Poppy’s Steak Bites

Know someone who loves to eat steak but can’t be bothered with cutting it up or cutting around the bones and fat?  Steak bites are the answer.

“Why steak bites rather than whole steaks, Poppy”?

Several good reasons; steak bites are bite-sized (duh), and easy to eat. There is less waste, everyone can help themselves to as much or as little steak as they want. In our family 3 good sized steaks can feed 4-5 people when served with sides. Maybe Poppy spoils his family or perhaps he is the lazy one.

This “spear a piece of steak with your fork and pop it in your mouth” journey starts with a good pair of kitchen shears. I own a several of these but my favorites are the ones that come apart for cleaning. Yes, you could cut up the steaks with a knife but a good pair of shears gives you so much more control. If you don’t own a pair of good kitchen shears, treat yourself and buy a pair. You will end up using them for things you can’t imagine now.

The next part of this “Wow this is good stuff” journey involves selecting the steaks. I end up buying either a Ribeye, New York strip or T-bone based on price and availability. If you can find a good buy on Ribeyes, this is your best bet.

Once you have your steaks let them warm to room temperature, pat them dry, start cutting them into bite-sized chunks, then give them a liberal sprinkling of garlic salt.

Start preparing the sauce you want to use to coat the steak bites. I’m not going to tell you what type of sauce to use anymore than I’m going to tell you what type of music to listen too while you are cooking (you are listening to music, aren’t you?). I’m always experimenting but one of my favorites is a sauce I picked up at a spice shop http://www.sometimesitshotter.com/ on St. George island on the Florida panhandle. It’s their “Peach and Pepper Hot Sauce”. But I have also used soy sauce based steak sauces as well as concoctions made with mixing steak sauce and Thai pineapple and chili sauce. Just play until you get something you like or use a commercially prepared steak sauce. Once you have your sauce ready to go, set it aside for now.

Next comes the only tricky part to this recipe. Because you are cooking small pieces of steak it is very easy to get them overdone. The idea is to cook them very hot and very fast, searing them for a quick brown, but not cooking so long that they get tough. Cook time is measured in seconds, not minutes.

I’ve experimented with several ways of doing this but I believe this method gives me the best results. Grab your biggest cast iron skillet and place it in your oven that has been preheated to 400-425 degrees.

Once the skillet has reached oven temperature, pull it out and place it on your biggest, baddest burner on it’s highest setting and turn on your vent fan. Give your skillet a quick coat of corn oil (corn oil has higher smoke point than olive oil), by pouring in a tablespoon of oil and applying a quick swish with some wadded paper towels.

Drop your steak pieces into the skillet and distribute them over the hot surfaces. They should start sizzling like crazy. After about 30 seconds give them a stir, flipping over as many pieces as possible. Brown for a few more seconds, stir again, then dump in your sauce, stir again and remove from heat. The steak will continue to cook for a bit after it’s removed from the heat, so it’s important to not let it cook completely while it’s on the burner. Give the bites a generous grind of black pepper and let rest for a couple of minutes before serving.

Hooray for lazy steak eating!

Difficulty: Easy (and a little easy to overcook)!

Ingredients: 

• steak, sauce, seasonings and a lot of heat!