Perfect Pairings: Making Your Steak the Star of the Show

You don’t have to spend too much time scouring Google to come across articles about perfect steak-and-wine pairings. In fact, you probably know some of the basics of steak and wine pairing already. While there is not necessarily a right or wrong way to enjoy your steak and wine, most foodies and culinary experts agree that a deep red wine is the best accompaniment to a quality piece of beef.

There are a number of reasons for this. It’s a matter of balance, for one thing, the flavors of a red perfectly offsetting the savoriness of the steak. There is also a certain symbolic quality at work: For many of us, steak and red wine are indicative of passion, suggestive of an intensely romantic dinner for two.

More than anything, though, this concept serves to underscore an important point about great steak—namely, that what you serve it with matters. The perfect pairing enhances and underscores the qualities of your beef. It provides depth and context. A flawed or poorly thought-out pairing, meanwhile, can actually diminish the experience for you, and even—to some extent—waste that great steak you’d hoped to savor.

This isn’t only true of wine pairings. The food items you serve with your steak matter. There is a long history of perfect steak pairings—salads, potatoes, even seafood items. At the same time, there are certain items that you just don’t see on the menu at truly world-class steakhouses, because they simply don’t bring out the best in your steak.

And with a Diablo, that’s the whole point: You want both the side dishes and the wine or beer served to bring out the best in your steak. A Diablo is a special occasion food, an indulgence; it’s meant to be the main event in your meal, the thing that brings people to the table, and the star of the show.

You don’t want to serve a Diablo with something that might diminish or distract from it. Everything else on the table needs to serve a supporting role, all of it reflecting and enhancing the centerpiece—helping the Diablo the shine.