Getting Daring . . .

I am an unabashed carnivore. I love good meat, hence why I schlep 15 miles round trip every couple of weeks to a really good butcher near the countryside. Alas, this whole Crohn’s business has meant that I have been mostly relegated to chicken and turkey, with a bit of venison and extra lean beef mince, for the past 6 months. Sigh.

However, this weekend, I really craved steak. A good proper, juicy steak. I haven’t had steak since last November. In fact, I can even tell you the exact date and place that I ate it. And I paid for it dearly for several days afterwards. But oh, how badly I wanted steak on Saturday.

My beloved butcher had already closed for the Bank Holiday when this craving hit, so I had to settle for a Sainsbury’s steak. Fortunately, they had their Angus beef sirloin on offer. If Scotland declares independence in the autumn and end up outside of the EU trade area for a while, the loss of Angus beef at a good price would be one of the biggest shames. One would think threats like this would get the English more interested in what is going on north of the border, but alas . . .

Beef in and of itself is not a problem with a low-residue diet, the problem is the fat and gristle content of the cut. I generally prefer leaner cuts of beef anyway, and my first choice for steak is usually rump, although sirloin is mighty tasty too. I have a friend who “likes a good chew” and will always go for the more chewy t-bone or rib-eye steak, but that has too much fat and gristle to go with the low residue thing. There was a good layer of fat on the sirloin I bought. I left it on to cook to get the flavour, but didn’t eat it (I never do anyway).

I like to marinade my steak for a few hours before I cook it. By the time I got home on Saturday, I didn’t have time to marinade it for long, but I still let it sit in marinade for about 20 minutes while I pre-heated the grill and did a few other things about the kitchen. My personal preference for a steak marinade is as follows (this is per steak, so increase quantities to reflect the amount of meat you are cooking)

1 tbsp of olive oil
1 tbsp of rice vinegar
1 tbsp of soy sauce
1 chopped clove of garlic
A bunch of peppercorns

Mix together and pour over the steak and leave it for a while, turning the steak once.

Now the garlic and peppercorns are not really allowed on low-residue, so I substituted the peppercorns with fresh ground black pepper. I still used the garlic, but just made sure that I took it off the steak before I cooked it.

 I will fully admit that I have developed a taste for bloody meat (not that I’m a goth or anything) as I’ve gotten older. Not rare, but medium-rare is beautiful. Alas, the low-residue thing always talks about “well-cooked” meat. I just can’t bring myself to cook a steak well-done, it’s just wrong, but I did leave it on longer than I would have liked.

I removed the steak from the marinade and cooked it under a medium-hot grill for about 10 minutes, turning once. This brought the steak to medium well. 

It was gorgeous! And I figured that if I was going to be daring, I was going to go whole hog and have chips with it too. Oh steak and chips, how I have missed you!

Thankfully, I did not have to pay a terrible price for this steak. Although my tummy was a tad grumpy about it, it generally went down very well. And I suspect that my iron levels are thanking me for it too.