If you’re not looking for a full steakhouse-style dinner, a rib roast would be the perfect thing to serve this Christmas. You could also pair it with this blue cheese sauce.