Butcher Box Ranch Steak with Asparagus and Cauliflower Scramble
At the moment, I have paused my Butcher Box subscription because I buy most of my meat directly from Kim at Lola Farms in Lake Butler, FL, but I am still working my way through the last pieces of the last couple of Butcher Box orders and I love their products. (Side note: I’m really grateful for my three freezers.) This plate is 4oz of their grass fed ranch steak. They come two per package and I seasoned them the night before with a bunch of sea salt and left the plate uncovered in the fridge. Ah, the beauty of living alone….unsealed raw meat, but I don’t have to worry about anyone touching it or have any serious cross contamination concerns here at home….
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I preheated both my carbon steel pan and the Ninja. The former over a medium high burner and the latter to Bake 350degrees. Now, I know that you are supposed to bring your steaks up to room temp before you add them to a hot pan, but I pretty much never remember that part. They came out of the fridge and got a quick dash of ground black pepper. Once I seared the steaks on both sides, I transferred them to the Ninja to finish cooking. As soon as I took the steaks out of the skillet, I put the trimmed asparagus in, added about a quarter cup of water and covered it with my cutting board to steam the asparagus…Bonus: This part helps clean the pans from the steaks. 😉The asparagus only take a few minutes to cook. Take a peek and move them around a little. They will change color. I like mine bright with a good deal of bite left to them. I’m not a big fan of flopping asparagus, in general, but cook it to your liking. Most people aren’t a fan of lightly salted steamed veggies on their own, so if that is you, add some olive oil, grass-fed butter or melted ghee.
I was reading Christina Chey’s Bon Appetit newsletter about the unglamorous eating habits of a recipe developer the other day and, on that note…Let’s talk about the weirdness underneath that delicious piece of meat…It all started when I bought a leek at the grocery store and decided that I wanted to make cauliflower and leek mash with a bit of my latest obsession, nutritional yeast, for a little “cheesiness” and that’s where I should have stopped….but I didn’t…I had two egg whites leftover from making mayo and I figured, “Great. Protein. Perfect.” So I whirled it all up in the food processor and I had a very heterogeneous mixture…definitely not fit to call a mash. ”No worries…I’ll make pancakes with it. The pan is right here…” Back on track, everything seemed great until there were some bad words uttered during an ill fated attempt at flipping, but after some time over the heat, the story ends with a rather interestingly delightful scramble that I can only describe as pillowy and full of umami…. Not bad for a failure, but I think I’ll tuck this side dish in my back pocket until I reintroduce dairy next month.
Back to the steaks…The ones that I got were very different in thickness and, while I could have done my own butchering to even them out, I did not. Instead, I used my trusty meat thermometer and checked them for an internal temp of 135 degrees. They had DRASTICALLY different cooking times…about 15 minutes for one of them and 22 for the other, so keep your thermometer handy. As always, I let them rest before I slice them. Ranch steaks are super lean, so add a sauce if you like, but they are perfect for me with nothing but the sea salt and pepper.
Not a blockbuster recipe, but you don’t need one when you have good ingredients. Simple, quick, easy, and delicious.
Eat the rainbow, y’all!
