Today's Lazy OFW Recipe is: Homemade Steak
This is what I had for dinner tonight:
Tenderloin Steak
"Beef Brisket" Steak
And to show my lacking plating skills:
Seriously, I need to take some classes.
Ok, to make this is very very simple but it takes some sort of effort. And you would need an oven. Oh, and ziploc. ;)
Ingredients:
Some nice cuts of beef (I wasn't intending to make steak but I saw I had tenderloin in the freezer and beef brisket so I thought what the heck!)
Salt
Pepper
Oil (I used olive oil in this case but any neutral tasting oil will do i.e. canola, vegetable, etc)
Procedure:
1. Let the meat thaw and reach room temperature.
2. In a ziploc bag, put 2 tbsp oil, salt (be careful with the amount, a pinch will do), and pepper. Add the steaks and shake until the meat is completely covered by the oil. Let sit for an hour at least. (I prepared mine during lunch but planned on having it for dinner so I put it in the fridge first. However, if you're going to do that, make sure that before actually cooking the meat, you bring it out of the refrigerator to thaw and reach room temperature again before cooking it or I don't think the steak will be tender.)
3. When you're ready to cook the steak, get a baking dish and cover it with aluminum foil. This will make it easier for you to do the cleaning later on. Preheat your oven on high.
4. On a skillet grill pan (or just a plain frying fan if that's the only thing you have lying around), sear the meat so its nice and cooked from the outside.
5. Once the outside is cooked to your liking, transfer the steaks to the oven to continue cooking. The tenderloin took around 10-15mins to finish cooking in the oven. The beef brisket took another 10-15mins due to the thickness.
6. Carve (cut up) and serve.
Optional: Gravy
Beef Broth (made from dissolving 1 beef cube in hot water)
Flour (dissolved in hot water)
Butter
Worcestershire Sauce (try pronouncing that!)
Milk/Sugar
In a sauce pan, combine the beef broth (add the juice left over from the baking dish) and the flour until they combine and become a thicker liquid. Add butter, worcestershire sauce. Check to see if the taste is to your liking. The milk and sugar is in case you find it too salty, then that ought to neutralize the taste a bit.
I'm not an expert in gravy and this was an impromptu recipe that was made successful by To Man so credit goes to him but it tasted good with the steaks so I'm adding it here.
I initially debated whether to do a proper marinade but I read somewhere that a good steak is defined by the taste of the meat, not all the accoutrements that you added into it so I decided to just highlight the taste of the meat by simply using salt and pepper.
The steaks were great! To be honest, they were just the normal cuts of beef that were selling in the grocery downstairs. I didn't even get the special types and all (though the beef downstairs were proudly Australian beef). The key here was you let it thaw properly, no short cuts, so the meat will not get tough when you cook it.
If you get a chance, you should try this. I highly recommend it. And to think I only paid maybe $10 for both pieces of meat. That's cheap steak!
Oh, I should call this dish "Cheapskate Steak" moving forward.
What do you think? Poll Cheapskate Steak