Cory's Spot: $0.50 Steak!

For those of you who haven't watched Alton Brown's Good Eats on Food Network, you need to give it a try. Beware, though, AB is a geek at heart, and you'll know it the first time you see one of his teaching aides.

In any case, on a recent rerun of Good Eats, AB took plain old bottom round and a Jaccard meat tenderizer and made his own cube steak for Salisbury Steak and Chicken-Fried Steak and such. I decided I wanted to give this a try, so I bought a nice bottom round roast, cut it into 1/2" slices, Jaccarded the heck out of the slices, and froze it all for future use.

Well...I froze all but one piece. That one piece got seasoned with Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper and drizzled with Worchesterchesterchestershire Sauce and left to marinate for 30 min. or so. While that was getting happy, I preheated my new cast-iron grill pan, and then I introduced the steak and the grill to one another. A few minutes and a flip, a turn, and a flip later (to get the groovy cross-hatch grill marks), my steak was done.

It was just a snack, so I had it on its own - no veggies or tubers to get in the way. Ok...I did pour some A1, but that ended up going to waste - the steak was a bit chewy (What do you expect from $1.48/lb. beef? The Jaccard can only do so much!), but nice and juicy, with a warm pink center and a nice sear on the outside. It didn't need any extra sauce.

Now I know this isn't a recipe, per sé, but it is a mighty tasty way to make use of a very cheap cut of beef. Oh, and cast iron...I won't get started on cast iron right now, but suffice it to say, I haven't used the old stainless steel pots and pans any more then necessary for quite a while now!

Thanks to Travis and Melanie for getting me to give the new Diet Berries and Cream Dr. Pepper a try and to David for the idea of using the mini Santoku as a steak knife.