marinade

Grill Your Way to a Healthy 4th!

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Hello, dear friends! Yes, it has been a while since I’ve posted, and I apologize for that. I have been a frantic person lately trying to finish the renovations to our forever home in time for Jacqueline’s graduation party, which was this past weekend. I am relieved to say that all of that is over, it went without a hitch, and I am ready to get back to writing my blog again.

So, an important topic is our upcoming 4th of July holiday. I recently developed a recipe that would be PERFECT for the fabulous 4th; marinated and grilled sirloin steak. I just sort of stumbled upon the idea for this because I was buying meat from my favorite Royer farm at the Fishers farmers market and I thought, “I haven’t used sirloin because it’s a tougher cut of meat, but I know it’s flavorful so I want to see what I can do with it.” It was a challenge to myself which I always love, kind of like Chopped (that’s a cooking competition show on Food Network for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about).

Here’s the good thing about sirloin, it’s a lean and nutritious cut of beef. It’s very high in protein, a 3 ounce portion has 25 grams of complete protein, meaning it contains all the essential amino acids. This macronutrient is essential for cell rebuilding, immune function, and muscle growth. Protein has a high satiety rating, ie it makes you feel full for a longer period of time. Sirloin is also low in calories; a 3 ounce portion has only 180 calories. Sirloin contains 33 percent of the RDA for niacin, 26 percent of B-12, 30 percent of selenium, 30 percent of zinc, and 19 percent of phosphorus. Selenium boosts the immune system and is important for thyroid function. Zinc is also an immune booster, and it helps with wound healing and cell production also. Phosphorus works in concert with calcium to strengthen bones and teeth, and it also helps to filter waste through the kidneys.

Another advantage to sirloin is that it is a relatively inexpensive cut of beef. It is around $6 per pound as compared to New York strip which is $9.50 per pound.

Now here’s the not so good thing about sirloin, it can be a very tough cut of meat unless it is prepared properly.  However, never fear my wonderful readers because I’m going to tell you my secret to tender sirloin every time. It involves preparing and cooking the meat in just the right way so that it turns out perfectly. Here we go!

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  • Prepare the marinade- This type of meat needs to be marinated for 24 hours in the fridge before cooking it. My marinade is very simple, 1 cup of Dale’s steak seasoning (can purchase in any grocery store), 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons herbs of your choice, 2 tablespoons minced garlic, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, and 1 teaspoons of red wine vinegar for approximately 3 pounds of sirloin. The acid in the vinegar helps break down the fibers in the meat, lending to a more tender steak, but too much and the meat can get mushy, so a little bit definitely goes a long way. FullSizeRender (180)
  • Dry the meat- After the sirloin sits in the marinade for 24 hours it will be super moist, and it needs to be dried so a good sear can be developed on the outside. Blot the meat with paper towels until the meat is dry.
  • Seasonings-Now more seasonings can be added to develop more flavor. I use 1 tablespoon dried herbs, 1/2 cup red wine, 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, and 1 teaspoon each salt and pepper. I rub the dried seasonings on the steaks, and then combine the wet ingredients to use on the steak as it cooks.
  • Grilling is the preferred cooking method- Here’s why: in order to develop the best flavor, you will need to use an extremely hot grill to sear the meat, followed by grilling at a moderate temperature to cook the meat. Instructions for grilling:
    • Turn all the burners on high and preheat with the lid closed for about 15 minutes.
    • Turn one burner down to medium.
    • Place the steak on the hot burner. Grill until well browned on one side for about 2-3 minutes. This is important to develop the crust. Flip the steaks and grill on other side for 2-3 minutes.
    • Move steaks over to cooler side of the grill. Put the lid down and grill for 5-6 minutes for rare meat, 6-7 minutes for medium rare, and 7-8 minutes for medium. DO NOT OVERCOOK THE MEAT. Overcooking leads to tough meat and remember all we did to try to make our meat tender? Let’s not blow it in the grilling phase!FullSizeRender (186)
  • Let it rest- It is important to allow the steak to rest before cutting so the juices settle back into the meat. Let rest for at least 5 minutes.
  • Cut the Steak- For maximum tenderness cut the sirloin against the grain. The grain is the direction that the muscle fibers are aligned. To cut against the grain means that if the grain runs left to right you would cut up and down, across but not parallel to the grain. Cutting through the fibers shortens them and makes it easier to chew through, since a lot of the hard work of breaking up the muscle fibers has already been done for you.

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Now comes the easy part- eat and enjoy! I served my sirloin with white cannellini and pinto beans (more vitamin B for us!), and a vinegar salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, red bell peppers, onions, and jalapeno peppers. We had grilled barbequed chicken thighs and beets too. Lots of protein and vegetables in this meal! Eating a meal like this abounding with healthy foods will help you live a life of vitality- with Valerie! 🙂

 

Eat Clean, Stay Lean!

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Healthy and pretty too!

Healthy and pretty too!

Well, friends, the kids have all gone back to school and we’ve survived subzero temperatures here in the Midwest so it’s officially the start of a new year. As I’ve said in past posts I do not believe in “resolutions” for the new year but I do try to set some goals for myself. One of those goals is to clean up my diet a bit. I ate quite a few sweets over the holidays, and more carbs (pasta, potatoes, etc) than usual. I feel sluggish and bloated right now. So, it’s time to get back to my healthy way of eating or as I call it, “Eat Clean, Stay Lean”. With that in mind I want to share a great salad that I’m eating right now. It’s tasty and satisfying- and healthy too. It’s particularly good at this time of year because oranges are in season right now in California and Florida, thus they’re readily available. The salad can be made with grapefruit as well if you prefer. My girls brought me a few oranges and grapefruit back from their recent Florida vacation, and they’re so juicy and delicious that I’ve used one in this recipe. I think you’ll really like this salad!

Winter Citrus Salad with Citrus Vinaigrette

Assemble all ingredients first!

Assemble all ingredients first!

1. Assemble ingredients- 1/2 Bag of organic salad greens, 1 orange, 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), 1 teaspoon minced onion, 5 black or Greek olives- pitted, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. This is enough for 2 side salads and will give you some vinaigrette left over.

Cut the skin and pith off the orange!

Cut the skin and pith off the orange!

2. Cut the skin and pith off the orange- First cut down the orange to remove the skin and pith. The pith is the white part and it’s quite bitter so make sure you get it all off.

De skinned and pithed!

De skinned and pithed!

This is what the orange will look like after it’s done. Now it’s ready to supreme.

Making supremes!

Making supremes!

3. Supreme the orange- You supreme (pronounced su- prem’) an orange (or any citrus fruit) when you cut the wedges out of the orange defined by the thin membrane that separates the wedges from each other. It makes for really pretty sections of orange in the salad and preserves the juice for the vinaigrette.

Squeeeeeeeze that orange!

Squeeeeeeeze that orange!

4. Preserve the juice- Now you’re going to squeeze the heck out of the orange into a smaller bowl where you’ll make the vinaigrette. It will produce a ton of orange juice, more than you’d expect so keep squeezing til you can’t squeeze no more! 🙂 Then discard the pulp.

Vinaigrette made!

Vinaigrette made!

5. Make the vinaigrette- Add the minced onion, salt and pepper to your orange juice. Give a quick stir and then add your EVOO while whisking continually until combined. Taste, and add more salt and pepper if needed.

Add oranges and olives to your greens!

Add oranges and olives to your greens!

6. Get your salad ready for the vinaigrette- Add the oranges and olives to your salad greens in a large bowl. Then, pour approximately half the vinaigrette over the salad and toss well. Save the rest of the vinaigrette for future salads. It also tastes really nice added to quinoa or as a marinade for chicken or fish.

And that’s it! This is a delicious and nutritious salad. Flavorwise, you get the sweet/salty combination that I love from the oranges and olives, and the bit of minced onion gives it a nice flavor. Nutritionally, the oranges add a ton of vitamin C, the greens give antioxidants and fiber, and the EVOO and olives add heart healthy monounsaturated fats (MUFA’s). I ate this salad with a leftover pork patty we grilled the other day and a dollop of guacamole. Definitely a meal that works for my “Eat Clean, Stay Lean” goal. Try it, you’ll really like it! It will help you live a life of vitality- with Valerie!

 

 

My 30 minute Labor Day Menu

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Labor Day is a holiday that gives me mixed emotions. First of all, I’m happy the family is home and the kids are off of school, so that’s good. However,
it signals the end of summer and means that winter is right around the corner- snow and cold=yuck! Another good thing is that corn and tomatoes are plentiful right now and throwing something on the grill is an easy endeavor so hours aren’t spent in the kitchen preparing for this holiday meal- Thanksgiving is another story entirely!

This year my brood is spread out for the Labor Day weekend. 2 family weddings in 2 different states, sorority rush for my college students, and out of town travel means that we will likely be eating on the fly somewhere. So I made us an early Labor Day meal before we left home and I’d like to share it with you so you can see how easy it is to throw something together that is tasty and your family will enjoy. It won’t take you hours in the kitchen slaving away over a stove either. My estimate is 30 minutes tops for this meal. Here it is!

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The first thing I do is marinate the meat for the grill. The longer your protein can sit in this marinade the better but I usually am rushing around so 5-10 minutes is all I can do. You can use any kind of protein you like, steak, pork chops, chicken, etc. In this case I had a T-bone steak and two smaller sirloins. I marinate the meat using a combination of wet and dry rubs. I start with the dry ingredients and after a minute or so I add the wet ones. As you can see from the picture I used red pepper flakes, black pepper, Italian seasoning, shoops seasoning (contains salt, pepper, and garlic), garlic powder, and awake-a-steak (contains coffee granules, along with other seasonings) for my dry ingredients. My wet ingredients were garlic, Dale’s steak seasoning (kind of a pumped up soy sauce that I’ve used for a million years. It’s my favorite go to for flavoring meat and I use it on everything!), and extra virgin olive oil. I just coat the steaks with the dry seasonings using more than I think I need to really flavor the protein. I use about a half cup of Dale’s poured over all the meat, and a tablespoon of garlic and a teaspoon of olive oil per protein. Let that sit for a few minutes while lighting the grill and waiting for it to heat up.

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While you are waiting for your grill to heat up, start on your corn. My brother told me about this YouTube video that showed an easy way to make corn in the microwave and at first I was highly skeptical but I tried it and you wouldn’t believe how well it works! This is the procedure I will describe to you now.

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You take one ear of corn and put it in the microwave on high for 4 minutes. Don’t shuck it just leave it completely intact.

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When the cooking time is complete take it carefully out of the microwave using a pot holder and cut the bottom end of it off using a fairly sharp knife. Again, use a pot holder to hold the ear of corn because it’s hot.

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After cutting the bottom off, grasp the top of the corn and shake it, and the corn slides out of the husk leaving the silks inside. No muss no fuss and the corn tastes exactly the same as if you’d boiled it. No shucking is a very good thing and a huge time saver if you ask me! Now of course you can only make one ear at a time but I put the finished ones on a plate and cover it while I’m making the rest to keep them warm.

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While all of that is going on I make the caprese salad. It’s really easy. I use tubes of mozzarella, tomatoes, green and purple basil from my garden, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. I slice the mozzarella into 1/3 inch slices and place those on the plate. Then I cut the tomato into slices of about the same thickness. Next, I rip the basil with my hands into little pieces and sprinkle on the tomatoes. I drizzle a little EVOO on each, add salt and pepper to taste and that’s done!

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While all of this is going on I got out the salsa I made the other day and some chips and we chowed down on my delicious salsa for our appetizer during the grilling process. As you can see there’s not much left. We were hungry!

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Next on to the grilling, we put the big T-bone on the grill first because it took the longest to cook. Now I don’t know about all of you out there, but in my house the grilling is done by the man of the house and he’s very territorial about his grill. It’s like his outdoor man cave and he likes to do it all by himself. I have to say though that his grilling is perfection so I let him have his outdoor cooking domain while I handle what goes on in the kitchen. It works for us!!

A thick cut of meat needs to grill longer than thinner cuts so it would be easier to have all of your meat approximately the same size and thickness to standardize the cooking time. However, with different types and thicknesses of meat you’ve got to be prepared for different grilling times. First, do a quick sear of the meat on each side on high heat for about a minute per side then turn the grill down to medium and grill a thin cut for about two minutes per side, a medium cut for about 4 minutes per side and a thick cut for 5 minutes per side. This will give you a medium rare piece of meat so adjust it up or down if you like rare or well done meat. Also, REMEMBER TO LET YOUR PROTEIN REST BEFORE CUTTING INTO IT! This is the toughest thing to do for most people because they want to see if the meat is done. Chefs say to let the meat rest for a half hour but I don’t usually have that much time to spare so I rest it for 10 minutes before cutting it. Another thing to remember is to USE A MEAT THERMOMETER TO DETERMINE THE DONENESS OF YOUR PROTEIN. That way you will ensure it’s cooked properly without cutting into it.

This is my simple shortcut grilling menu. If I have more time I would make my Mama’s delicious baked beans (to die for!), or my potato salad. I’d also make my man’s favorite dessert, my berry crumble, but if I want to make a decent grilling meal in 30 minutes this is my go-to meal.

If you try to make any part of my 30 minute Labor Day meal let me know how it turned out, or if you’d like to share your own 30 minute menus I’d love to hear about them. I hope you enjoy Labor Day with your family without spending hours in the kitchen and that you live a life of vitality- like Valerie!