At the beginning of the summer I got a wonderful box of tools from OXO’s #WhatAGrillWants campaign to make use of in my summer cooking. For most people this means cooking in the great outdoors as rays of sun wash upon their smiling faces. I—on the other hand—have mastered the genre of cooking that I refer to as “indoor barbecue” seeing as how I inhabit a New York City apartment and lack any sort of outdoor cooking space. Life is all about making the best of what you’ve got though. So with my grill pan, OXO’s Bladed Meat Tenderizer, and some love I set out to accomplish some summer grilling.
I experimented with the meat tenderizer on a cheaper cut of beef—a top round steak in this case. If you’ve been long time reader of my site then you know how much I love steak (the answer is A LOT), but spending $7 per pound minimum on a well marbled piece of beef isn’t always in my budget. Using a tenderizer is a great way to make use of the more wallet-friendly cuts of meat without having to feel like you’re eating shoe leather. Here I cooked the meat very simply with oil, salt, and pepper, and charred some ears of corn on my gas range to go along with it. However, the real star of the dish is the lemon chimichurri—it’s herbaceous, acidic, spicy, and packed full of flavor. This green sauce will skyrocket the flavor of any dish to planet flavor.
Lemon Chimichurri:
- 1 bunch of parsley
- 1 lemon, zest and juice
- 1 Tbsp. salt
- 1 tsp. red pepper flakes
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- ~1/4 cup olive oil
Procedure:
- Most recipes only tell you to use the parsley leaves, but you can definitely take advantage of the stems too. Just remove about an inch off the bottom and then rough chop or tear the rest.
- Place the parsley, lemon juice, zest, salt, red pepper flakes, and garlic in a food processor. Pulse for a few minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl every now and then, until the large pieces of parsley are gone. (If you don’t have a food processor, you can just chop everything very finely by hand.)
- With the processor running, slowly stream in the olive oil so that the sauce is well emulsified (combined). In the restaurant we were told it should be the consistency of yogurt, but feel free to make it tighter/looser according to your own preferences by adjusting the amount of oil you add.
Have you had chimichurri before? What are some of your favorite things to eat it with?
[…] vegan celery root mashed potatoes. I served them as a side dish for roasted chicken thighs with chimichurri sauce. Quite tasty, if I do say so […]