I recently came into possession of a .75 lb top sirloin fillet wrapped in bacon and I would like to know some of the best recipes for cooking it. Please include seasonings and/or marinades.
Oh yes, grilling is not an option, but feel free to post those recipes, too, as someone may find them useful.
This should kick off a good debate before the day’s out.
But anyway…
a good meathod would be to liberaly season with kosher salt and cracked black pepper and sear in a VERY hot pan with just a little oil (cast iron is quite good for this). I’d say sear it for about 1 to 2 min a side depending on the thickness then take tha pan off the heat and put a lid on it for about 5 min. Should be a nice pink rare in the middle.
If you want to be more adventureous you could always prepare it Au Proive which is one of my favorites - let me see if I can find a recipe and get back to you.
My favorite way to eat a steak is easy, neat, and healthy. (Really, it is; repeat that to yourself over and over as you clean up the grease and undergo a triple bypass.)
I take an iron skillet and melt a little (OK, a lot) of bacon fat in it, flame on high, till it’s just about smoking.
Then I put the steak in and watch the grease splatter the entire kitchen. I turn it over when the first side is crispy crusty brown, and do the same for the other side.
Then I hold it on edge with a pair of tongs to cook the edges too.
Then I salt it liberally with sea salt, and put huge, juicy, medium-rare chunks, with crispy goodness on the outside, into my mouth. Then my eyes roll back in my head with a really freaky kind of orgasmic intensity.
When I come out of the coma, I hose down the kitchen with Janitor in Drum, and start thinking about my next steak.
According to the Bible (my name for Alton Brown), the best way to heat it indoors is to broil it. Crank the heat all the way, but set the rack pretty far from the heat. This will warm it through without damaging the cell structure. Then move it close to the heat to char it. It should stay tender and juicy on the inside.
Marinades? Something acidic. Lemon juice would be good. Lime juice would give a mild Mexican flair. A good non-creamy salad dressing will have a complex marriage of flavors that might work nicely.
And when you serve it, be sure to cut across the grain. After letting it rest for five minutes, of course.
Sorry bout the spelling, it’s au Poivre.
I like both zoid and lissener’s methods, except that I would add the salt later on as the latter does. Salt tends to draw out the moisture in the meat. Au poivre is my fave also (preferably au poivre vert a la creme), which basically means you fry the steak in a bed of cracked green peppercorns, remove the meat, then deglaze the pan with your liquid of choice and reduce it until thickened. I’ve probably left something out, but that’s the basics.
I would avoid salting it unless you do it just prior to cooking. That will draw too much moiture from it.
A good rule for turning a panfried (or grilled) steak is to turn it only once. You can tell when it’s done on the first side because little pools of red juice will appear on the undone side. Then flip it once, let it go for 2 minutes, then let it rest on a warm plate for 5.
The bacon will be a nice addition to both flavor and coronary blockages. In lieu of bacon, butter works very well with steak.
Good steak should be served as simply as possible. My own taste is to serve it with baked potatoes, green beans, and garlic butter. I like to add a little lemon zest to the garlic butter.
It is worth splashing out on a nice full bodied red wine to serve with the meal.
2nd’ed about not adding salt until the last moment to prevent juice being drawn from the steak by the salt. I would also be tempeted to use very little salt, as the bakon you mentioned may well be quite salty itself.
Yep, I should have mentioned that it should be seasoned just before placing in the pan.
If you can’t grill it, eat it raw.
Chefguy, I will take your suggestion to heart. I had been cooking them zoid’s way, but the pepper sauce sounds yummy. What else would you use besides cream?
Oh, and when I cook fillet in bacon, it’s usually venison. Mmmm, backstrap! (And I especially don’t want to draw out the moisture in that; it’s dry enough as it is)
Julie
If it’s already wrapped in bacon, hold off on the salt until it reaches the table. The bacon will contribute some all by its widdle self. I’d broil the sucker at the highest temperature possible until the bacon is crisp but the steak is still rare. Fresh cracked black pepper wouldn’t hurt either. Make sure and have some spuds to mop things up with.
I love marinading in Caribbean Jerk Sauce, but I think they stopped making it. I’m sure there’s a recipe somewhere. Pure heaven, I tell ya.
If you have some brown stock or beef glace on hand, use that. You can use just water, but it’s going to be very bland.
I don’t know your cooking skills, but if you can make a brown roux and add some canned stock to it, that might suffice, but I wouldn’t add any salt while cooking the steak if you do that; the canned stock is going to be very salty.
add a little beer to your roux-based sauce, but write your will first because you will just dee eye ee DIE.
I have never tried most of these ways. Except grilling outdoors… But the coup de gras is in a huge frypan filled with sliced portabellas that have spent the second half of their saute time boiling in merlot.
Here’s a sauce I made for narrowly sliced rare steak last year:
After the steak is done, set it aside and deglaze the pan with a whole bottle of decent dry red wine. Reduce it by about 75% percent. Turn off the flame, and toss in a few fresh blackcurrants or blackberries, just enough to warm them. Drizzle over the sliced steak. Call an ambulance.
Normally I would say rub the steak with equal parts salt and sugar and then grill or fry. But since it’s already bacon wrapped, I’d say skip the salt.
Seriously though, someone turned me onto this rub awhile back. I tried it on pork and beef before I went veggie, and OH BABY. Quite good.
Oh, and incidentally, I don’t know if I’d try this with this steak because I don’t know how well it’d go with the bacon, but this marinade is quite tasty for meat:
Honey Mustard Teriyaki
4 Tsp soy sauce
2 Tsp rice vinegar
1 Tsp powdered ginger
several dashes sesame oil
several dashes fire oil
1 Tsp honey
1 Tsp Dijon mustard
For your entertainment, the classic Scylla Great Debate: Steak Wasting.
P.S. This is also the thread that brought our esteemed poster Fenris out of lurkerdom to start posting. Though his name doesn’t appear since that thread is from the old board format, his is the last post in the thread.