Date Night In Steak Dinner For Couples

We love a good fancy dinner out on the town. But, if you can’t get out to your favorite restaurant, we’ve got you covered! We’re sharing the best at home date night menu with delicious and simple ingredients.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good date night at a nice restaurant, getting dressed up and not having to do dishes. But, sometimes that’s not possible because of a casual global pandemic or because you can’t get a reservation.

Lucky for you, we’ve built the best at home date night menu for you and your partner! Let’s talk about the actual menu first and then I’ll get into the details for each part of the menu.

Easy At Home Date Night Menu

• Drinks: Watershed Distillery Old Fashioned
• Appetizer: Caprese Bruschetta
• Entree: Garlic Butter Basted Ribeye
• Side Dish: Roasted Parmesan Crusted Mini Potatoes
• Dessert: Mini Strawberry Galettes

Head all the way to the bottom to see an outline of when to prepare each item so it’s all ready at the same time for your fun at home date night!

I could eat caprese style anything every single day and be happy. Fresh mozzarella is my happy place. Did you know you can actually make your own mozzarella at home using this kit. We did it once before and it’s easy and would be a fun addition to your at home date night.

Caprese Bruschetta Ingredients + Instructions

This appetizer is super easy to make, which is why I picked it for a date night dinner. You want to balance out items that can be prepped ahead of time so you aren’t trying to cook 15 things at the same time! That spells disaster.

First, the ingredients for this yummy bruschetta.

• Baguette/Bread. You can really use any bread here! My baguette pieces were a bit small, so I might recommend a thicker Italian bread. But, heck if you only have sandwich white bread – that works too!
• Fresh Tomatoes. We just signed up for our first CSA (Yellowbird!) and got some beautiful cherry tomatoes. We sliced ’em up for this bruschetta.
• Fresh Basil. I actually forgot this at the grocery store (whoops), so Joel had to get some for me. Hopefully my little basil plant starts to grow on our patio and we’ll have basil all summer!
• Fresh Mozzarella. I’m a really big fan of BelGioso mozzarella, but whatever brand you like works too! You can grab a log or slices or even the little “gems” as they call them.
• Balsamic Vinegar. This is optional, but I love the extra flavor! You can also make balsamic reduction using this recipe here.

This bruschetta is pretty simple to assemble, but I wrote out each step too!

• Chop your mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes into bite size pieces and place in a bowl together. Toss around until combined.
• Slice your bruschetta or bread into small appetizer sized pieces. Drizzle with a little bit of olive oil and toast the pieces.
• You can either toast on a pan in the oven at 425 degrees F for 5 minutes or you can use a grill pan to toast them. I like that method and use this pan here!
• Remove your toasted bread and place on a serving platter or plate. Then, spoon the caprese mixture on top of each piece.
• If desired, drizzle with balsamic vinegar or reduction!

Now for the side dish, roasted parmesan crusted mini potatoes! I saw a meme the other day that talked about loving potatoes in all forms. That would be me. But, these might be my favorite way to eat them.

I love love love The Little Potato Company. They have a few different varieties of potatoes and all of them are great. We live in Ohio and can find them at Meijer and Kroger so I think they are pretty available at most grocery stores!

You could definitely use regular potatoes too but these ones are so creamy and perfect and delicious.

Roasted Parmesan Crusted Mini Potatoes Instructions

These little morsels of deliciousness are super easy to make and are perfect for your at home date night menu. We used recommendations from Gimme Some Oven to whip up these yummy potatoes. Here are the ingredients we used for this recipe.

• Potatoes. Like I mentioned we used the Terrific Trio from The Little Potato Company. But, you could seriously use any kind of potato. You just need to chop into small, uniform pieces.
• Oil. I like to use an oil that has a high smoking heat (not olive oil) since you roast these at 425 degrees F.
• Cornstarch. This helps your potatoes crisp up and keep the seasoning tight so you can all the yummy flavors.
• Seasonings. We used salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, and basil for a little Italian twist. You can you do whatever kind of flavor you want here!
• Parmesan Cheese. A necessity on all potatoes, cheese! I love adding freshly grated Parmesan because it gets nice and crispy and also has the perfect addition of saltiness.

I love this recipe as a simple side dish for your date night at home because you can prep it ahead of time and just toss on your pan when you are ready. By the way, I just bought these half sheet pans and I am OBSESSED.

• Anytime you cook potatoes, you HAVE to soak them in water for at least an hour. This removes the starches so they get crispy when baked. Do not skip this step.
• Once you are ready to make them, preheat your oven to 425 degrees F.
• Toss your diced potatoes in a bowl with the oil, cornstarch, and seasonings. Then place on an oiled baking sheet (so they don’t stick) and pop in the oven for 15-20 minutes then remove from the oven and flip around a bit so they cook evenly.
• Place back in the oven and cook for another 10-15 minutes. In the last 5 minutes of baking, sprinkle the cheese on top to let it get nice and crispy.
• Remove from oven and immediately remove from pan so they don’t stick.

Now for the real MVP of the meal, the garlic butter basted ribeye. Joel usually cooks our steaks, but I whipped this one up for date night and I will happily say I did it justice.

We usually sous vide our steak, but I opted for cooking straight in a cast iron skillet this time around.

Instructions for the Best Steak Ever

There are some solid tips you should know when you want to make a steak at home. I should also say, INSIDE at home. Grilling a steak is a totally different story.

• Pat your steak dry with paper towels on both sides then place on a plate. Season each side with salt and pepper. If you have a favorite steak seasoning, you can use that too if you’d like.
• Then, heat a cast iron skillet and add some canola oil. As Simon Davies says, you want the pan “ripping hot.”
• Place your ribeye in your cast iron skillet (both if you have room!) and cook, flipping every 2-3 minutes, until a nice crust has formed on both sides.
• Push your steak to the side of the pan. Then, reduce the heat a bit and add a decent amount of butter (like 1/2 stick) and some crushed garlic.
• Tilting the steak (with an oven mit) and using a spoon, ladle the melted (slightly foamy) butter over the steak for 1-2 minutes. Before removing, use a meat thermometer to make sure your steak is to your preference.
• Remove from the pan and place on a cutting board to rest for 10-15 minutes.

We also served with a quick little salad with some greens from our CSA and a simple balsamic and oil vinaigrette.

Plating and tablescaping for your date night at home is fun too! If you want to get real crazy, grab a table cloth and maybe even some fabric napkins. We have one too many items to place on our table because … food blogger problems.

Here is the best order to ensure you can make everything on time and it’s all finished at the same time.

• Soak your potatoes in cold water in the fridge.
• Prep your dessert (see below!) first and store in the fridge.
• Assemble your caprese without the bread and place in the fridge.
• Remove potatoes, dry them and toss in the cornstarch/seasoning mixture.
• Toast your bread and assemble the caprese bruschetta for an appetizer.
• Make your steak (see above!).
• Preheat oven to 425 degrees F and then start baking your potatoes.
• Your potatoes should finish up while your steak is resting.
• When you plate your meal, put your dessert in the oven so it’s finished when you are done with dinner.

These mini strawberry galettes might have been my favorite part of the date night dinner. Okay, actually not sure because I loved it ALL. You can get the recipe over on Sally’s Baking Addiction!

A few more date night recipes.

While this is a pretty wonderful date night menu, we have some other recommendations because we will be having a lot of date nights at home right about now.

• Garlic + Olive Oil Pasta. I love this simple pasta! Plus, it’s only made with one dish so hellooo clean kitchen.
• Nashville Hot Chicken. I mean, we had fried chicken at our wedding so this really screams date night to me.
• Mini Pumpkin Cheesecakes. I’m obsessed with these little pumpkin cheesecakes. They are so delicious and they are little so you can eat like 4 and it’s fine.