Despite my braces I still love rump steak. I’ve posted this steak marinate recipe back about 2 years ago before the post got deleted earlier this year. I’m bringing my steak marination recipe back to a new post with a twist and serving it with a beautifully made beetroot salad, one of my favourite salads. I’ve probably talked about this already in my grill recipes, but here we go again just a small reminder to stay healthy. Always marinate your meat first before cooking, we all know that marinating meat before cooking helps to tenderise and enhance its flavour. Marinating meat before cooking also helps to reduce/prevent the formation of carcinogenic compounds that cause cancer, especially when burning meat or cooking meat on high temperatures such as grilling and bbqing. Also remember to stop eating burnt meat and other burnt foods in general, the burnt black parts of the food also contain cancer causing formulas. There’s no scientific proven tests regarding to this matter (mostly due to no one wanting to be the test subjects), but it’s always better to be healthy than sorry.
The seasoning I used to marinate my steak today is the classic Cambodian marination which includes salt, sugar and stock/fish sauce. The stock and fish sauce helps to enhance the flavour as well as tenderise the meat. I often leave it to marinate for a minimum of 15 minutes and maximum over night to allow the seasoning to marinate the meat inside and out. Therefore when it is served it’s less likely you’ll need extra sauce or gravy to get more flavour.
STEAK AND BEET SALAD
Prep-Time: 20 mins Serve: 3
Cooking Time: 1 hr
Ingredients
3 pieces rump steak
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 cube of stock powder
6 cloves garlic, halfed
2 fresh rosemary, leaves
3 tbsp olive oil
salad
Salt and pepper
2 bunch baby beetroots/ 6 beetroots, quartered
100g baby rocket
50g feta cheese
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
4 baby carrots
Method
Marinate the steak with sugar, salt, fish sauce and stock powder by massaging the seasoning into the steak and then leave it to set for 15 minutes or over night for the best results.
Preheat oven at 180°C Fan Force.
Cut the top of the beetroot (save the leaves for other dishes or for a salad) peel an cut into quarters. Place the beetroot and the carrot in a baking tray, drizzle the oil over them and then rub to cover all sides with oil. Next sprinkle some salt and pepper on top and also add the 6 whole garlic cloves into the baking tray and then cover the tray with aluminium foil and bake in the oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Remove from the oven after 45 minutes and leave to cool.
Remove the garlic from the beetroot tray and peel off the skin. Make 2 holes in each piece of steak with a pointed fruit knife. Stuff each piece of garlic into the hole made in the steaks. The cooking process takes longer than it normally would because the steaks are thicker. We also don’t want the steaks to burn so to prevent that from happening flip the steaks more often then if you were bbqing for example.
Start by heating the oil in a pan over medium high heat, place each steak in to the pan facing away from you. Sear all four sides of the steak for 2 minutes each or until each side starts to brown. After all sides have been seared flip the steak back to the larger side and cook for another minute and do the same to the other sides. Do the flipping a few times for each piece, depending on how cooked you want your steak to be, it may take longer if you want it to be well done. I flipped mine at lease 4 times for all sides until the centre top of the steak puff starts to go down and when pressed with a finger it’s still soft but you can also feel a slight hard force forcing back (if the steak feels very soft and the centre top is very puffy the steak is rare). Remove from heat and leave to rest.
make salad
Remove the beetroots and carrots from the baking dish and place into a salad bowl and then add in the rest of the ingredients into the same bowl and then toss to combine. Serve with the steaks.