Strip Steak with Tequila-Avocado Sauce
It was just Belle and I for dinner the other night, and she asked for steak. We had some striploin in the freezer and lots of recipes in our collection of cookbooks.
Belle opted for this Latin-style steak and it was great. Belle loves her steak rare and I am more of a medium-rare steak eater, but somehow, following the cooking times in the recipe, we ended up with more medium-well then rare.
Luckily, this didn’t effect the flavour. We were both very surprised that the steak tasted so good, even though it was technically over-cooked by our standards. I did this on the stove top instead of the barbeque, which might have been a mistake. I am usually more attentive to steaks if they are over flames rather then in a pan. It might also have been because of the thickness of the steak, but I’ll definitely watch the cooking time more closely in the future.
We had roasted chayote with this, and that was really delicious, too. It would be great just as a snack during the day or late at night. It’s so simple and you can experiment with all sorts of seasonings on them – I’ll post the chayote recipe tomorrow!
Belle’s note: I was a little disappointed when we sat down to dinner and I saw that the striploin was quite well-done. But surprisingly, it had retained its tenderness, and the tequila-avocado sauce was just so lovely with it! Until Ward started cooking, I was never one to see the benefits of having a sauce for my steak, but now he’s definitely sold me on it.
Strip Steak with Tequila-Avocado Sauce
Adapted from The New Steak
2 striploin steaks
2 tsp kosher salt
olive oil
2 tbsp peanut oil
freshly ground black pepper
Tequila-Avocado Sauce
4 tomatillos (about 1/3 cup) I use canned tomatillos so no peeling or cooking is required – just core them
1/2 tsp hot sauce
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1/3 cup cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
1/2 Hass avocado
3 tbsp organic lime juice
2 tbsp tequila
Steaks and Sauce
- Bring steaks to room temperature.
- Place all the ingredients for the sauce in a food processor and blend until smooth.
- Pour into a small pot and set aside until steaks are done.
- Salt the steaks and rub with olive oil.
- Heat the peanut oil in a pan until hot.
- Sear all sides of each steak in the hot oil for about 1-1/2 minutes each side.
- Turn the heat down to medium and continue to cook the steaks for 6 minutes, turning every couple of minutes. (This resulted in a medium-well steak. Next time I do this, I will change this to 2 minutes per side for a rarer steak, or use a thicker cut.)
- Rest the steaks. Any juices that are released you can add to the sauce.
- Put the sauce into a small pot and heat over high heat for 3 minutes to slightly reduce.
- Plate the steaks and add some sauce to each one.
> November 10th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
your sauce sounds great! after years of trying to perfect a creamy pepper sauce, we found that there is so much more to lven up your steak and a trusted version in this household is an avocado and cashew-nut “pesto”. so much fresher and lovelier than a cream sauce, i find! yours sounds amazing, too… and with the medicinal qualities of tequila you can never go wrong
[Reply]
> November 13th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
[...] Strip Steak with Tequila-Avocado Sauce: This is definitely a good recipe. I know this, because the steaks we had were on the thinner side, and because Ward followed the cooking times in the recipe, we ended up with medium-well instead of our preferred medium-rare/rare – and the steak was still good! The Tequila-Avocado Sauce was incredibly flavorful, too. [...]