New Meal Monday: Filet Mignon w/ Pesto Butter

Regardless the fact that there was frost on my lawn this morning, May is Spring.  It's a time to start working on outdoor chores, like mowing the lawn or weeding the garden.  It's also time to official get the grill out (if you ever really put it away) and the start of BBQ season (at Kiss the Cook we celebrate May as "BBQ Month"). In honor of that, our next few blog posts will follow the theme of being grill related. So that means, this past weekend when my wife left town to spend the weekend with some of her friends from college, I had an opportunity to grill whatever I wanted. I decided I wanted to grill some steak.  I typically like to keep my steak fairly simple, allow the flavor to come through and have something that helps compliment the flavor.  So I wanted to do a filet mignon, and while a lot of times steak is served with an herb butter, but for some reason I got it stuck in my head that I really wanted to do a pesto butter.  So I did, and I was pretty happy about it! 

First, let's talk about the Pesto Butter: I decided to make enough of the butter to save quite a bit (there are so many great ways to use pesto butter!).  I stored the butter in an ice cube tray, The recipe below yielded about 12 1"x1" cubes and I think 1 cube is enough for 2 cuts of fillet (but use it to your taste.)

Pesto Butter Ingredients:

  • 2 Cups Basil
  • 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
  • 1 head of garlic (normal sized garlic...not super colossal or jumbo) separated and peeled.
  • 8oz Butter
  • 3/4 Cup Pine Nuts
  • 1/2 Cup Grated Parmesan

Making the Pesto Butter:

  1. Pre-measure ingredients and separate and peel the garlic.
  2. Using food processor, place basil in and start.
  3. Slowly pour olive oil in while keeping processor running, than 1/2 of the garlic and butter
  4. Once blend is smooth add remainder of butter and garlic.
  5. Once blend is smooth again, add cheese and pine nuts and continue to blend until texture is smooth.
    *once pesto butter is ready, place any you plan to use immediately in the fridge and cool for minimum of 30 min, any you don't plan to use in the freezer as noted above.  I used about 1 Tbsp per fillet, but you could do a little more, or less, depending upon preference.

Preparing the Fillet Mignon:

When I made this, I just cooked two pieces of steak, but the below works for however much (or little) you're making.  Also--if you use a gas grill, you can turn one side up to about medium high, and the other side down to medium low. If you're a charcoal enthusiast like myself, after getting my charcoal hot I pushed a lot of it to one side to create a "hot" side of the grill and a "warm" side of the grill. (Although, you could probably just as easily find "hot spots" and "cool spots" on your grill if you're feeling adventurous!) 

  1. Rub each side of each Fillet with 1/2 tsp of olive oil and salt and pepper each side somewhat generously.
  2. Place steaks on hot side of grill to brown on each side--cooking 2-3 minutes per side.
  3. Move steaks to cooler side of grill and cook to your preference, evenly on each side. (I cooked for about 7 minutes total for medium-rare). Use an instant read thermometer to get the most accurate results.

Top the steaks with the pesto butter, serve and enjoy!