Sesame Chuck Steak
This recipe appears to have been copied from a cookbook. My steak was a little over 1 lb. so I made half the recipe. I did not care for the recipe. It wasn't bad - it just didn't wow me and the sesame seeds were a bit of a nuisance.
I buy the large, gallon size canola oil and, for convenience, keep a squirt ketchup bottle (that my son won at an event by guessing how many lego brick candies were inside) filled from the large gallon. I never measure the TBSPs of oil, just squirt what looks like the right amount into the skillet.
I've had a jar of sesame seeds on my spice shelf for as long as I can remember. They still smelled good so I was glad to be able to use a lot of them up. I'd never toasted seeds before but it was easy to see the color change and it happened rapidly. A bit like making rice-a-roni or Spanish rice - but faster.
I don't know why it is hard for professional recipe writers to give an amount for onions. Medium - what does that mean?! I used a whole onion that was on the small side for the average onions I see in the produce section plus about 1/4 of a large onion that I had left over. It seemed like LOTS of onion when it was in the bin to marinade.
When I first read the direction to put it in a 9x13 pan I thought it would be convenient to go from fridge to oven. Then I realized that pan was only for the marinade. Since I was only making half the recipe and usually don't have a bunch of room in my fridge, I used an 8x8 square Tupperware.
I figured mixing would be easier if I put the onion in first and then poured the sesame seed-oil over the top.
The onions were so many and so chunky it was a little awkward to mix.
The soy sauce and lemon juice ran straight to the bottom. The sugar, salt and pepper were easier to distribute across the onions. I used regular ground pepper instead of cracked pepper because I wasn't sure if I still had peppercorns and if I did, how to crack them.
To trim my steak I just pulled the fatty pieces off the edges with my fingers but did not cut out the big hunk of fat in the middle.
I felt like the onions were keeping the meat above the juices. I turned it once, with my hand, and tried to scoop up juices and drizzle on top. I wound up with finger-fulls of sesame seeds that I had to rinse down the sink.
I was not comfortable with running my broiler on my new-ish oven for almost an hour. I have a new oven because I ran the broiler on my old one for about 10 minutes and it fried the control panel. I had never run the broiler before on that oven and I have only done it for a few minutes on my new one. So, I went with my trusty George Foreman grill to cook this hunk of meat.
I was a little surprised that the recipe said to cook the left over marinade and onions. Usually recipes say to throw it out. I was a bit worried about the raw meat being completely cooked off of all the onions so I made sure to stir well several times.
There were a LOT of onions with this dish. I wound up throwing a lot of them away as well as rinsing sesame seeds down the drain. I was not wowed by it. I can't even tell you that it had a particularly good flavor. It was rather blah.
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