Food You Can Eat: Zwiebel Rostbraten

First things first:  I love steak.  When I was a kid and we would go out to dinner, I always ordered the steak.  Even when we ate at Pizza Hut (which, back in the ‘70’s, was actually pretty decent pizza), I looked for steak on the menu.  I ordered steak so often that eventually my father would tell me not to even think about it as soon as the menus were handed to us.  So, I had to learn how to be judicious about my steak ordering practices and only order it when he was in a good mood.  Now that I’m a grown-up (but not necessarily an adult), I can order steak whenever I damned well please.  Fortunately, our Butcher Box sends steaks pretty much every time we get it.  Sometimes we get filet mignon, sometimes sirloin, sometimes top round, sometimes strip—as we got this last time.  It being winter time, I try not to use the grill so this necessitates looking into my pan frying options.  This variation on a basic German recipe is the result.

A caveat before we get started:  Like I said, this is a variation on the recipe.  It’s certainly not “traditional”—it’s more like something you might find in a fine dining restaurant, if that fine dining restaurant were actually more like an Applebee’s.  Traditional Zwiebel Rostbraten uses rib roast, not strip steak.  It’s also typically served with gravy—and a fine dining restaurant would likely use a Demi-Glace, but I don’t have time for that shit, especially when I’m only making one steak and cutting it in half for Mrs. Butcher and I.  There’re also usually crisp-fried onions in addition to the sauteed onions, but—again—ain’t nobody got time for that.  So, this is a stripped-down strip steak variation on a theme and is quite simple to make.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Strip steaks

Salt

Pepper

Olive Oil

Onions, sliced thinly

Balsamic Vinegar

First, gently tenderize the steaks.  The operative word here is “gently”.  You don’t need to work out your frustrations over a deeply fucked-up world where right wing shitbags continue to destroy what little good there is in our lives; where other right wing shitbags continue to enable the shitty behavior of their right wing shitbag counterparts; where you’d love to have five minutes alone with Mitch McConnell; where the rich continue to escape the consequences of the dystopian hellscape they have created; and where you just want to pound the fucking hell out of that goddamned steak until you are sweating and weeping with exhaustion…

Wait, where was I?  Oh, right.

Just let the weight of the tenderizer fall on the steak—don’t actually use any force with your arm.  Give each side a once-over and you’ll be done.  Pro tip:  to prevent any juices from flying around when tenderizing any meat, lay a piece of plastic wrap over the top of the meat to contain it.

Season the steaks with salt and pepper, to taste.  Put a little oil in a sauté pan over medium heat and cook the steaks to desired doneness (any more than medium and you are dead to me).  Set steaks aside and wrap in foil to keep warm.

Add sliced onions to the pan and cook until they are dark brown.  Deglaze with the balsamic vinegar.  (If you were going full-blown Fancy Chef, this would be the part where you’d also add the Demi-Glace and reduce.)

A word about balsamic vinegar:  Like olive oil, most of the balsamic vinegar you buy in the stores is garbage.  It’s very thin—like any other vinegar you might use—and that’s because it isn’t cooked or aged properly.  True balsamic vinegar should be cooked into a thicker consistency and aged for several years.  The vinegar I use is made using the Moderna DOP method, which is a 12-year aging process in wood barrels and is slightly syrupy in texture (although you can also get 25-year aged DOP balsamic as well, but damn is that expensive).  There is a Moderna IGP method which blends the balsamic with red wine vinegar to thin the product, and is not aged nearly as long—typically between six months and three years—making it more profitable.  Don’t use that shit.

Once the pan has been deglazed, plate your steaks and pour the onions and vinegar over the top.  (If you were going the Fancy Chef route, this is also where you would garnish with crisp-fried onions.)

If you were going Fancy Chef, then you’d probably serve this with steamed vegetables of some sort, or maybe Gurkensalat, which is a German cucumber salad.  If you were going more down-home traditional German, then you’d serve it with potatoes in some form or fashion and probably cooked red cabbage.  I still had leftover mashed potatoes and corn from the Worlds Best Meatloaf, so I was sort of half German here, which is appropriate because my Grandmother was German, which makes me…sort of German.