This meal really packs a flavor punch. The sweet and salty steak rounds out the spicy and tangy soba for a great weeknight dinner. We split this between two for dinner, but it would be very easy to double for a larger group. The chuck eye steak is great in this dish and is also relatively inexpensive. There is a lengthy explanation of the process here, but simply cut to the chase below and make it this week! 

Ingredients for Scallion Grilled Steak:

• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1/4 cup Tamari sauce
• 2 Tablespoons Rice Wine vinegar
• 1 Teaspoon Fish sauce
• 3 Tablespoon sugar
• 3 minced scallions (white and green parts) + 1 chopped scallion for garnish
• 1 Tablespoon canola oil
• 1 lb chuck eye steak 

Ingredients for Spicy Basil Soba:

• 2 Jalapenos, cored and seeded
• 3 cloves garlic
• Juice from 1/2 large lime (approximately 2.5 Tablespoons)
• 2 Tablespoons dry white wine
• 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 cup snow peas
• 1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 8 oz soba noodles
• Salt to taste
• 1 cup washed basil leaves

Process for Steak Marinade:

• The night before you're eating, prepare the marinade
• In a medium bowl whisk together the minced garlic, tarmari, rice wine vinegar, fish sauce, sugar, 3 minced scallions, and canola oil. Set aside.
• Remove any long or large strips of fat from the check eye steak. Reserve for oiling your grill grates.
• Slice the chuck eye steak into 1/4-inch thick strips, slicing across the grain of the meat. Discard any large pieces of fat.
• Put the steak strips in a zip-lok bag, pour in the reserved marinade, and mix well. 
• Squeeze out as much air form the bag as possible, seal, and set in the refrigerator overnight (12-24 hrs)

Process for Grilled Steak and Soba:

• 30 minutes before you're ready to eat, take the steak out of the refrigerator and bring to room temperature
• Get your grill going to medium-hot (you can hold your hand an inch above the grill grate for 4-5 seconds before pulling away).
• Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the soba, and cook for 5-6 minutes. Drain, set aside (you will reheat these in a skillet later). 
• In a blender combine the jalapenos, garlic, lime juice, wine, and brown sugar. Blend until liquified, 30-60 seconds. Set aside. 
• When the grill is preheated, scrape the grates clean, and oil the grates with the reserved fat from the chuck steak (if you don't have much fat, just use some canola oil on a paper towel).
• Place the strips of beef perpendicular to the grill grates laying the long strips across the grates to keep the meat from falling through.
• Keep the grill cover off, and grill for 4-5 minutes being watchful for any flareups
• Using tongs turn each strip of beef over and grill for another 4-5 minutes. 
• After a total of 8-10 minutes, you should have some nicely caramelized beef! Remove to a plate, and cover loosely with foil for 5 minutes.  
• While the steak is grilling, warm the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat.
• Sautee the snow peas and red bell pepper until starting to brown slightly, about 5 minutes.
• Add the reserved sauce from the blender, cooked soba, and basil leaves.
• Stir/toss to combine well, and cook for 1-2 minutes. Just enough to heat everything through. 
• Plate the soba combination on two plates, top each with half the beef strips, and garnish with the remaining chopped scallion and a pinch of salt. 
• Enjoy! 

 

What to do with chuck steaks, actually. That was the question I needed to solve after leaving Kinderhook Farm with a couple "chuck eye steaks" in my hands. They were a gift from Lee, and came with a simple request in return: figure out a good recipe for a chuck eye steak. Now I'm relatively well versed in cooking steaks (rib eyes, porterhouse, strip, etc), and also with chuck in general (chuck roasts, ground chuck, etc.), but what does one do with a chuck steak? Most often a steak can be seared quickly on a grill to get a nice crust going and then finished off to the side pretty quickly... say within 8-12 minutes total cooking time depending on thickness. But chuck is a considerably more tough muscle doing a lot of work for its cow, and is usually slow cooked or roasted for hours before its tender.... as shown in my recent chuck smoking for smoked beef chili. I wanted to find a way to cook these on the grill because Lee generally has these available in the summer months when people don't want to make a pot roast with a chuck roast. And its kind of hard to slow grill a 1-to-2 inch steak... so i needed to find another method for rendering this tougher cut of beef. Marinating was the obvious choice, though i wasn't sure if it would tenderize it enough so I opted for two options:

1. A korean-inspired sweet/salty marinade with pre-cut strips
2. A steakhouse-style rich/acidic marinade for an entire steak

Both were surprisingly good, though cooking times were dramatically different from what I expected. Here was my approach: 

I was grilling these steaks as a taste-test, so prepared both dishes at the same time. But before I could really see what I had on my hands, i needed to actually see the steaks clear of their vacuum packs. After thawing the steaks in water, it was immediately apparent they had a nice marbling to them throughout, but also featured a sizable amount of fat/connective gunk along one side. While I'd usually want this extra fat when slow-roasting, I figured it would only cause too many flare-ups on the grill and we'd cut it away once on our plates anyway. So I sliced off the long strip of fat, and saved it to oil the grill grates when I set to cooking. A few before and after shots of each steak: 

First up was a Korean-inspired grilled beef I first tried this summer with a rib steak. That was a wonderful meal, and I thought cutting the meat into strips raw combined with the substantial marinating time could do wonders for this chuck steak. So I set to making the marinade which consisted of minced garlic, chopped scallion, tamari sauce, rice wine vinegar, fish sauce, sugar, and canola oil (recipe will come soon can be found here). Here's a shot of the marinade: 

I sliced the steak cross-grain into 1/4-inch thick strips, discarding any large clumps of fat along the way. I then tossed this into a zip-lock bag along with the marinade, squeezed out as much air and set in the fridge overnight:  The next day I brought the steak/marinade mixture to room temperature while I got the grill going red-hot. After cleaning and oiling the grates (with that leftover chuck fat), I carefully placed the strips across the grates of the grill trying to keep any meat from falling through. I then grilled these over a medium-to-hot heat for 2 minutes per side as I had done with the rib steak, but I was left with essentially raw strips of steak under a crusted exterior... so I kept going and ended up with about 10 minutes of cooking time.... kind of shocking for 1/4 inch thick strips of beef. I was rewarded with a greatly caramelized mound of beef strips: 
While the steak was cooking I made some soba noodels with snow peas and red bell pepper in a spicy basil sauce (that recipe coming soo too can also be found here):  I served the steak on top of the soba noodles with scallions as a garnish, and I have to say this was one of my favorite steak meals to date. It doesn't satisfy the big steak desire I often have (you know, sitting down to a big juicy steak with a sharp knife and a bottle of wine), but it was absolutely outstanding. Sweet, tender, beefy meat combined with a nice spiced basil sauce over the soba noodles... really delicious. Here are a few shots of the final plates: 

Next up, the steakhouse style. I made a simple marinade of 1/4 cup balsamic, 1/4 cup worcestershire, and 2 Tablespoons olive oil. I flipped the steak in this marinade a few times to coat, then pressed 1 Tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves (rosemary would have been my first choice but we had thyme on hand) into both sides of the steak, covered, and set in the fridge overnight.

The next day I brought the steaks to room temp, while I got the grill going red-hot. I was cooking these with the steak strips above, and I grilled over high heat for 6 minutes a side as I would normally do for a steak 1.5 inches thick. But it still felt very raw, and when I cut inside to check it was completely rare. So i kept it on for another 3 minutes per side, still over a high heat. That's close to 20 minutes on the grill (ok, its 18), which would have turned a similarly sized  strip or rib steak into a piece of leather. Unsure of myself the entire time, I did my best to wait it out and was rewarded with a beautifully crisp exterior, and a juicy medium-rare interior:

I sliced it cross-grain (again), and served it up with a horseradish/mustard dipping sauce. This steakhouse style approach was the most surprising of the two preparations I tested today. I make this steak all the time with a $22/pound steak, and while that is absolutely amazing I wouldn't say it is actually twice as good as this $10/pound cut. The chuck steak provides a very beefy flavor, and combined with the marinade makes a very powerful steak meal. Really delicious. 

I'm definitely not giving up an occasional rib steak dinner, but these chuck eye steaks are half the cost and were very, very good. Much better than I thought they would be, and still considerably better than most steaks I've picked up at the supermarket. If you see a chuck eye steak at your local farmer's market, pick it up and give one of these meals a shot. And if you hit Kinderhook Farm, tell 'em BBQ BIlly sent you. Enjoy!