Korean Beef

One vital skill to have when meal planning is flexibility. Not the bend over and touch your toes variety, but the fly off the seat of your britches flexibility. Tonight one such night. When planning our menu for the week I did not take into account the fact that I would have a MASSIVE eight page paper due soon. Then when Saturday rolled around, I was half way through the day before I realized I did not get the planned dinner into the crock pot. DRATS! Fortunately, Hero said he would take care of dinner. Take care of dinner he did!

Tonight my culinary talented husband made Korean beef. We did not eat it with the noodles as suggested in the recipe, instead we enjoyed it over a bed of rice with sautéed mushrooms and grilled red onions. Hero added garlic to the marinade. Also, instead of frying the meat as directed in the recipe, Hero grilled our skirt steak and then sliced it thinly against the grain to insure a tender morsel with each bite.

While we enjoyed our Korean beef, we did decide that next time we would like it with a smidge less heat and more sweetness. If you have ever enjoyed Korean cuisine you know they are hugely into pairing tastes--hot & sweet.

Enjoy!

Fast Marinated Flank Steak

This is one of our favorite grilled dinners. I cut the recipe out of the , Great American Home Cooking magazine years ago. I will post the recipe as it was found in that magazine, but I will add notes in red on how we have changed the recipe to suit our tastes.

Fast Marinated Flank Steak
Marinade:

• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar We use a lot more than this, probably close to 1/2 cup
• 2 tsp each olive oil and mustard We use a lot more of each of these, probably closer to 2TBsp of the oil and at least a 1/4 cup of the mustard. Dijion mustard gives the taste a little bit of warmth, but we prefer to use ground mustard for a tangy taste.
• 2 garlic cloves, minced Again we use more, usually about 4 cloves
• 1/2 tsp each salt and pepper

1. Mix the marinade in a resealable plastic bag. Add steak; marinate for 30 minutes. We have found that we like this to have a strong taste, you can not get that in 30 minutes. We prefer to marinate this steak for at least 2 hours in the refrigerator, the longer the better. HOWEVER, not longer than 24 hours.
2. Pour the marinade into a small saucepan. Boil the marinade for 1 - 2 minutes, then spoon over the steak. We found that since we marinate the steak longer, we didn't need or like to do this.
   
3. Broil the steak 4 inches from the heat, 6 minutes per side for medium-rare. We prefer to grill this steak. Flank steak is a steak that is meant to be eaten medium-rare to rare. You can cook it longer if you need to eliminate any trace of "rare", but the longer you cook it the tougher it will get. Let the steak stand for 5 minutes, then thinly slice on an angle. You want to cut Flank steak against the grain to help with it's natural toughness, when cutting against the grain it will be almost fork tender. The thinner you can slice it the better.

I like to serve this with mashed potatoes, usually Ranch Mashed Potatoes or Garlic Mashed Potatoes.