Steaks are effortless cooking. All you need is an all star marinade and around 5-10 mins of cooking time. But when you say the word steak, your mind immediately associates it with America & Texas style barbecues. So today I'm going to break away from the stereotype. I am not going for a traditional American marinade. Instead, I'm looking the other way, I'm looking eastward. My steak today is Asian inspired, the ingredients I've used are very yin and yang. I'm using soy sauce which is salty, sugar which is sweet, orange juice which is tart, cinnamon and cloves give a liquorice flavour, and finally BBQ sauce which is tangy. So as you can see its a combination of different flavours that come together beautifully, to make a steak that is finger licking good!
Makes enough for 4 slices of steak
For the marinade:
2 tbsp Black bean paste
2 tbsp BBQ sauce
2 tbsp Soy sauce
1 tbsp orange juice or Tang powder
1 tsp brown sugar (regular sugar will do, but brown sugar gives a nice colour)
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Finely chopped ginger (approx 3" root)
3 Cloves
1 stick of cinnamon
1 tsp Peanut or Sesame (til) oil
A pinch of pepper
Note: Salt is omitted on purpose as soy sauce is naturally salty
Mix all ingredients in a bowl and mix to combine. Toss in the meat and using your hands ensure that the marinade is equally slathered on all meat slices. Leave to rest overnight or for a minimum of four hours before use.
Cook meat on a skillet at high heat according to doneness. Be careful as since the marinade is a little runny, it might start splattering will the heat. Below is a basic time reference for cooking an inch thick slice of beef. Ofcourse if you are using chicken instead, you don't have to worry about this as you cook the chicken through and through.
| Thickness | Rare | Medium | Well | |
| 1" | 6-8 | 8-10 | 10-14 | |
Serve piping hot off the grill with some mashed potatoes. Since I was going for oriental flavours, I've added some spring onions to my potato mash.
