If the meat is good and flavorful, why tart it up with so many ingredients? It sounds like a rumble on a plate!

I personally prefer hanger or skirt steak, flash-seared to crustiness and rare inside. Maybe a red-wine reduction of the pan juices.

ed. to add: rubbed with salt a couple of hours before cooking (per Judy Rogers), then briefly marinated with some or all of the following: salt, pepper, balsalmic vinegar, Worcestershire, soy, red wine, olive oil, minced shallots.

(Heh. I did just grumble about tarting up good ingredients. But feedlot beef needs all the help it can get, IMHO)

I like filet mignon for the texture. When done right, it can be amazingly tender and juicy.

I used to like the Chinese-style treatment, where one
uses it like a flank steak:
--mm
Beef with mushrooms and onions
cat: mine, main, mean
servings: 4

1 lb mushrooms
1/2 lb onions
oil
salt
1 lb hangar steak
1 clove garlic, mashed
2 Tb soy sauce
1 Tb sake or dry sherry

Clean and slice mushrooms. Dry saute over high heat until
browned. Remove and set aside.

Slice onions thin. Saute in a small amount of oil over high
heat until soft; lower heat to minimum, salt, and allow to
caramelize. Add to mushrooms.

Slice hangar steak on the bias, teasing meat off the big
gristly sheet in the middle. I of course fry this gristle
separately for "cook's treat" - it is perhaps 15-20% of the
total weight of the thing. You see this cut (diaphragm?) on
menus and labels as "hangar" and "hanger." I don't know which
is right. This is a very tasty but troublesome cut and is quite
expensive in NYC - rivaling sirloin in price at times (this was
$6.49/lb - I don't know where I'd seen flank steak recently for
$3.99, but flank is almost equivalent (hangar is somewhat more
savory but has the gristle) and makes a most satisfactory
substitute. Marinate in garlic, soy, and wine for at least 30
min and then saute in a little oil over highest heat.

Combine with onion-mushroom mixture and serve with rice.

Source: moi, August 2001

---
but lately, becoming an adherent of the less is more credo,
I treat the cut even more simply. Marinade is superfluous.

I take the meat with the gristle cut out, rub a cut clove of
garlic over it, salt it, pat it dry as possible. Heaviest
frying pan in the house, heated as hot as possible. Strew a
little salt in the bottom of the pan and lay the meat on top.
Cook a couple minutes, flip, and cook a couple minutes more
for the way I like it (very rare). Slice into thin sheets,
the knife at a very shallow angle to the cutting board. I've
found that the relation of the cut to the grain of the meat
is not all that important but do tend to cut against the grain
by force of habit.

I prefer a good, simple baguette to Pop Tarts, even though many claim that Pop Tarts have "more flavor."

Likewise, I prefer filet mignon to ribeye....

i eat filet and occasionally prime rib.

if its wagyu/kobe/etc, it can be extremely marbled.

i also never do any addition besides au jus.

Filet Mignon is indeed pork for me. If I want a nice beef filet, I will ask for a Chateaubriand or for a Tournedos Rossini, but then, I am French :D

I can't believe all the people who love filet!

It really is flavorless and requires a good amount of sauce (no not A1 or barbecque, something like a red wine or mushroom sauce).

I love rib-eye in the US.

But my favorite is what they call rump steak in Australia, and I can't seem to find an equivalent anywhere else. Bring me a rare rumpsteak from Kelly's or Hurricanes' and preferably some sauce au poivre, and I will be one happy camper.

Because they don't know what real steak tastes like?

again, wagyu/etc + filet = win. although i might prefer raw. havent had that yet.

i prefer steak medium rare i think, but eat raw beef/fish/eggs as well.

i would never eat dry aged.

I generally go with filet because I eat my steak very, very rare (30 seconds on each side, max) -- other custs tend to be on the chewy side that rare. But I agree, anything more than black and blue requires a different cut of meat.

As for the filet v. filet mignon debate, I was taught that filet mignon includes that small tail piece on the end, while the filet omits that.

Serious question: How hot is your grill/oven/pan? I understand blue, but 30 seconds? I think my curiosity is what benefit does that 30 seconds give as opposed to eating it just, uh, raw?

ETA: I only have electric stove/broiler and lame propane grill, so things tend to get barely gray on the outisde in 1 minute or so and not much improved for 2-5 minutes per side.

I don't normally do it this way, but an electric stove on high with a cast iron skillet well pre-heated can achieve this easily in 30 seconds.

Having lived in Houston, Austin and Calgary, I really loved my ribeye. But living in London, I really learned to love 21 day aged rump steak that one can buy at Mark & Spencer...medium rare with some nice wines.

Filet Mignon, never was a big fan.

If I want a real steak I want a NY Strip with all it's tangy (dry aged preferred) beefy goodness. Barely a sprinkling of salt needed.

If I want a "Fancier" steak with a great sauce, a filet is best for that. I love the old standards - Bearnaise, red wine reduction, and I make a great sauce at home with cream, mushrooms, Gorgonzola and a hint of chipolte peppers (epicurious.com recipe "Filet with Gorgonzola Sauce"). Filet is a perfect blank canvas for a great sauce.

I'm afraid you are wrong. 'filet' ("fil-lay") is a pretentious way of pronouncing fillet, the most expensive cut of beef.

International board, you have to be prepared to understand that different countries have different terms for food. It's probably best not to attempt to lecture if you don't get the reference - in the UK, it's called fillet steak ;)

Interestingly, I've found fillet to be pretty bland in the US and nearly always a bit disappointing, so tend to order steaks with a bit more flavour. In the UK, it doesn't seem so bad - different quality of restaurants? Different rearing methods? Perhaps it needs slower growth, less reliance on hormone to actually work? I don't know, but I'll keep ordering fillet over here and avoiding it over there!

I'll choose fillet because I'm not a huge fan of meat fat, so if there is a nice sauce, I have to do less scraping of the sauce to ensure that I amn't going to get a mouthful of nasty fat.