JeffreyW’s Loaded Baked Potato would be great with Coffee Rubbed Steak
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From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
It’s another one of those Colorado weeks where it’s impossible not to want to be outside all day. Beautiful, warm spring weather, the flowering locusts are in full splendor making my evening bike rides fragrant and still cool enough at night to need a blanket…or a cat…or several. I’m halfway through my horseback riding lessons, I’m finally comfortable with my posting trot, but feel like my major accomplishment is being able to adjust my stirrups from the saddle. I also managed to get my deck flower pots planted, though I always want more than I have space for, I’m satisfied with what I’ve done for this season. It is definitely outdoor season here. What’s on your weekend agenda? Planning on grilling for Mother’s Day? What is your favorite food item to grill?
In honor of the great weather, I thought tonight should be about grilling. Steak to be specific. This rub is a favorite of a couple of readers, so I thought it was a good time to repeat it. This can be used with any cut of steak, though I originally had it on rib eye. It’s too heavy to use on poultry or white fish, but I would be tempted to try on swordfish or maybe salmon. Easy to do and adds a real dramatic flavor.
3 tbsp chili powder (talking the good stuff here, pure ancho or a blend)
3 tbsp finely ground coffee (espresso works best)
1 ½ tbsp paprika (again, you want a good one)
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
2 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp fresh ground pepper
1 tsp ground coriander
1 to 1-1/2 lb of steak (rib-eye, sirloin, NY strip, etc) in 4 thick piecesMix together all spices. Lightly rub each steak with oil and then coat liberally on both sides with coffee rub. Now you can cook in a pre-heated skillet on medium-high heat, 5 to 7 minutes each side for medium rare. You can broil in the oven, using the second slot down from broiler, for 5 minutes each side, again for rare to medium rare, longer for medium. You can grill them outside. Cooking times will vary depending on which steak cut you choose, so watch carefully and you’ll probably have to use a meat thermometer to really judge, because the rub makes it a little harder to eyeball it. Let rest for a few minutes before serving.
AA+ Bonds
How much like coffee does it taste b/c if ‘not much’ I will try it
TaMara (BHF)
@AA+ Bonds: It’s more a hearty, chili flavor, not so much coffee. While I’m a pot-a-day coffee drinker I don’t particularly like coffee flavored things, so I understand your hesitation.
AA+ Bonds
Okay – sounds great, thanks!
protected static
@AA+ Bonds: Depends on what you mean by tasting like coffee. The beans themselves have a nuttier, earthier, smokier flavor than brewed coffee. The flavors in that rub recipe *really* play nicely together.
Supper tonight was good but not great: stovetop mac & cheese from scratch with broccoli and bacon added. I forgot to get green onions, but onion powder filled in admirably in flavor if not looks & texture. It could probably be a great recipe, but it’ll need some monkeying around with to get there.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Thanks for this! I add a (very) little roasted garlic powder and a pinch of dried, crushed rosemary as well. Like you, I find it a rounding blend of a rub, without actual coffee flavor added to the meat.
Thanks for the recipe threads.
Wag
A link to colorado’s own Savory Spice Shop is in order as long as we’re talking quality spices.
TaMara (BHF)
@Wag: Thanks for that link. It’s actually just down the street from my office, I’ll have to stop in.
Wag
And if you don’t want to deal with an instant read thermometer, here’s the best touch technique for judging how well done your steak is.
And yes, it works beautifully.
Wag
And if you don’t want to deal with an instant read thermometer, here’s the best touch technique for judging how well done your steak is.
And yes, it works beautifully.
Wag
@TaMara (BHF):
I live a few blocks away from the Lowry location. The people there really know their spices, and they have tasters for everything they sell.
And yes, you can get Pink Himalayan salt there, too.
Rebecca
That’s a potato? Why is it flat? I thought it was bread.
TaMara (BHF)
@Rebecca: It’s a twice baked potato, you lop off the top, scoop out the insides and mix them with good stuff, re-stuff it and bake it again until it’s all good and gooey.
Night all…
gaz
@Wag: I’ve learned that technique, but I have scrawny hands and long fingers, so it doesn’t work for me =( If I tried that my rare would be medium well. =(
I need more body-fat. I try like hell to get it. Nothing works. =( People are always like “oooh, I wish I had your problem”. Yeah right. It sucks. I’m always too cold – I have to drink calorie supplements every day just so I can keep a few extra pounds on – which doesn’t even really work and it’s in many other ways a pain in my arse. It’s 2012, and not only do I have no flying car, but there’s no magic I can use to put on weight. If we put half as much energy into finding ways to do that that we did into coming up with dieting stuff…. =( =( meh.
/rant
The Moar You Know
Skillet steak. Turns out I can’t cook it any other way.
mclaren
Using coffee to flavor a steak sounds spectacularly vile. Why not just go the whole way and rub dogshit on it?
The JewwfreyW potato looks good, though. Too bad there’s no recipe given for that.
jeffreyw
@The Moar You Know: Skillet steak.
Mnemosyne
@Wag:
You can get pink Himalayan salt at Cost Plus. I bought some so I can make salted chocolate truffles.
Amir Khalid
@mclaren:
Then I guess you have no taste for moldy, pungent European cheeses, or Asian fermented-shrimp pastes like Malaysian belacan, an indispensable ingredient in our nasi lemak which all the tourists love. Closer to the US did you know that chocolate is a common ingredient in Latin America’s savory cooking?
Yutsano
Heh. I turned up anemic on my blood tests pre-surgery (can still go forward though) and my doc asked me if I ate red meat. I said yes but not recently.
“Eat a steak.”
I’m in good hands. :)
Wombat
Annie Laurie,
Real grill cooks do not use meat thermometers to judge the doneness of meat. When you are the grill cook on a line you have no time to mess with that. Real cooks use touch to determine doneness, something I have been teaching my friends and acquaintances for a number of years. It is this simple; loosely pull your thumb towards your palm and press down on the mound of your thumb. That is raw beef.Now tighten your thumb a little and feel the mound again, it offers more resistance, now we have medium rare. continue this through several iterations and you get the various grades of doneness.
For beginners, if you are nor sure, check your touch test with a thermometer and eventually you will realize you can touch your meat and tell when it is ready. There are many great shortcuts you can use to circumvent technology which are just as accurate. Take it from a professional chef.
protected static
@Amir Khalid: Mmmm… belacan. First time I cooked anything with it, I was making a Thai red curry paste. Throw that stuff into a hot wok and it smells like you’ve set a cat’s litter box on fire. There’s no way this’ll be edible, I thought, my eyes watering… I was very, very wrong.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@mclaren: My, aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?
Quaker in a Basement
Flowering locusts?
That doesn’t sound right. I live in Colorado too, but I haven’t seen any of those in my neighborhood.
daveNYC
And remember to let the steak warm up before you cook it. Otherwise John will kill you.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: You do realize you made me Google. And I honestly love stuff like that. Nasty on its own but you integrate it with another ingredient and culinary magic happens.
Schlemizel
@Amir Khalid:
My mom used to make nasi gorang when I was a kid but shrimp paste was unavailable in 1950s Minnesota. The first time I saw it in an asian market I bought it & ran home to make some gorang. When I opened the container I thought I might have made a terrible mistake but cooked in the food it was perfect.
TaMara (BHF)
@Quaker in a Basement: Flowering Locusts.
shep
The way I was raised, if you put anything on your steak other than mushrooms, you could be taken out to the back yard and shot…and no one would ask any questions. Moved to California several years ago and came across a coffee rub somewhere and, for some reason, I tried it out – sacrilege! Delicious and doesn’t interfere with the flavor of the steak as I thought it might. Now I’m experimenting with different coffees.
mclaren
@Amir Khalid:
Shorter Amir Khalid: “Rotting food is yummy!”
What is wrong with you people…?
Yutsano
@mclaren: Tofu is rotten soybean milk. Cheese is curdled milk. Soy sauce is rotten crushed soybeans. Pickles are chemically changed by bacteria. We have lived off the products of fermentation for eons.