hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with grilled root beer beef that's
right I do not drink soda so if I'm buying root beer it's for one of two
reasons one would be i makin root beer floats which is not technically drinking
soda since it's being used as an ingredient in a recipe and the second
reason would be the use in a marinade which is what we're doing today and
since i've only ever used this for lamb and never beef
I guess this officially counts as an experiment and a pretty successful one
at that so with that let's go ahead and get started by adding a little bit of
vegetable oil to this mixing bowl followed by some freshly ground black
pepper and some cayenne but no little shake this time we're gonna go with the
whole spoon since heat and sweet always works so well together and it will also
toss in a little bit of chipotle speaking of heat as you know that is
dried to ground smoked jalapeno anyway we will continue on with a little plop
of ketchup as well as a spoon of honey and since I was adapting this lamb
marinade for beef I did reduce the honey amount a little bit but in hindsight we
probably should have reduced it a little more and I will review that and other
decisions later and then we'll finish this thing off with a generous amount of
soy sauce no not low-sodium we need the sodium so
please use full strength and then last but not least the star of the show one
bottle of root beer and then we'll take a whisk and give this a thorough mixing
and by the way any old brand a root beer from the corner store is going to work
but if you can maybe try to use one of those fancier brands which tend to have
a little more of a complex flavor as well as being not quite as sweet but
anyway that'll be up to you the Yoda of cooking with soda after all you are but
anyway we'll go ahead and mix that up and set it aside while we move on to
prep our beef and today I'm going to be using a flank steak but I'm pretty sure
this marinade will work with many other cuts and what we'll do to prep this is
cut this lengthwise right down the middle and then slice it across the
grain in like half-inch pieces and in case you're not familiar cutting across
the grain simply means cutting across those fibers which are super easy to see
I'm flank steak so what we'll do is simply cut it across those fibers this
way until like I said half-inch pieces okay exact size doesn't really matter as
long as you pick a size and stick with it
although I will say for this technique to work you don't want to go any thinner
than this and even though it might look a little odd by cutting our beef in this
method we're gonna be able to use a very interesting and effective technique for
scuri knees so we'll go ahead and slice up our beef at which point we can go
ahead and transfer that into our root beer marinade and I guess use our
tongues that mix it thoroughly although if I wasn't filming I would
have totally done that with my bare hand since that's faster better and feels
surprisingly cool and even though I'm calling this a marinade it actually is
gonna act more like a brine and that that sugar in the root beer and salt in
the soy is not only gonna flavor the beef but it's also gonna help it stay
nice and juicy release that's the plan and then once we're sure that is
thoroughly thoroughly mixed we'll cover that in plastic and marinate it in the
fridge for anywhere between four hours and overnight and I've done both and
there's not a huge difference but overnight you do get a little more
flavor penetration so we'll go ahead and transfer that into the fridge like I
said anywhere between four and twelve hours at which point we're gonna pull it
out and start to skier and the method we're using here is to basically fold
each of these pieces of beef in half okay so that skiers going through twice
and by using this technique not only are we producing something that's going to
cook evenly but it's also going to have a lot of surface area which on a grill
equals flavor and and maybe most importantly it's gonna look supercool
once it's cooked on a quick tip here if you have any weird odd sized pieces or
small pieces I will usually save those for the end that way if we don't like
how they look after they're grilled we could just pop those off and eat them
and our guests will have no idea that we took one for the team and I should
mention the amount of meat we're using here will make about four or five of
these skewers depending on how much you put on but I'm only showing in doing
three here because I wanted to save some and experiment with a longer marination
time but anyway once our flank has been folded and impaled we are pretty much
ready to head out to the grill but first I wanted to recommend that you do not
throw away any excess marinade since what I did and what you probably want to
do is set that over medium heat and reduce it down to a glaze okay contrary
to what you may have heard a marinade is always safe to use as a sauce as long as
you cook it first I will simply reduce mine in a saucepan
over medium heat until it looks a little something like this
which by the way will get even thicker as it cools and then once that looks
right we'll just set that aside until our beef is grilled which is the next
and last step so let's head outside we're gonna place these over some
glowing red charcoal and the reason we want to use very hot direct heat for
this is so we get some beautiful browning and carmelization on the
outside before the inside gets overcooked and dried out and if you cut
your steak the same size and skewered it exactly like I did this is only gonna
take about three or four minutes per side and while many quote-unquote grill
masters say only turn your meat once I generally ignore that advice all right
as long as each side gets about the same time facing the heat you can flip it as
many times as you want and as far as judging doneness goes it's gonna be
tough with a thermometer just because of the size and shape of these pieces so I
generally don't bother with that and go by feel and if it feels really soft and
mushy it's still rare and if it feels really hard its overcooked so we're
shooting for somewhere in between that and basically when it goes past mushy
and starts to spring back to the touches probably somewhere between medium rare
medium which personally for me is perfect so that's how far I'm going and
as I mentioned that took about three or four minutes per side and once we
determine those have cooked long enough we'll pull them off and head inside
where I have some very good news for you we do not have to let this gorgeous meat
rest we can go ahead and immediately plate up next to a couple prop salads
and if we made one which you should have we'll go ahead and brush over our glaze
then once our glaze has been brushed on we'll go ahead and finish up a little
bit of toasted sesame seed and for whatever reason sesame is a perfect
match for the flavor of root beer and that's it what we're calling grilled
Ruby or beef is done and looking very very enticing if I do say so myself so
I'll grab a fork and knife and dig in to make sure it tastes as good as it looks
which it totally did but before I get to the flavor let me talk about the texture
which was just incredible and sure it helps I didn't overcook this but it
really was beautifully moist and tender and exhibited extreme juiciness and as
far as the taste goes it is very very close to one of those sweet sticky
bourbon glazes that you may have enjoyed at your friendly local strip mall casual
dining establishment I know that didn't sound like a
compliment but it was so definitely on the sweet side but at the same time not
one-dimensional alright there's lots other stuff going on of course having
said that next time I'm gonna eliminate or greatly reduce the amount of honey
since I'm this beef it seemed a little too sweet whereas the more gamey or lamb
it seemed right on and also I thought it might have needed a little more acidity
and how I could tell was i dripped a little bit of vinegar on and it tasted
better which by the way is how you check these things all right why guess when
you can chew so in the blog post I will go over several tweaks I'm considering
and if for whatever reason you end up not using the marinade I still hope you
give the cutting and scaring technique we use for the flank steak a try since
that worked out so nicely but officially I hope you do both especially since you
only need one root beer which means you can use the rest of the six-pack for ice
cream floats so for those reasons and many many more I really do hope you give
this a try soon so head over to food wishes calm for all the ingredient
amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy
you