Tequila Steak

Recipe originally submitted to GBSFood by InediblePenguin, Submitted here by JohnnyTruant.

So what do you do when you buy a fuckton of tiny steaks because they're cheap, but they're too cheap to really stand up to being eaten on their own and too much trouble to chop up into smaller bits for any other use? You marinate them and hope that makes them taste better, that's what. And if you use this recipe, then they WILL taste better, and you'll be all like WOO.

Your ingredients:

• Steak of your choice (I wouldn't bother getting any really good stuff, but don't get stew meat, either. I forget what cut this was, but I'll probably use a moderately nice sirloin or something next time.)
• 1/4 cup tequila
• 1/3 cup lime juice
• Two tablespoons lemon juice
• Roughly one tablespoon garlic salt (I wasn't paying attention and I think I may have ended up accidentally pouring in like two tablespoons.)
• One tablespoon ground black pepper
• One tablespoon crushed red pepper (not shown)

Mix ingredients together in a flat-bottomed, lidded container. Add the steaks.. In our case, the marinade came up over the tops of the steaks, so we could ignore it for a while. Your case may vary. If you have really thick steaks or very shallow marinade, you're going to have to go out and flip them over once in a while. Make sure your whole steak gets marinated or why are you even bothering? Seriously that's like Marinade 101, common sense here people.

Put the lid on and stick it in the fridge. Go watch a movie or have sex or play Counterstrike for a couple of hours.

Do you have a cast iron pan? If you don't, you should get your ass off the couch and go buy one. You can't finish the recipe without a cast iron pan. Let the steaks finish marinating while you're out shopping.

When you get back you need to add another 1/4 cup of tequila to your tummy.

Get the steaks out of the marinade and put them on a plate. Add kosher salt and ground black pepper to each side of the steak. Keep the marinade handy, too.

You're going to want to have a set of good, sturdy oven mitts handy. In fact, you might want to double-bag it - oven mitts AND pot holders. That cast iron is going to be very hot very soon.

Set the oven to the highest temperature you can get - 450 or 500. If you have the type of electric oven in which both heating coils turn on in the "bake" setting, then set it to Bake. If Bake only turns on the bottom coil, set it to Broil. If you don't know, use Broil. Leave the cast iron pan in it and let it heat up all the way. You may also need to preheat your burner.

Once it is insanely fucking hot, put the pan on the burner.

Slap the steak into the pan. Sear the steak for thirty seconds on each side.

Spoon some of the marinade on top of the steaks, then put them back into the oven. Let them cook for a while, then flip them over, put another spoonful of marinade on, and pop them back in.

Note on cooking times: The canonical cooking time is 2 minutes per side. This gives you a nice, rare steak. If your steak is really thick or you don't like it red, you may need to cook it longer. I like to cook it about 3 or 4 minutes per side, so most of the steak is light pink and it still bleeds when you cut it. Delivery McGee, who was in charge of the heavy lifting on this project while I stood idly by drinking tequila and taking pictures, likes his steaks well-done, and leaves them in about 5 minutes per side. If you have any doubts, pull them early and stab one to gauge whether you want it cooked more or not.

When you're happy with the level of doneness, turn the oven off, remove the steaks from the pan, and put the pan back into the oven until it cools down. (500-degree cast iron can do surprising things to countertops.) Cover the steaks with tinfoil and let them sit for a minute or two. I'm not sure why we do that, but my mother and Alton Brown both told me to, so I do it.

You're ready to eat!

These would probably go really well with some sort of southwestern Bobby Flay-style side dish, but I just made a baked potato.

Note: This would probably be even more awesome with fresh minced or crushed garlic and some kosher salt in the marinade. Still, I used garlic salt because I didn't have any fresh cloves and was in no shape to drive to the grocer's, and it turned out delicious.