Cast Iron Elk Steak with Cowboy Butter -- Cooked at 4 AM Because Sleep Won't Come

It’s four in the morning and I’m standing in the kitchen of a one-bedroom apartment in Colorado Springs in my socks and a t-shirt, and I’ve got a cast iron skillet on the burner and an elk backstrap thawing on the counter and I figure I should explain myself.

My name is Ryan Gallagher. I’m twenty-one years old. I grew up on a cattle ranch outside Roundup, Montana — 800 acres, 150 head of Angus, more open sky than most people see in a lifetime. My dad, Patrick, runs the place. My mom, Colleen, keeps everyone alive. I joined the Army three years ago because my dad told me to go see the world before I committed to a piece of it. I went. I saw it. I’m not sure I’d recommend it.

I got back from Afghanistan in March. Not the way I planned to get back. I was on patrol outside a village called Sangin when an IED went off. The details aren’t something I’m going to put on the internet, but the short version is: I got hurt, I got medevacked, I spent two months in hospitals, and I’m at Fort Carson now waiting on a medical discharge and trying to figure out what comes next. My leg works. My arm works. The rest is a work in progress.

I don’t sleep well. That’s not a complaint — it’s just a fact, the same as saying it gets cold in Montana or cattle are stupid. Some nights I sleep four hours. Some nights two. Tonight was two hours and a dream I won’t describe, and then I was awake and the apartment was dark and quiet in the way that isn’t actually quiet, the way that’s full of sounds you don’t want to hear. So I got up. And I did what I always do when the night gets too long: I cooked something.

The elk came from last fall, before I deployed. I got a nice bull up in the Pryor Mountains and processed the whole thing in the shop behind the barn — me and my dad, two days, the radio going, not talking much because Gallagher men don’t need to talk when they have work to do. I packed the backstraps in vacuum seal and they’ve been in a cooler in my truck and then in this freezer ever since. I have maybe ten pounds of elk meat left. I’m treating it like currency.

Elk is different from beef. If you’ve never had it, I’ll tell you: it’s leaner and darker and it tastes like the land it came from — a little wild, a little mineral, clean in a way that grocery store beef just isn’t. My mom doesn’t love it as much as beef, but she’ll eat it. My dad prefers it for steaks. I’ve been eating it my whole life and I’d take an elk backstrap over a grocery store ribeye any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

The cowboy butter is something I picked up from a guy in the unit who was from Texas and had opinions about cooking. He called it cowboy butter and I don’t know if that’s the real name or if he made it up, but it doesn’t matter. It’s compound butter — softened butter with garlic and herbs and a little heat — and it goes on a hot steak right out of the pan and melts into something that makes you understand, briefly, that the world contains goodness. That’s not nothing. At 4 AM in Colorado Springs, with the nightmares still sitting at the edge of the room, that’s actually quite a lot.

I learned to cook from my mom, mostly by watching. Colleen Gallagher does not give cooking lessons — she cooks, and if you’re standing in the kitchen, you learn. That’s how she taught me everything: by doing it and letting me watch until I understood it well enough to do it myself. Biscuits at five in the morning. Beef stew in the Dutch oven on cold days. Pie every Sunday because that was the rule and Gallaghers follow rules they make for themselves. The food was plain and it was good and it was made for people who worked hard and needed to eat enough to keep going.

I don’t have much equipment in this apartment. I have the cast iron I brought from home — a twelve-inch Lodge that was my grandfather’s, seasoned so black it looks like it’s been through a fire, which it has, many times. I have a cutting board. I have a chef’s knife that needs sharpening. I have a freezer with elk meat and a pantry with the basics. That’s enough. You don’t need a kitchen full of equipment to eat well. You need heat and fat and something worth cooking and the patience to let it do what it does.

The cast iron goes on the burner and I turn it up to high and I let it sit there for five minutes, until it’s smoking and the kitchen smells like hot iron. That’s the thing people get wrong about cast iron — they don’t let it get hot enough. You want the pan so hot it seems like a bad idea. That’s when you add the oil, and then the steak, and then you leave it alone. Don’t touch it. Don’t move it. Trust the heat. It knows what it’s doing.

I season the elk with just salt and pepper and a little garlic powder. That’s it. The mistake people make with wild game is they try to cover the flavor because they’re nervous about it being too “gamey.” Don’t be nervous. The gamey flavor is the point. It means something lived and ran and ate clean food in clean mountains and was taken cleanly. Season it simply and cook it right and it’ll tell you what it is.

Three minutes a side. Maybe four. I like my steaks medium-rare, which on a lean elk backstrap means you pull it when it feels like the fleshy part of your palm — firm with a little give. It rests on a cutting board for five minutes while I make the cowboy butter, which at this point is already made and just needs to come out of the fridge. Then I slice it against the grain, lay the cowboy butter on top, and stand at the counter and eat it out of the pan because there’s no one here and the table is covered in paperwork from the Army and I don’t need formality at four in the morning.

It’s good. It’s always good. The butter melts into the meat and the herbs hit the heat and for a few minutes there’s nothing in the room except the food and the sound of eating and the sky outside the window starting, barely, to lighten at the edge. I think about the ranch. I think about the Musselshell River and the way the hay fields smell in August and the particular quiet of the Montana high country just before dawn, when you can hear the cattle moving in the dark and the whole world smells like grass and cold water and possibility.

I’m going home eventually. Not yet — there’s still paperwork and appointments and a discharge process that moves on government time, which is to say slowly and without any regard for what you actually need. But eventually. And when I do, I’ll cook this in the shop behind the barn over a real fire, with elk I took myself, and my dad will probably come out and stand there and not say anything and eat a piece off the cutting board, and that will be enough. That will be more than enough.

Until then I’ve got a twelve-inch cast iron and a freezer full of elk and a burner that gets hot enough if you’re patient. The nights are long. The food helps. Cook something. It’s a small thing and it’s enough.

This is the recipe I keep coming back to on those long nights — simple enough to make in a small kitchen with minimal gear, but real enough to cut through whatever the day left behind. Elk backstrap over cast iron isn’t a complicated thing, but it’s my thing, and when the butter hits the pan and the smell fills up the room, Montana doesn’t feel quite so far away. Here’s how I make it.

Cast Iron Elk Steak with Cowboy Butter

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 1

Ingredients

• 1 elk backstrap steak (8–10 oz), about 1 inch thick, fully thawed
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp coarse black pepper
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp beef tallow or neutral high-heat oil

• 4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
• 2 cloves garlic, minced fine
• 1 tbsp fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper

Instructions

1. Make the cowboy butter. Combine softened butter, minced garlic, parsley, thyme, red pepper flakes, lemon juice, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Mix until everything is evenly incorporated. Roll into a log using plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. You can make this days ahead and keep it in the fridge — it only gets better.
2. Bring the steak to temperature. Pull the elk steak from the fridge 20 minutes before cooking and let it sit on the counter. A cold steak doesn’t cook evenly. Pat it completely dry with paper towels. Moisture is the enemy of a good sear.
3. Season the steak. Combine the salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Season the steak on all sides — top, bottom, and edges. Press the seasoning in with your hand. Don’t be shy with it.
4. Heat the cast iron. Place a 10–12 inch cast iron skillet over high heat. Let it sit for 4–5 minutes. You want it smoking. This is not optional — an insufficiently hot pan produces a gray, steamed piece of meat, and you did not come here for that.
5. Sear the steak. Add the tallow or oil to the hot pan. It will smoke immediately. Lay the steak down away from you and do not touch it for 3 minutes. Do not press it. Do not move it. Flip once, and sear the second side for 3 minutes. For a 1-inch elk backstrap, this gets you medium-rare — pink throughout, warm in the center, with a deep brown crust. Elk is lean, so do not overcook it. Medium is the limit. Well-done is a waste of the animal.
6. Sear the edges. Using tongs, hold the steak on each edge for 30–45 seconds to render the fat and build crust all the way around. This step is worth doing.
7. Rest the steak. Transfer to a cutting board and let it rest for 5 minutes. Do not cut into it early. The juices need to settle. Use the five minutes to slice the cowboy butter log into 1/4-inch rounds.
8. Finish and serve. Slice the steak against the grain into 1/2-inch pieces. Lay two rounds of cowboy butter directly on the hot meat and let them melt. Eat immediately. Eat standing up if you want to. It’s four in the morning and there’s no one watching.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 540 | Protein: 54g | Fat: 34g | Carbs: 2g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 980mg