This is going to be a little quicker and dirtier than most of my other recipes, but it really wasn’t planned – I just bought the steak tips on a whim and made up a recipe the next day, so I’ve made this a grand total of once. Reviews were positive, though.
Whole Foods (at least the ones around here) currently has sirloin steak tips on sale for $4 a pound, which is a steal for some pretty good quality beef; using a marinade and rub based on stuff you probably have in the house and a simple side or two like a rice pilaf, you’ve got dinner for 3-4 adults for under $10. The store at which I usually shop has them in packages of 1.5-1.75 pounds; this marinade will take care of the lower end of that range but you may want to boost the juice and olive oil for the higher end.
Marinade:
Juice of one small lemon
1 tsp Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
1 small dried chile pepper (e.g., arbol), crumbled
Pinch of salt
Ground black pepper
Roughly 1/4 cup olive or vegetable oil
Combine all ingredients but the oil in a measuring cup, and add enough oil to double the total amount of marinade. Cut the steak into skewerable chunks and place in the marinade in a ziploc bag or other sealed container. Refrigerate at least four hours and up to 24 hours.
Heat your grill and about five minutes before it’s ready for the meat, remove the beef from the marinade and rinse briefly under cool water. Pat with paper towels until thoroughly try. Rub the outside with a mixture of kosher or coarse sea salt (2 parts), ancho chile powder (1 part), and cumin (1 part). Grill over direct heat until the outside is well browned and the inside has reached the desired degree of doneness.
Keith,
“Here” is the Boston area, correct? Which Whole Foods did you get that price at? That’s a great deal.
Do you usually shop at Whole Foods, or do you use one of the chains (Stop and Shop, Shaws/Star)? I like Whole Foods, but generally find them overpriced.
Why the cool water rinse? That seems like a step I’ve either never seen or always just missed.
Hey Keith…do you use a charcoal grill or propane?
Rob: Yes, in Boston. That deal was at the Alewife location, which I like to use because they roast their coffee beans daily, often several times a day. The Woburn location is nicer and it’s easier to park there, but their coffee is never as fresh and they don’t carry a few other products that we like and that Alewife carries.
DCTF: To add the rub. You could skip that step and just place the marinaded meat on the grill, although I’d at least try to shake off excess marinade to avoid flare-ups.
Thanks for the recipe, Keith.
Incidentally, the Whole Foods by me just had flank steak on sale for $5/lb, which is ridiculously cheap (even the supermarket flank runs $7/lb).
Hey Keith,
Thanks for the recipe. Question, though: I don’t have a grill, but I do have a 17-inch round grill pan that is used over the stove burner. Will this work just as well for the recipe? I just bought it a few weeks ago, and am trying to figure out the best uses for it. Thanks.
Best everyday meat deal at whole foods:
Beef shanks @ $5.99/lb
Tender flavorful meat, perfect for osso bucco.
PS – How about a KlawQue25? You seem to travel enough, and I’d love a list of the top 25 que joints in the country.
I agree with Marco. That would be awesome for traveling purposes 🙂
KLaw-
Where exactly in Beantown are you? The locales you give make me think suburbs and not the city.
Also, I just can’t get rice right, let alone a rice pilaf. Do you uni-task with a rice maker? And any simple recipes for a pilaf? One of my favorite foods and I can never get it right.
BSK – on the rice thing, at least for me with basic long grain or jasmine rice … 2:1 liquid to rice, 20 minutes after reduction of heat – magic numbers, it just seems to work. Hard thing is to trust the ratios and times – not to look at the rice cooking – but you have to do it.
Rice cooker is a good unitasker, keeps the rice warm – and clears a spot on your stove that you might need … but if you buy one you will have to learn its nuances, experiment with precise ratios to see what makes it behave the best.
Thanks, Sriram. I might need to buy higher quality rice, too. Any brands you’d recommend? Generally, I find that I’ll cook it for the suggested time and it’s still very soupy and the rice not quite cooked. Clearly, I’m undercooking, but I don’t know if it’s the time, the water, the heat, or some combo.
BSK – I’d recommend finding an Indian store somewhere nearby and buying real Basmati rice. They come in 40 lb bags, so you can stock up.
I’m with malcolm on that one.
BSK: Was the same way, just couldn’t get rice done properly no matter what instructions I followed. Went with a Cuisinart rice cooker and haven’t had an issue since (aside from the slight ego hit from giving up). Haven’t had the spillage problems some people commented on in the reviews section.
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/e100/index.cfm
(Also, this post means I’ll never again go into the Alewife Whole Foods without looking for Klaw.)
Appreciate all the help. I’ll have to find a good Indian grocery and experiment with that. If no luck, I’ll look into rice cookers.
Charcoal grill.
BSK: I don’t think it’s the rice but probably your technique. I just buy bulk rice at Whole Foods, brown and white, jasmine basmati short-grain long-grain, doesn’t matter. What exactly goes wrong when you make rice?
Keith, not sure where else to post this, but if you have a WTF of the day, this has to be it.
What on earth is wrong with Griffin and what does he have against you or Bart Given???
From Richard Griffin’s mailbag today: http://thestar.blogs.com/baseball/2009/04/mail-bag-2.html
Q: Richard,
Is it just me or did someone (see Paul Beeston) roll up your newspaper, smack J.P. Ricciardi across the nose and tell him to behave this season? He no longer does the Wednesday post-game Q & A on the Fan590, and has been persona non-grata on TV thus far. It seems that he was told that he’s not the show, so step out of the spotlight that his ego clearly craves. Is this the beginning of the end for the slickest G.M. to never lead a team to the playoffs?
DeShaun, Kozak, Uxbridge, Ont.
A: In 2002 when Ricciardi was hired, Buck Martinez and Carlos Delgado were the public faces of the Jays. He fired Martinez in May and chased Delgado out of town after 2004. At that point, Ricciardi became the one and only face of the Jays. They wheeled him out and put a mic in his hands for every major Jays event. Fans were gushing. It was like a six-month pep rally with an assistant GM (now a blogger) and an Ivy League stats guy off on the side waving the pom-poms.
Hey Keith, my wife and I have one of the practically mythical reservations at Momofuku Ko this weekend, do you want me to send you a rundown afterward or has someone you know already been?
Griffin’s not wrong in calling me an Ivy League stats guy – that was my job, and I did go to an Ivy League school, which I’m sure grates on somewhat like Richard, who views himself as a sort of unrecognized genius. He did get Given’s job wrong (traveling secretary).
Griffin’s main problem is that he can get some macro things right – he said from the start that Ricciardi was selling snake oil, and I think that opinion has been vindicated over the last seven years – but can’t express them in any meaningful way. He’s an awful writer; he’s a misanthrope; and his views on baseball are so wrong that they sound like they came from a Michael Lewis-penned caricature. So even when there’s a kernel of truth in what he says – there was absolutely an attempt to build a cult of personality around JP back in 2002 – he obscures it with bad prose, needless vitriol, and ignorance of how baseball teams typically market themselves to fans.
as someone who knows very little about the bj’s- why would there be an cult of personality around jp? and why is that bad?
According to Given he was ultimately an Assistant GM.
Michael: At the time to which Griffin is referring (the beginning of the Ricciardi Era), Given was the traveling secretary.
Keith – thanks for the direct and prompt response.
I’m curious to know your views on the Toronto media market. As someone who spent time there during years where the Raps were constantly about Vince, the Leafs made playoff runs and the Jays struggled to get out from under the 24/7 Hockey talk even in the summer, are Torontonians being snowed by media types who profess how tough a market it is? A lot of columnists/radio types here talk about teams being covered by 4 dailies, national all-sports tv and radio networks, and claim it’s a much bigger market than people realize and it makes it difficult for sports teams.
why a cult of personality is bad => marge vs. the monorail.
you want to evaluate your GM based on what he actually does. you don’t want your opinion of him clouded by anything else. when you sell a GM and make him into a demi-god, it colors people’s able to accurately perceive his actions as a GM, which is all that actually matters.
big baby- excellent reference. I was curious if the C.O.P. came from the BJ organization or from the press.
People sell themselves as a Brand these days, and JP certainly has a brand. Creating that C.O.P. is a great way to have longevity and I am curious of its origins. Without knowing much at all of the situation it is certainly interesting.
I live in Arizona and Eric Byrnes wrangled himself an outstanding contract for himself by selling his Eric Byrnes brand. He is pretty entertaining, but a marginal baseball player. Baseball is in the business of entertainment. Good entertainers have a C.O.P.
Wait, if you were the stats guy, who was the Assistant-GM-turned-blogger?
brian, taking a silly cheap shot here, but you don’t know much about bj’s? (Har har, couldn’t resist)
KLaw, for the rice, generally I cook it the prescribed time. When it’s “done” or getting close to done, I’ll check and see a lot of liquid in the pot. I’ll turn up the heat a tad, it will absorb the liquid, but still not be fully cooked (still too much bite) in the center. Is the heat too low to start and than too high at the end? Just more time? Does it need to “rest” to absorb the water better? I’m lost.
I’m Indian, and I use a rice cooker, and so does my mom. We used to cook it on the stove, but really, the cookers work really damn well unless you like the rice on the bottom of the pot to be a little burnt and cripsy (some people do). Don’t feel guilty about getting one. Plus, they’re like 15 bucks — 1 part rice, 2 parts water, dash of salt, tablespoon of oil, and you’re good to go.
Bring the water with rice and salt to a boil, reduce heat to ~medium, and cover. The mixture should be just simmering. If you go 14-15 minutes and the water isn’t all absorbed, either you used too much water, or your heat was too low.
I don’t use a rice cooker because I rarely make just plain rice. I nearly always use onion and then toast the rice in the fat/onion mixture. I do like the fluffy rice you get from steaming in a rice cooker, but I prefer the complex flavors of a pilaf.
I guess I know what my next recipe post should be.
I definitely was too low on the heat. I thought I remember you (but possibly someone else) talking about how simmer does not mean “boil the hell” out of something, so I probably low-balled and turned to low. I’ll experiment with medium and see how it goes. Does the 2-1 water-rice ratio still hold?
Now I need to hear more about toasting the rice in a fat/onion mixture. And yes, pilaf! I love a good pilaf but know there is far more to it than just throwing veggies into rice, right?
brian-
KLaw just shut down the other threat (and rightfully so), but I do need to apologize for some of my “outburst”. I was wrong to conflate some of your viewpoints which I found disagreeable and possibly twinged with ideas I did not like with you being an outright racist. This was not productive to the conversation nor was it productive to my end of hoping to end racism. Shouting you down wasn’t right, so I apologize. I’m not going to get into the other end of the conversation (right vs wrong, ethics vs morals) because that is another ball of wax, but I did want to own up to my poor handling of the situation. I didn’t engage your points and instead just “got loud” mainly because I have such strong feelings on this topic, but am still in my infancy of best understanding the ways to productively undo what ails me about society. Best of luck, good sir (especially with the BJ’s).
Now if we can just get this fascist KLaw to stop silencing discord…
BSK- greatly appreciate the apology. I certainly am not exhonorated and have culpability. My apologies extend to you also. Your last post was really fantastic and I’m sad that we don’t get to engage in that discussion. I embrace relativism and in our puritanical society, that’s frowned upon. Much like Rocker;)
Doesn’t every man want to know more about the BJ’s?
I think if Riccardi had foresight to create his C.O.P. form the very beginning, that’s pretty smart. He is in a job with a short shelf life, yet he has the advantage by shear force of his brand to keep his job longer than he should have. GM’s sometimes seem to exist in name only, yet he was/is out there in the public spotlight. If Griffin levied that criticism then the previous paragraph is void.
Finally, during bachelorhood a steamer seemed to work better than a rice cooker for me. The multiplicity of use with the steamer seemed a greator utility.
Hmm, did you miss the double-entedre of BJs? Or do you just REALLY like talking Riccardi?
Apparently I love Riccardi…love Riccardi. And the Bj’s. Just not together.
http://deadspin.com/5201891/toronto-were-not-in-creighton-anymore
I use a rice cooker unless I am making a complex rice dish (like jambalaya)there are ways to add good flavors like rendered fat and onions into a rice cooker and get good results. However the toasted rice flavor is missed.
I had never used a rice cooker until my roommate (who is filipino) introduced me, but it is a good unitasker if there is such a thing.
Who wants to make me dinner?
Hostile crowd in the chat today Keith. How many people were going to ask questions by saying “Gun to your head….” ?
I don’t think anyone thought Murphy would be this bad defensively. I actually feel bad for the guy, it’s embarrassing.
Any plans to check out Citifield this year? I got an extra upper deck seat for ya. You can’t see right field, but the beers of the world stand makes the trip worth it. Atleast I keep telling myself that.
Made the steak tips recipe last night (slightly modified; no chile pepper and grilled it in the marinade rather than with a dry rub). Very nice indeed, will be doing again.