Teriyaki Flank Steak

If you have carnivores in your house, there is nothing more satisfying than a down-home meal of steak and potatoes, especially when we are all hankering for some comfort during this stressful time. This marinade for steak has been my go to for years and it never disappoints. We enjoyed this steak last night along with roasted brussel sprouts drizzled with balsamic vinegar and oven baked potatoes on the deck.

Marinated Flank Steak

Marinade:
1/2 cup soy sauce (coconut aminos for gluten free)
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons canola oil
3 green onions, sliced thinly
1.5" knob ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves, minced

1.5-2 pound flank steak

Add all marinade ingredients in gallon sized plastic bag and mix. Add flank steak and marinade several hours or best over night. Grill over medium hot grill until cooked to your liking. Enjoy!

Korean Beef Lettuce Wraps with Spicy Mayo

These flavorful lettuce wraps have a delicious sweet/soy beef filling topped with fresh carrots, micro greens and a tasty spicy mayo. You can add rice to make them a little more hearty or eat them as is for a refreshing light meal, which is wonderful after the holidays!

Korean Beef Lettuce Wraps with Spicy Mayo
*recipe from The Family Flavor Cookbook by Whitney Ingram

Spicy Mayo Ingredients:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon Sriracha chile sauce
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

In a small bowl, whisk mayo, garlic, Sriracha and sesame oil until combined.

Beef stir-fry ingredients:
2/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
3 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon kosher salt
----------------------
1 head romaine lettuce leaves torn off core
1 cup cooked rice (optional)
1  shredded carrot
handful of micro green sprouts

Measure soy sauce in liquid measuring cup. Once measured, reserve 2 tablespoons in small bowl. Add the cornstarch to the reserved soy sauce and mix well. Set aside. In medium bowl, whisk together remaining soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil and rice vinegar.

In a large skillet over medium high heat, add ground beef, garlic and salt.  Saute until ground beef is cooked through, about 10 minutes. Stir in soy sauce/brown sugar mixture. Once simmering, add cornstarch mixture and stir until thickened.

To serve, line a romaine leaf with rice (if desired), spoonful of ground beef, sprinkle with carrots and sprouts and drizzle with spicy mayo. Enjoy!

Balsamic and Beer-Braised Short Ribs

This recipe from the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook is amazing- the sauce is rich and delicious and the meat just falls off the bones. I made them on a Sunday afternoon and refrigerated them that night so that I all I had to do was just heat them up for dinner on Monday after my daughter's softball game- so fun to have a yummy meal ready to go on a weeknight! This would be a great dish to serve for company as well.

Baslamic and Beer-Braised Short Ribs

5 punds bone-in short ribs

kosher salt and pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large red onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

2 bottles dark beer (I used Guinness)

2-3 cups beef stock

Season the ribs generously with salt and pepper. Heat a large Dutch oven over high heat and add enough olive oil to coat the bottom. Once the oil is hot, brown short ribs on all sides, in batches. Transfer browned ribs to a plate and repeat with remaining ribs.

Preheat oven to 325°. Turn heat down to medium and pour off all but 1 tablespoon of oil and fat.  Add onion, season with salt and pepper and cook until softened and a little bit brown, about 10 minutes. Add garlic cloves, saute 3 more minutes. Add tomato paste and cook a few more minutes, then add vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and beer, scraping bits off the bottom of pot. Return browned ribs to the pot, with the meatiest sides facedown. Add enough beef stock just to cover the ribs. Bring liquid to simmer, cover pot tightly with foil and then a lid. 

Bake for up to 3 hours or until meat can be easily pierced with a knife or pieces can be torn back with a fork. I baked mine for 3 hours and I think it was a little too long... I should have checked it at 2 to 2 1/2 hours, because I think how long you cook the ribs depends on how thick they are- mine were not that thick.

Remove from oven and let sit for 15 minutes, uncovered. Skim as much fat off top as you can. Serve them hot or you can refrigerate  them in the pot after they had cooled. The next day remove the ribs from sauce and spread them out on a large baking sheet and bake at 400° for 15 minutes. Serve with heated sauce.

I served them with creamy polenta and steamed green beans, but mashed potatoes would be yummy as well. Enjoy!

Three-Two Chili with Corn Pudding

I tried a new chili recipe last week- I usually make my favorite, Turkey Black Bean Chili, but this one is fun because it has two kinds of meat and three kinds of beans (hence the name). I think I needed to add a little water or another can of tomato sauce because it was rather thick, but it tasted delicious atop Susan Branch's Corn Pudding.
 

         

Three-Two Chili

2 T olive oil
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
1.5 pounds turkey
1 pound ground beef
1/4 cup best quality chili powder
2 T cumin
1 T oregano
1/4 t cayenne pepper
1 can 28 ounce crushed plum tomatoes, undrained
1 can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can cannellini or other white beans, rinsed and drained
salt and pepper to taste

Saute onions until translucent and soft over medium low heat in a dutch oven, about 5 minutes then add garlic and cook for 1 minute more. Add turkey and beef, raise heat to medium and cook until no longer pink. Stir in chili cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper. After 2 minutes,  add tomatoes and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally for 1 hour. Stir in beans, heat through, and season with salt and pepper.

Serve in a bowl with grated cheddar and green onions atop Susan Branch's Corn Pudding and you have yourself a perfect fall dinner!

Soy-Marinated Flank Steak

We love flank steak in our house, especially with my signature teriyaki marinade found here.  But I was ready to try a new marinade for flank steak tonight and tried Martha Stewart's Soy-Marinade.  It was much less sweet than teriyaki and was very savory, especially the reduced sauce. It was fun to try something different, but I think my kids prefer the sweeter teriyaki marinade.

Flank Steak with Soy Marinade

1 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
1 flank steak (about 2 pounds)

Combine marinade ingredients in gallon zip-lock bag. Add steak to marinade in bag and place in glass 9x13" pan. Marinade for at least 6 hours. Pull meat out of bag, reserving the marinade, and grill meat over medium heat for 8 minutes per side, or until the meat is cooked to your liking. Pour marinade from bag into saucepan and simmer over medium high heat for 10 minutes. The cooked marinade sauce is flavorful and very savory.  Enjoy!

Sesame Beef Stir Fry

This is another variation on the beef/soy sauce/veggie combination that is a winner! I also just discovered a wonderful Trader Joe's short cut.---Quick to Cook Beef Sirloin---which makes this dish even easier because you don't even have to slice the meat!

If you have access to Trader Joe's, this meat is perfect for this dish

Sesame Beef Stir Fry

1- 1/12 pounds thinly sliced beef sirloin
marinade:
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 knob ginger, grated
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon sesame seeds

2 tablespoons canola oil
1 shallot, sliced
1 pound sliced cremini mushrooms
1 pound  baby broccoli

Make marinade by combining soy sauce, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, brown sugar and sesame.  Add sliced sirloin to marinade for 15 minutes- 1 hour. While meat marinates, head saucepan to medium and add 1 tablespoon oil then the sliced shallots and mushrooms. Saute until the mushrooms are beginning to get soft. Steam broccoli for 5 minutes until bright green and drain. Put mushrooms and broccoli aside. Add 1 tablespoon oil to same pan that you used to cook the mushrooms and heat at medium high. Add the meat and cook  approximately two minutes on each side until cooked through.Cook meat in batches so that you don't crowd the pan. Combine mushrooms, broccoli and beef in same pan to warm all through. Serve with brown or white rice. Enjoy!

Beef and Broccoli

When we go out for Chinese food, one of my daughters always orders Beef and Broccoli, so I tried to duplicate the recipe for her at home.  I wanted a more savory than sweet version, so I used this recipe for inspiration and altered it to our taste.

Beef and Broccoli
 
1 pound flank steak or boneless round steak, sliced thinly across the grain
1 pound broccoli florets
2 tablespoons oil

For marinade:
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon  rice wine or sherry
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 garlic cloves, minced

For stir-fry sauce:
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 teaspoons rice wine or sherry
2 teaspoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 garlic clove, minced

Stir together the marinade ingredients and marinate beef for at least 15 minutes, or up to 8 hours. Stir together stir-fry sauce ingredients in bowl.
In saute pan, bring 1 inch of water to boil, add broccoli, cover and cook 3 minutes until bright green. Drain the broccoli and dry out saute pan.
Put saute pan back onto medium high heat and add 1 tablespoon of oil. Add beef and cook for 1 minute per side.  Cook the meat in batches so that the slices do not touch one another while cooking.
When all the meat is cooked, add steamed broccoli to pan and pour stir fry sauce over the meat and broccoli until warmed through. Serve with rice~ Enjoy!

Korean Beef

My kids adore this steak- it is their favorite beef dish that I make.  What I love is that the marinade mixes together with just a few ingredients, the meat takes under an hour to marinade and you can cook it in batches to taste. As you can see in the picture below, the meat on the right was cooked for two or three minutes less than the slices on the left, so if you have a rare meat lover in your family, those pieces are for them. My kids adore the ones that have caramelized (like the ones on the left). As you make the batches, the pan tends to accumulate cooked marinade which makes the next batch more brown, so it's good to wipe out your pan with a paper towel in between the later batches so you don't get too much browned marinade. 

Make this for your family- they will devour a whole steak in a flash!

Korean Beef

1/2 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup soy sauce

3 minced garlic cloves

1 knob ginger, grated (or 1 teaspoon powdered ginger)
1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 1/2 to  2  lbs flank steak, sliced thinly before cooking

Combine all ingredients except flank steak in a small bowl. Slice raw flank steak into thin strips. Place meat in plastic storage bag and pour marinade on top. Marinade meat for 15 minutes - 1 hour. Cook the meat in batches for 3-4 minutes per side in a non-stick skillet over medium high heat until brown and bubbling. Serve with steamed rice and vegetables. Enjoy!