Whiskey Tango Steak Night!!!

Ok so maybe just Whiskey in the steak marinade, but YUMMMMM! When Mike and I are high fiving each other over such a great dinner you know we have a hit on our hands.

Again, another creation from the "big book of food." The Roomie decided steak over lamb and boy it was a good choice. So the menu for the night was:

Sirloin steak
Mashed Potatoes
Grilled Veggies
and a Mushroom Gravy

But let's embellish a little. That menu sounds like a pretty basic mid-western meal. Well you may be right but damn meat and potatoes is just a good way to go.

So here is the revised menu so you can start drooling like we did.

Sirloin steak marinated in a whiskey brown sugar marinade served with a baby red potato mashed into a heavenly smash with garlic and butter with a side of grilled California mixed vegetables with olive oil and garlic herb seasoning with a great side of mushroom gravy to serve on top of the steak and potatoes.

So now then you ask, what does this look like???? Well I am guessing you are salivating. Too bad these pictures aren't scratch and sniff, oh man you should have smelled this. The steaks only needed an added salt and pepper (light) to spice up the marinade for grilling.

So to start we marinaded the steaks in this fabulous whiskey marinade (we even bought cheap whiskey - McCormick's for $5 - tasted great! You are welcome to use Jack if you prefer). Here is the recipe:

1/4 cup whiskey (your choice to go expensive or go cheap - we couldn't tell the difference)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 Dijon mustard
1/4 cup finely chopped green onion
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 dash Worcestershire sauce
ground black pepper to taste

Stir together whiskey, soy sauce, Dijon mustard, green onion, brown sugar, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and pepper. Add to chosen meat - sirloin steak in our case. Marinate over night or at least a couple hours. (We marinated over night)

Marinated Steak - just started grilling

From there we started making the mushroom sauce/gravy.

The mushroom gravy we cheated a little bit and used pre-made beef gravy and added some ingredients.

So we took this "savory beef" gravy. The gravy on its own is not that tasty. So we checked out the recipe for mushroom sauce from the "big book of food" and added white cooking wine (instead of white wine as stated in the book). We then cooked down mushrooms and browned them with some green onion.

freshly cut white mushrooms: courtesy of
Mike the ninja knife master

DON'T CROWD THE MUSHROOMS ;)
or they won't brown

So now we add the mushrooms and onions to the gravy.

Thickening process

Started cooking after browning mushrooms

We ended up having to make a roux (Mike made - I do not have the patience, when I thicken gravy I use cornstarch. He says that doesn't taste quite as good. I am sure he's right.)

Here is the gravy after adding the blonde roux.

YUMMY!

Of course we also added salt, pepper, rosemary, garlic powder and the white wine. Roomie didn't care for the rosemary and, therefore, didn't care much for the sauce/gravy. But Roomie liked the steak, taters and veg.

We cheated on the taters since neither of us wanted to boil and mash (even though that's probably my favorite way to eat taters).

Can I just say though, these didn't even need butter added. It's an "add boiling water" and wait 5 minutes potato mix. Just yum!! I was shocked for a potato flake mix. Definitely recommended.

So by this point food is starting to come in from the grill.

Steaks ready to come in - veggies in the foil

Can we eat now?

Steaks smelled AMAZING when they came in. Was so ready to eat at that point. So Mike got plates out and we dug in.

The veggies came in and looked great.

Now to eat and show off the skills of cooking.

My steak was done more medium rare/medium while the rest were closer to medium/medium well. Still so so so delicious.

We will definitely make this again. Maybe next time we will mash our own potatoes and make our own gravy but in the mean time this did a great job of satisfying our hunger.