- Beef steak originates in Scandinavia but was perfected in 16th Century Venice and 18th-century New York!
- There’re various beef steak cuts, such as the Flank, T-Bone, New York, Sirloin, Bottom Sirloin, Rib-eye, and more!
- Beef steaks are high in calories, around 250 kcal per 100-gram well-cooked steak!
- You can combine your beef steak recipe with multiple beverages, including wine, beer, cocktails, or juices.
A beef steak recipe is something you know by heart when you’re heading for a summer vacation or a trip! There are hundreds of different beef steak recipes, and the popularity of this summer dish is unmatched throughout the United States!
Nonetheless, like any other recipe, the beef steak recipe has its history. The word “steak” is of Scandinavian origin, dating from the middle of the 15th century, while the Venetians were the first to cook beef steaks and serve them in public places.
However, it was in the mid-1800s when the beef steak recipes gained momentum across the United States. Even though barbecue is a culinary result of a cultural mixture between native Carribeans and Africans, New York restaurants and chiefs quickly began to serve it as the number one dish on their menus!
Today, there are tens of beef steak recipes you can find on how to best prepare a delicious steak. You can cook a particular beef steak recipe from different meat in various marinades and use multiple grilling techniques to make it perfect! In this article, we’ll explore exactly that – which is the best beef steak recipe for a summer barbecue!
Understanding Beef Steak
There are tons of different cuts of beef steaks and barbecue recipes! For example, you can use multiple recipes, such as the beef steak tagalog recipe, beef burger steak recipe, and beef steak Filipino recipe, to cook the beef according to your taste. However, choosing the right beef steak cuts is crucial for making any of these recipes.
You can choose between various beef cuts, including the sirloin steak, the tri-tip steak, the flank, or the rib-eye steak. The difference between each of these is from which part of the animal the meat comes.
Each has specific characteristics and factors you should consider before setting it on fire. Following are some of the main features of each beef steak cut and how it can affect your summer grilling performance:
- Sirloin steak – The sirloin steak has a beefy flavor. Even though sirloin steaks are famous for their tenderness, these cuts are also known for their high level of marbling, making them juicy and quite delicate for cooking.
- Bottom sirloin – The bottom sirloin makes for the best beef steak recipes. The reason for this is its enlarged size and tenderness. You must be careful not to overcook it to keep the juices.
- New York Steak – Juicy and tender piece of meat, which you should cook for a shorter period at a lower temperature (about 135 F).
- Rib-eye steak – Thick, juicy, and marbling meat cut from the rib. You can cook it on medium fire to retain the juices!
- Flank steak – Cut from the belly, full of flavor and chewiness!
Preparing the Beef Steak
If you’re asking yourself how to cook beef steak, there are hundreds of answers! You should first start by seasoning and marinating the meat. The most frequently used ingredients for marinating beef steak are salt, pepper, and rosemary. The magic of the beef steak recipes is that you often don’t need more than that – even salt and meat are sometimes sufficient.
You can marinate it in garlic flavors, spices, herbs, and oils. Moreover, you can use some of the sauces for marinating your steak, such as the special barbecue sauce. Before placing the meat on the grill, a great tip to consider is deciding which ingredients to use for marinating the steak to accentuate its qualities. Wrap the marinated steak and leave it refrigerated the previous night for at least 2 hours.
Preparing the grill and cooking the steak is your next step! However, there’re many grilling techniques, such as adjusting the cooking time and the temperature, flipping the steak, and getting perfect grill marks.
You can set the cooking time to 5 minutes for raw, 6 to 7 minutes for medium, or 10 to 12 minutes for well-cooked. Heat the grill to about 550 degrees for perfect grill marks. If you want a juicy crust, flip the steak every 30 seconds or leave it for longer if you prefer it well-cooked. Following are some tips on how to make beef steak perfectly done:
- Consider the steak type;
- Heat the grill beforehand;
- Lower the temperature during grilling;
- Don’t flip too much;
- Keep an eye on the coloring.
Side Dishes to Complement the Beef Steak
If you’re wondering how to cook beef steak, there are only two steps: applying marinade and grilling the steak! It’s the perfect summer barbecue recipe because you can make it juicy, dry, or overcooked – any way you like it! You can also apply tens of different marinades and sauces to make it juicier, spicier, or sweeten it up!
However, beef steak recipes are also famous because of their compatibility with numerous side dishes, such as salads, potatoes, vegetables, and herbs. The steak ingredients to enrich and intensify the flavors are cucumbers, potatoes, avocados, lettuce, boiled corn, caesar salad, and more. Nonetheless, when you choose a particular beef steak recipe, you should consider the meat and marinade characteristics.
For example, if you’ve marinated your steak with barbecue sauce or hot spices, you’d want a refreshing lettuce or cucumber salad on the side. On the other hand, if you’re cooking a beef burger steak recipe, you can add onion rings or fresh pickles. With a beef steak tagalog recipe, you can always experiment with well-cooked rice or mashed potatoes.
The essential aspect of the beef steak ingredients and procedure is balancing the flavors and textures. The texture impacts our sensory impressions of eating a particular steak type. That’s why culinary experts suggest we carefully choose the flavoring and marinade according to the beef texture. The marinade and seasoning can enhance the flavor. Depending on the texture, you can use mustard, cumin, curry, onion, garlic, and dry herbs.
Beverage Pairings
To serve the best beef steak recipe, you must know which beverages to pair with the particular recipe. Even though you can combine the barbecue steak with your favorite spirit or juice, the barbecue enthusiasts recommend beverages, such as wines, beers, whiskeys, and martinis.
Cocktails hold an exclusive place in the heart of many American barbecue lovers! Manhattan, Whiskey Sour, and the Old Fashioned are the most popular cocktails to mix with a beef steak Filipino or a beef burger steak recipe. Moreover, barbecue lovers prefer to drink white, red, or semi-sweet wine to enhance the meat’s flavors. These wines go perfectly with juicy and tender steaks like Sirloin and New York.
Lastly, beer is the number one beverage option to combine with a beef steak recipe. Beer can balance the flavors of the meat and provide you with a refreshing sensation after a chunk of beef steak tagalog recipe or other spicy recipes!
Nevertheless, when choosing what to drink with your beef steak, you should enhance and enrich the meat and marinade’s flavors. For instance, whisky can help you balance the meat’s richness, and its smokiness goes great with a well-cooked steak. Additionally, beer can slightly neutralize intense spices and let you feel the texture and marbles of the meat. Red wine matches savory steaks, while white wine cuts through the steak’s richness and texture.
The best tip we can give you to choose the right beverage is to consider the texture, spices, marinades, and seasoning.
Catering to Different Dietary Needs
Nowadays, many people are following prescribed or voluntary diets for various health purposes. The most common diet among adults is low-calorie or weight-loss, and a beef steak is high in calories. Nutrition experts say that within a 100-gram piece of well-cooked beef steak, there are about 250 beef steak calories.
That’s why many people across the States are trying to avoid the beef steak and the high-calorie intake. They usually prefer alternative beef steak cuts, lower in calories and complementary to their diets.
Some common alternative beef steak cuts for people on a diet are sirloin tip-side steak, top-round steak, filet mignon, and bottom-round steak. The meat recipes with ingredients and procedures for these cuts are the same as New York, Sirloin, or T-Bone steak. The only difference is that these cuts are from the body areas where there are the least fats and calories.
The biggest problem emerges with vegetarians and vegans who wouldn’t like to taste the magic of barbecue and steaks. Currently, more than 5% of the population is vegan or vegetarian.
That’s why you’ll need to know some catering tips for vegans around the barbecue. Firstly, you mustn’t cook the steak and the vegetarian food on the same grill. This way, you’ll protect the person from ingesting fats, calories, and other beef ingredients. Next, you shouldn’t use the same utensils for both products.
Lastly, vegan and beef steak recipes have a mutual side of food – nachos, guacamole, and salsa dips! You can enjoy them together while you combine them with your delicious steak and you prepare some vegan soy steaks for your friends.
Serving and Presentation
The last step of preparing a delicious beef steak recipe is proper serving and an appealing presentation! For this purpose, you can use many side dishes. You can use them to intensify the coloring or add a stylistic touch to your barbecue specialty.
Here’re some tips and ideas on how to choose the steak ingredients for an appealing presentation and an attractive serving:
- Consider the cuts – You can choose the presentation ingredients for steak according to the size and symmetry of the cuts. Simply said, some steak cuts look better when sliced and placed on a wide plate than others.
- Experiment with colors – Depending on how much your steak is cooked, it can change color and texture. Find the most suitable and eye-catching hues. Culinary experts usually use brightly-colored vegetables and barbecue sauces for decorating the beef steak recipe.
- Be a little bit picky about the serving – Place only a few additional ingredients on the plate. It will look more minimalistic and appealing while maintaining the original flavor of the beef steaks.
- Use garnish – A beef steak recipe isn’t complete without the lively colors of garnish, like salsa, herbs, salads, greens, and herb butter. The garnish will also intensify the flavor of the meat.
- Experiment with the shapes – After you become a master in how to cook beef steak, you can proceed to experiment with the shapes of the garnish and other ingredients.
There are also many other ideas for a unique dining experience, including serving sizzling meat or specially packed in other ingredients.
Final Words
There are numerous beef steak recipes. You can prepare more lightly served and seasoned Flank beef steak recipes for dinner or grill some huge sirloin steaks for a daytime party. You can choose between many types of beef steaks and combine them with various fruits, vegetables, and even cocktails. Here’s a detailed recipe for the perfect summer beef steak:
- Mix ½ cup of lime juice, 3 tablespoons of water, 3 tablespoons of minced onions, ½ teaspoon salt, 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil, 1 tablespoon of minced ginger, and 1 tablespoon of minced garlic.
- Marinade the steak and leave it for 6 hours in a food-safe bag.
- Afterward, cut thin slices into the beef.
- Keep it on the grill for 30 seconds on both sides, a maximum of 5 minutes (to avoid overcooking).
However, the perfect summer barbecue depends on the beef steak ingredients, such as the marinade, side dishes, beverages, and grill techniques. Moreover, you have to beware of the temperature and the impact it has on the beef steak calories, the texture, and the overall taste.
That’s why it’s important to choose and mix up high-quality ingredients that will add to the flavor and let you feel the texture and all the juices. Nonetheless, you shouldn’t forget to address the dietary needs of other people and serve the steak as they like it!
