Steak and Eggs

Today was just about perfect big green egg weather. When I got home from work, I fired up the egg (I still haven’t named him/her. waiting on the right name yet. It’s been about 5 years.) and started prepping.

I bought two smallish sirloins last night. I took those out of the fridge and tried a method of preparing them by liberally sprinkling (I used about 1 tsp per side of kosher salt. It’s a lot of salt) to tenderize the meat. Cover both sides with salt and let sit at room temp. for a half hour.  I found this idea at http://steamykitchen.com/blog/2007/08/28/how-to-turn-cheap-choice-steaks-into-gucci-prime-steaks. In the meantime, once the grill was warmed, I threw on a sweet potato wrapped in foil and some portabello mushrooms. This is one of my favorite meals. Yes there’s no greens. So?

Salted steak

Mushrooms and potato

If I’m grilling, I don’t want to  cook inside at all. I cook everything on the grill, appetizers, main meal, dessert.  For the mushrooms, I take about a tablespoon or whatever of salsa and top it then sprinkle mozarella cheese on top. I thought I had mozz. cheese, turns out I did not. What I had was string cheese. Same thing, more work. Whatever. It turned out…

Cooked and ready for noms

About the time the mushrooms are cooked up and ready (15 minutes or so) my steak has come up to room temp (overall time – about a half hour. Half of that is grill prep time.)

Washed the salt off the steaks and patted them dry while I got the grill up to super high temp. This is my method for grilling steak, it would not work with a gas grill. Bring temp way up (650+) and sear the steaks. Turn them 90 degrees if you want after a minute or two for fancy diamonds. After two or three minutes of searing, flip, close everything down, and shut all dampers. Then let it cruise for 10 minutes or so. This will get a 1″ steak to medium.

Searing. Flames are so hot I can hear them

This is some trial and error stuff. I had a few flops before I got it right. While I shut down the dampers, I toured my yard for a minute because I thought I noticed my native azalea starting to bloom. It was. Yay! This and my peachtree are the harbingers of spring in the yard.

Piedmont Azalea

Peachtree Bloom

After 10 minutes or so, I took the steaks off, covered them with tin foil and let them rest. This is an important step, it sucks the juices back into the steak and makes it better. As it rested, I threw a frozen whole wheat roll on the grill to warm up and put the mushrooms back on to just to warm. By this time, the sweet potato is so soft and wonderful I can’t even describe it. OMNOMNOMNOMNOM.

Steak and potato and roll. Mushrooms on their way to my belly.

Steak turned out super tender. I like the salt method, will try again. Also, i topped them with some Dizzy Pig Cow Lick before grilling. Omnomnomnomnom.

Steak Dinner – 5 noms out of 5