Sunday Steak Supper

Volunteer Herbs!

Derek's been doing physical labor in the heat all day and wants to fix something easy that doesn't involve using the oven.  He's going to grill a London Broil I got on sale and we’ll have an arugula and tomato salad and some broccoli from our garden.  London Broil is a term that doesn’t really mean anything in and of itself, but refers to various cuts of meat that are typically used for a London Broil. 

London Broil with Chimichurri sauce

According to Cook's Illustrated, which is my kitchen bible, “it's a generic label bandied about by butchers to sell large, cheap, unfamiliar steaks that might otherwise be ignored by customers.  Over the years, a number of different steaks have been called London broil. For a while, flank steak was the most common, but flank's popularity on the grill and in stir-fries bumped its price up {too much} for the London Broil territory. Nowadays, you'll mostly see the still-cheap (roughly $3.99 a pound) chuck shoulder steak, top round steak, and bottom round steak labeled as London broil.”  America's Test Kitchen prefers the bottom round because of its even shape.  I have no idea what part of the cow this one came from, but it has a uniform surface and thickness.  All of the above are cuts of beef you’ll want to cook medium rare (120 degrees) and slice very thin, at an angle against the grain.  Some of the most important things to remember when grilling meat are to get the grill super hot before you put the meat on, make sure the surface of the grill is free of residue, and let the meat rest loosely covered for about 10 minutes.  This allows the juices to redistribute so that you don’t lose as much of it when you cut into it; the juice is where the flavor is, so that’s crucial.  My biggest challenge in the kitchen is timing, so I really appreciate those 10 minutes to get everything else together.

Parsley Flower

I like to use the leftover London Broil in a salad with arugula, red onion, tomatoes, red bell pepper, and radishes, when I have them; I like arugula with beef because its bold peppery flavor stands up to the hearty beef.  To accompany our London Broil, I’m going to prepare a chimichurri sauce since we have so many fresh herbs right now.  Chimichurri sauce originated in Argentina, where they have excellent beef.  It consists of loads of garlic and parsley, red wine vinegar, red onion, olive oil and red pepper flakes.  As you can see, it’s basically a garlicky salad dressing with a lot of parsley.  You can add other herbs, too; I plan to use some fresh thyme from our herb garden, which looks fantastic, by the way.  I usually make a salad dressing with red wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic, Zatarain’s creole mustard and some fresh thyme, but since I’ll have chimichurri sauce, that serve as my salad dressing.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, will be my lunch tomorrow.

I hope you all had a great weekend and ate some good stuff!