Labor Day Porterhouse

Not a whole lot to say about this, just a couple of thick, full porterhouse steaks I cooked on Labor Day

16 Minute Steak

Outside of family, I don’t cook for many people.  When I do, I think I get a lot of polite compliments on whatever I cooked.  Now, I am the kind of person that has a hard time accepting compliments unless I have done something remarkable.  I’d much rather I be told the truth, even if it means I didn’t do something right. (That’s how you learn to do better)

But I do get compliments from family when I cook steaks.

Someone asked what my secret was.

“Meat and heat”, really not too difficult.

Lots of people have some sort of “secret” way of preparing steak.  I have a couple of different ways of preparing steaks (but no secrets involved!!)

In the video below, as long as you have a known temperature, it’s just timing and it’s easy to adjust for rare and medium rare.  Yes, those are the only two choices for cooking steak.

The in-laws were over and I made some really nice boneless Strip Steaks.

ENJOY !!

First Steak Of The Season

Not much to say…………………………….

The 16 Minute Steak

Everyone has their own super secret way of cooking a steak.

I don’t have a secret.

It’s really just not too difficult.

I use a gas grill, have for almost 30 years.

I like it for the convenience and the ability to control the heat.

So here I go with my 16 minute steak:

 

 

On this day, it was filet.

Never my first choice and one of my least favorite cuts of the cow.  But the in-laws were coming over and the grocery store had filet on sale for $4.99 for 6oz.  Much higher than my price point for steak, but that’s what I got.  Filet is just always too dry for my taste.

There are just two ways to cook a steak:

Rare

Medium rare

Anything beyond that and you should just go have a boneless skinless chicken breast.

 

Rib Eye Steak

Oh lucky me !!!

The grocery store had Rib Eye steak on sale for $5.99 lb (that’s my price point) and the wife brought home a couple of nice ones.

“Steaks For Grilling”

Well DUH !!!!

And despite my best judgement, there will a non potato vegetable with dinner.

Pre cut in a bag.  Really simple.

Onto the fire………….

Mmmmm, Meat !!!

Perfectly  cooked to rare/medium rare !!!

The veggies turned out OK.

OK, for you real carnivores out there, you know what this is……………

MEAT CANDY !!!!

Best meat on the cow !!

I used to talk to a coworker about food quite a bit and he always bought his meat without bones.  He thought is was a waste of money to pay for the bone-in steak or pork chops.  I told he that he needed to try it at least once.

Well, he came to work a few days later and had cooked a couple of bone in pork chops and he was raving for days about how much better the chops tasted with the bone in.  Another convert !!!

Well, instead of gnawing on these, I thought that I would make some “Beef Barley Mushroom Soup.”

Boil them up for a beat.

Barley.

Barley is a close second to my split pea for soup making.

Yep. those are the mushrooms.

Toss in a few carrots and pick the meat off the bone.

Viola !!

A few days of lunches for work.

Sirloin Steak and Grilled Corn

Well the good news is that the wife brought home steak from the store and it was “Buy One Get One Free”, but it was Sirloin.   Not a real big fan of most cuts of Sirloin.   Far to lean and if you don’t get the best cut, a little tough.

Also not a big fan of “Corn on the Cob” either, but under the right circumstances, I will eat it. (Dang if I ain’t one picky son of a ^%#@)

You can see on the two pieces on the left, the “tough lines” that run through them.

But with a little effort, we can make this tough steak a little more palatable.

I gave all the pieces a good forking.

Then it gets cut up into 3/4 X 3/4 inch strips and give it a good forking again on all four sides

I marinated the meat in some oil, Worcestershire sauce, water and fresh garlic before putting them on the grill.

And now the sweet corn.

We’re going to use this to whip up a batch of my grandmother’s world famous “South Dakota Style Corn Husk Salad.”

The meat cooked grilled up satisfactory and the corn  was charred mighty fine.

Steak And Potatoes

Ahhhhh, yet another of my many simple pleasures of life !!

MEAT !!!!

Now, I really have in the past several years eaten a lot less steak then I used to.  It has just become far to expensive to have as often as I would like to have it.

But in this case, due to some good shopping skills and good luck, I was able to get this steak for only $4.00 instead of the packaged price of $8.00.

And as luck would have it, I found myself alone for dinner, and decided it was “Steak & Potato” time.

A nice bone in Rib Eye, nice and marbled.  Hard to believe that this steak goes for over $10 lb !!!

Real simple prep.

Black pepper and some garlic salt

Too lazy to go outside and fire the grill up, I think it would require cleaning the garage to find the grill anyway.

So, the kitchen mainstay of the cast iron skillet will do very fine indeed.

Ooooooohhhhh, a very nice sear and delightful crust !!!

Oh yeah, I said something about potatoes being involved.

Now at one time, those things may have been connected to a potato, but they get shredded, processed, pressed into a shape and “VIOLA”, Tater Tot.  I suppose that there is enough potato DNA there to legally call them potatoes for this post.

Also made a little compound butter with fresh garlic.

There were no survivors.

Lunch for the week I

Just for a change of pace, I did not make my usual “Split Pea & (fill in the name of a pork product) Soup”

Being the notorious cheap bastard that I am, this lunch for the week will be just under $5.00.

Normally that amount of meat would have only been 2 lunches, but I do need to lose about 20 pounds so I am going to be making a  (more) serious effort to eat less !!!

Finished product.

When using the canned vegetables, the secret is to mix them with the cooked meat, cover and remove from the heat.  That way the vegetables won’t get overcooked.  Yes, I could use fresh vegetables but sometime it’s much easier to open a can !!