Red Meat
We’re telling you up front, some of our beef recipes involve marinating your meat for up to eight hours. Why the warning? A few reasons—which apply to every recipe in the book that requires a marinade, brine, or rub.
First, you’ll be tempted to skip this step. Please don’t. If you do, you’ll be missing out on (a) infusing your meat with a glorious array of flavors, (b) transforming tougher cuts to tender, melt-in-your-mouth goodness, and (c) feeling like an accomplished adult who does grown-up things like returning library books on time and marinating steak.
Second, discovering this can be maddening when you’re flipping through a cookbook an hour before dinner. “This looks delicious . . . I have all these ingredients . . . Oh, come on! I have to marinate this?! I’m hungry now.”
Don’t be mad. Remember, you want to do this additional step with some of these recipes—but if your meat needs a few hours of soak time, you can’t leave your preparations until the last minute. Plus, it’s really not that hard to work this into your busy schedule. If we were you, here’s how we’d do it:
In your Sunday meal planning session, you decide to make the Steak Salad for dinner on Monday. But wait—this dish requires a marinated steak, so you’re already thinking ahead!
Sunday night after dinner, you take fifteen minutes to make the Cilantro-Lime Mayo and prepare your marinade, and toss them in the fridge in preparation for the next day.
Come Monday morning, you take two minutes to transfer your steaks and the marinade to a gallon-size resealable plastic bag, squeeze out the air, and put it back in the fridge. You spend the next eight hours working hard at the office while your steak is working hard getting tender and flavorful. (Don’t worry if there’s more than eight hours between when you leave the house and when you return—an hour or two either way doesn’t matter with red meat.)
Now Monday night when you return home, all you have to do is chop a few veggies, cook the steak, and dress the salad—dinner in under 20 minutes. See, wasn’t that easy?
If you really wanted to plan ahead, you could even reserve a small amount of the marinade in a separate container when you make it, drizzling the fresh stuff over your cooked meat just before serving to add even more flavor. (Please don’t reuse your marinade after it’s been in contact with raw meat. Ew.)
We’re careful to note long cooking times (like the Braised Beef Brisket) or marinate times in each recipe, so if you just pay attention during your meal planning sessions, you’ll never have to get mad at your cookbook—or eat tough, dry, flavorless meat—ever again.
