Steak

A busy weekend.  Children's birthday parties.  Time in the lab.  At the gym.  At the beach.  But we've decided that we want a regular Sunday night family dinner.  What's something fantastic?  Fast?  Delicious?  Oh yeah, baby.  How about a sirloin steak.  Quick stop at the grocery store to pick up steaks, and while Mrs. Dude puts Bbq Jr. down for a nap, I start marinating the steak (modified from one of my favourite books ever Serious Barbecue):

1 tbsp crushed hot red pepper flakes
2 tbsp boiling water
½ cup Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup Dijon mustard
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp soy sauce
½ cup coarsely chopped white onion
10 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp dried oregano

Soak the red pepper flakes in the boiling water for a few minutes.  Combine all ingredients, pour into a ziploc bag with 2 sirloin steaks.  Marinate 1 - 4 hours.



Half an hour before grill time, remove the marinating steak from the fridge and allow them to come to room temperature (so they're not warming on the grill, they're cooking).  Fire up the grill.  Get it screaming hot.

Cooking steak always makes me nervous.  Unlike brisket, where the difference between properly cooked and overcooked is roughly 3 hours, with steak, you have seconds between properly cooked and overcooked.  STRESS!!!  No.  No.  No stress.  Steak, is just something where you need a bit of practice.

Okay, so while the grill is heating up, make the resting butter:

4 tbsp unsalted butter
¼ cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
4 garlic cloves, shopped
1 tsp crushed hot red pepper flakes
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 tbsp chopped fresh thyme

Melt the butter, and mix the rest of the ingredients in.



Put the steaks on the grill.  Three minutes per side for rare.  6 minutes per side for medium well.



Dial in the proper length of time for your temperature grill and thickness of steak.  Don't be stressed.  This just requires practice, nothing more, nothing less.  Practice your steaks.



When done to your liking, remove the steak from the grill, and allow it to rest.  Resting is this weird thing, most people who write about getting meat to rest talk about the "juices redistributing".  It's a well known effect that if you cut the meat right after you cook it, the juices will come streaming out, and you'll have drier meat.  If you wait a bit, the juices stay in the meat.  The juice redistributing story sounds like just so much bulls*@t if you ask me.  More likely is that the fat in the meat is congealing, and holding some of the liquid in that way.  Either way, letting the meat rest results in juicier meat.

While the meat rests, brush on the resting butter.



Sprinkle with:

fleur de sel

Serve.  Shown medium well (just the way Mrs. Dude likes it - I'm more a rare/medium-rare guy).



Interesting thing about this steak preparation?  The fat bits of steak are particularly delicious.  I mean, the rest of it is steak, so unless you overcook it, of course it's delicious.  But the fatty bits?  Yum.

Serve with an assertive red.  Cabernet sauvignon, red zinfandel or mourvèdre.