If you want to serve a fancy steak dish along the lines of a beef wellington, but you don’t necessarily have time to pull that off or you’re a novice at cooking, what would you recommend doing?

If anything, you could have all those flavors of a beef Wellington — the duxelles, which is the minced mushrooms, shallots, garlic, those fresh herbs in there — you could do that. Have the Chateaubriand, roast that off, sear it off, let it roast, and then you could put the duxelles on the side. If you want to take it a step further, maybe do little circles where you’re doing individual circles of puff pastry, then compile and build their own beef Wellington, as opposed to slathering it with the duxelles, wrapping with the puff pastry and say, “It’s deconstructed beef Wellington.”

That makes it 10 times easier. I’ve never attempted beef Wellington.

You got it. It’s not as hard; it’s just the preparation. It’s not a lot of steps, but you’ve got to make sure that you have the correct steps along the way.

Do you have any holiday-specific seasoning recommendations for steak, incorporating seasonal kinds of spices?

For a great steak, especially Omaha Steaks, all you need is salt and pepper. The great thing about holidays, there’s some really great flavors and aromatics and spices that lean heavily towards that. I like to lean towards thyme, rosemary, sage, those things really pull back and give me that nostalgia of Thanksgiving. Incorporating those into simple rubs, maybe some crushed garlic, some crushed onion, shallots, stuff of that nature to where you’re really amplifying and bumping up those flavors that make you think of holidays.

Thyme and rosemary are two big ones for it. This is in the same vein, but what about holiday-specific seasoning recommendations for that compound butter that you’re going to put on that?

One of my go-tos is you always want to use unsalted butter. That way, you can control the salt content, because you could always add salt, but you can’t take it out. Roasted garlic — I like doing the whole bulb, put it in the oven until it’s nice and roasted and tender. Then, I take that out, and I crush that and mash that. I then mince up some rosemary, I mince up some thyme, sage, maybe oregano, and in there I do salt, pepper, a little bit of crushed red pepper or Calabrian chili, and whip that up.

It’s savory, a little bit of spice, a little bit of sweet, a little bit of heat and super flavorful and pairs well with pork, steak, literally anything. It’s a cross-platform kind of butter where you can use it for anything at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

In terms of ratios for that compound butter, how much do you normally put in for the spices or seasonings?

I’d say it’s about a half a pound … I like garlic. To hell with the breath after. I love garlic. Garlic is great. It’s an amazing, great flavor. I do about four to five cloves of that garlic in there. As far as seasoning, I’ll start out with a teaspoon and then see where it goes from there.

As far as the herbs, about a tablespoon of each. Depending on heat, if you like a little more heat, I’d probably say the tablespoon area of the Calabrian chili. If it’s crushed red pepper, a little spicier, a little more concentrated, maybe a teaspoon of that. If you’re doing seafood, maybe a little bit of lemon zest in there to brighten that up as well.

Citrus is a great way to cook.

It is great. Orange, lemon, all of it.