June 19, 2008
Cooking
My loving wife listened to my requests this year, and for Father’s Day I received not another coat, but rather a new kitchen knife. For those of you who are interested in such matters the knife she purchased for me was this one. It isn’t anything terribly fancy (or expensive), but it is a huge improvement over the $30 Walmart special we had before (by $30, I mean the entire 23 piece set).
So now that I have a new knife, I am constantly looking for excuses to use it. I am not much of a cook, but I like to pretend. Lately, one of my favorite things to make is a “meat” marinade. We have mostly used chicken as the meat, but tonight I tried something new… BEEF! It’s in the fridge right now and will be ready for frying or bbqing up tomorrow evening. I really like the recipe because it is so extremely simple… as most marinades are. Anyway, for those of you that are interested this is the basic concept. I am going to use the 1 cup of X version, I usually just kinda guess on some of the stuff (and usually make a double or triple batch):
- Some meat
- 1 Cup - Cooking Oil
- 1 Cup - Soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp - Vinegar
- 3 Tbsp - Ketchup
- Some Garlic
- Some Onion
- Some Fresh Ground Pepper
The oil, soy, vinegar and ketchup are pretty much all you need (acid, fat, salt) to season the meat, but that’s boring so I add the rest. I am a big fan of fresh garlic and onions, but you could certainly use another variety (dried or bottled). You could also try other good flavorful bits… ginger comes to mind immediately, but there are plenty of others I’m sure.
The type of meat to use is completely up to you. I prefer simple things… boneless chicken breast, London broil, flat-iron steak… you get the picture. However, it’s easy enough to substitute anything else. I know personally that I have been itching to try it out on a couple good fillets of salmon. I would recommend choosing your meat and vegetables/spices so that they complement each other.
Take all of the ingredients except for the meat and mix them together… I use a big pot that can hold everything once it’s all done. You could also do it in a zip-lock bag if you so desire. How you prepare the meat has a lot to do with what type you have as well as how you are planning on cooking it. For instance, we are planning on either doing some stir-fry or perhaps kabobs with the meat we are using, so we cut it up into nice bite-sized chunks. You could take a whole piece of steak and just marinate the whole thing then broil it and slice it into nice thin strips. It’s really up to you at this point.
Let the meat marinate for as long as you want and cook it up when you are ready.
Anydangway, I am happy that I’m going to have some tasty dinner tomorrow. I just hope that we’re able to do it over at my parent’s house.
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