What you Need:
1. Top sirloin, ground, 2 pounds
2. yellow onion
3. tomatoes 16 ounce can, chopped
4. celery and carrots, 3 stalks each
5. kidney beans, 2 12 ounce cans
6. olive oil
7. cast iron pan, 12”
8. Chili powder 2 oz
Who doesn’t like steak and potatoes? MMMMMM! Especially when it is a nice New York strip with no extra fat, smashed blue cheese potatoes, and fresh spinach sautéed with garlic. What more could a person want on a chilly autumn evening? Here’s what you’ll need:
Instructions:
1. Steaks are best on a grill. A good investment is a grill pan, that is like a frying pan but has raised ridges so the meat does not all sit right on a flat surface, but sits on the ridges just like a grill. If you have grill, use it, otherwise get your grill pan out and put it on the stove. Don’t heat it up yet. Make sure you take your steaks out, so they are close to room temperature. Never cook a steak right out of the freezer or out of the refrigerator. Good idea to wash your vegetables, so get a colander, which is like a football helmet with holes in it, (every kitchen should have one), rinse your spinach around under running water, then do the same with your potatoes.
2. In another frying pan (12 inch) Chop up your garlic finely put it in the frying pan, put some olive oil in the bottom so the garlic doesn’t stick and turn the pan up to medium. Careful how you cook your garlic. Don’t let it get brown like I did here or it gets bitter.
3. Once the garlic is cooked a bit, just dump in your spinach. Make sure you rinse your spinach and then dry it off with a towel, otherwise you’ll get spinach soup. You don’t want wet spinach in your frying pan. Notice we haven’t turned to the meat, because were letting it get up to room temperature, and if we have a grill were letting the grill heat up to hot hot hot. So, you can then put a top on the frying pan and let your spinach cook. Keep it on simmer, you don’t need a lot of heat to cook it. Check it once in a while and turn it, so all the spinach in the pan gets cooked.
4. How About those potatoes? Here I used purple white and red fingerlings. You can either put them in a microwave, with plastic wrap over the top so they steam, turn out the vegetables and they cook pretty well that way. Or you can put them in the hot boiling water. You don’t want them to get mushy, but you do want to cook them.
5. Once your potatoes are cooked get a sheet of aluminum foil on a baking sheet. Heat up your oven to 450. While your oven is heating up, arrange the potatoes on the sheet of foil, or the baking pan, make sure that you put some Pam on the pan if it’s not nonstick or your Taters will stick right to the pan. What you do next is so simple it’s outrageous. Now, smash your potatoes, one at a time, just take a spatula put it on top of each single potato pressed on with the heel of your hand and you have just smashed the potato. And put some blue cheese on the potato.
6. Once your oven reaches 450 you can put the potatoes in, but don’t do it yet. Wait until your steak is almost done.
7. So your spinach is about done, your grill is hot and your oven is 450 but you steaks on the grill at our diagonal to the bars. When you turn them turn them on the long side so there still facing the same way then you can take both your steaks and angle than the other way on the grill and then when you turn them simply turn him on the long side. Now you’ll have that crosshatch grill pattern that marks a professional chef! Don’t play with your meat. When you put that steak on the grill leave it alone. You will see it cooking. If you lift it up you are going to leave meat on the grill. When that first side is done, that’s when you turn it. Don’t keep turning your steaks lifting them up and looking at them; you’ll wreck them. You might want to sprinkle some salt on the steaks before you put them on the grill, and of course, you can’t put too much pepper on a steak either.
8. While the steaks are on the side, keep an eye on your potatoes. All you’re trying to do is melt the blue cheese. So that was pretty easy, the next time you won’t even need instructions, you’ll just get some steaks oil your potatoes, smash and put some blue cheese on top, or you could use any other cheese you want, sauté your spinach, and get ready to have steak and potatoes.
