Beef, it’s whats for dinner

Mindless cooking advice. Steak. Look for good marbling – small little dots of white or a marble look of white and red. The white are small little pieces of fat that will ensure that you have a nice juicy piece of meat. Cooking depending on how you like it done can be anywhere from 5 minutes to 10 minutes per side – depending on thickness of the cut this is a general range for rare to well done. I have mine medium rare, so about 6.5 minutes per side. The essentials are timing, flipping only once, and resting. Something a little dry rub is warranted, but with a really nice steak, just a little bit of salt and pepper is all that is needed to the raw meat. After cooking on each side, pull the slab of meat off the grill, pan, hotplate, etc; put it onto a plate and let it sit there for about 10 minutes. Putting it into the microwave or some other insulated area will keep the steak from getting cold. Make a sauce with a nice red wine, I prefer a nice port, mix a little but of balsamic vinegar, and the juices that have run off the meat while it has rested, and let the wine reduce to a thick syrup. Finish the sauce with a little pat of butter, and you’ve got a nice meal….

Now, with that said, what to do with a piece of left over steak. Reheating it is just a cause for all sorts of problems, beginning first and foremost with how. Nuking the sucker will only turn it close to rubber. So the solution here? Eat it cold. So here I have some left over steak, it sat in the fridge over night.

Taking a very sharp knife, carefully cut thin slices of the meat against the grain.

With all the meat sliced, place them on a plate, and drizzle a little bit of ponzu sauce. If you don’t know what that is, click the link. A little wasabi makes for a good compliment as well, mixed with the ponzu sauce. Eaten this way, you don’t end up ruining a really nice piece of meat by utterly drying it out, nuking it from the inside out, or turning it into rubber as you reheat it for your follow on meal. Thinly cut, the slices of steak go very nicely with a fresh salad, or as a light snack.