Mary Makes Her Grilled Flank Steak with Tomato Cucumber Salad | The Good Stuff with Mary Berg

Inspired by her visit to Toronto’s iconic St Lawrence Market, Mary makes her Grilled Flank Steak with Tomato Cucumber Salad.

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So, in there, I’m going in with 1/4 cup of olive oil. It’s a very tricky uh recipe to remember because it’s going to be a/4 cup of oil, 1/4 cup of wine, a good little red wine, always tasty, maybe a dry, something like that. Then, we’re also going to go in with a/4 cup of soy sauce. Maybe if you’ve been into the wine, you’ll still remember this recipe cuz it’s pretty much equal parts everything. So, 1/4 cup of that goes in for that little bit of saltiness as well. And then for a little bit of sweetness, I’m going to go in with half as much honey. So 2 tablespoons of honey is going to go right on in. This is going to give a little bit of sweetness to the marinade, but also add a little more sugar into the mix. So it’s going to give a good kind of caramelization on the outside. Now into there as well, I’m going to add in some garlic. Now, you always want a good amount of garlic in a marinade in my personal and professional opinion. So we’re doing four big cloves. So, what I want to do as opposed to mincing these up is I’m just going to smash them. And then just give it a rough chop. That’s going to get all that garlic flavor out of there and into that meat, giving you a really nice garlicky flavor, but it’s not going to be so small that it’s going to stick on the meat cuz you don’t want that garlic to stick on there while it’s grilling cuz then it’ll burn and we don’t want uh burnt garlic. All right, going on in. Season that up with a good generous helping of salt and pepper. All right. And then give that a little bit of a toss just to coat. Now, for this marinade, if you are talking to my mom, she will tell you that this needs to go into the fridge for like a week and a half. Don’t do that. She’s always like, “Marinate it for longer. It’s going to be better.” No. What you need is at least 2 hours, but you can also do this for up to 24 hours. That will get a nice, beautiful flavor in there. Just cover it, pop it in your fridge, but then before cooking it, you want to take it out and let it sit for about half an hour at room temperature just to take the chill of the fridge off. Now, I’ve got one here and and don’t be alarmed by the color that red wine has gotten into this meat. So, it’s got that beautiful marination happening, which is looking beautiful. And I’ve got a pan here over about mediumigh heat. Now, again, this is perfect for the grill. I do it around medium medium high on the grill as well. Now, I’m going to add a little bit of oil onto here. But as opposed to doing this into the pan, I actually like to oil the meat. That gives you the right amount of oil to coat it, but it doesn’t give you so much that it starts to spit and make a mess of your kitchen. All right. Season that up again with some more salt. Little bit more pepper as well. And then you do this where I pretend it’s like a fish and just flop it around a little bit just to get it all coated. Feeling good. All right. Now, this is going to go into that hot skillet. That’s what you’re looking for. That beautiful sear is the sound you are going for. That needs about I would say four to six minutes per side. Now a lot of times people will tell you when you’re cooking flank steak like 2 minutes. That is going to give you the bluest steak this side of the Mississippi and we don’t want that. So let it go for about 4 to 6 minutes until it reaches about 130 on the inside. That’ll give you a nice medium rare. Perfect for eating. All right. While that does its thing, we’re going to get to work on this salad. So I promised you tomatoes and cucumbers. So obviously we’re going to do tomatoes and cucumbers. But before we uh Yeah. You know what? I’m gonna do tomatoes and cucumbers first. I was gonna make the dressing, but I’m playing fast and loose today. Feeling good? Yeah. All right. So, I’m just gonna have some cherry tomatoes and add those on into a bowl. You want anywhere from two to three cups of cherry tomatoes. Now, it is getting into tomato season, so as we do go that way, um big nice heirloom tomatoes would be absolutely beautiful. But I always write recipes cuz I’m not sure when you’re going to be making them in the year. If you’re making this in the middle of winter, cherry tomatoes are always going to be fresh. They’re always going to be juicy and delicious. In the middle of January, a Toronto January with weather not at all like this, you are finding the saddest tomato ever. It is going to look beautiful and then you eat it and it’s going to taste like nothing. So, that’s why I usually stick with cherry tomatoes. But if you find beautiful, beautiful heirlooms, feel free to add those in as well. So, I’m going to go in with the rest of those tomatoes. Then, I’m going to go in with some cucumber as well. Now, for the cucumber, you can dice it, you can slice it, you can do whatever you’re feeling. I’m going to do a little bit of a slice here. Um, I’ve also gotten really into uh smashing cucumbers. If you ever seen that, I feel like it was viral for a while on the internet, but basically, you get your whole cucumber and a meat mallet or a wooden spoon and you just kind of whack it. Um, it gives it a really, really nice texture. You could totally do that as well. It allows the dressing to really get into that cucumber. It kind of breaks down the fibers a bit, giving it a little bit more kind of absorbability for that dressing. All right, I’m going to go into that bowl with that cucumber. And if you didn’t have cucumber, it maybe wasn’t looking great that day, you could sub this out with green beans, with asparagus, with whatever you’re feeling. Now, I also love a little bit of shallot. So, I’m going to thinly slice up some shallot and toss that in as well. Now, if you don’t have a shallot, you could easily do this with a red onion. That would work beautifully. But I love a shallot cuz it’s kind of a softer onion flavor. It’s almost like if um onion and garlic had a baby and then made a shallot. It’s a good thing. So just thinly slice that up and add that on in. Now if you are someone who maybe doesn’t like the taste of a raw onion, you could either swap this out with green onion or do what I’m about to do. Add the dressing or the vinegar onto the shallot and let it sit for a minute. That’s going to pull back on that spiciness. So, the first thing I’m going to add in is about 2 tablespoons of some red wine vinegar. You could also do this with lemon. You could do it with apple cider vinegar, but I figured we have red wine in the steak. Why not do red wine vinegar here? So, two tablespoons right on top. And you can see I’m kind of like favoring the shallots there. That’s just going to pull back a little bit of that kind of punchy spiciness, which we don’t necessarily want. Going to season that up with some salt, little bit of pepper, and then I’m going to go on with the rest of my dressing ingredients. This is just super duper simple. Going to go on with about 2 tablebspoon of olive oil. Perfect. And then to bring everything together and give it a really nice kind of emulsification, two teaspoons of dijon mustard just brings everything in. Dijon is one of my favorite things in the world. If you’ve ever watched this show and seen Andrea bucket on it, you can guarantee there’s going to be some Dijon mustard in the recipe. Always a good thing. Now, since there’s the honey in that marinade as well, I’m going to go in with a couple teaspoons of honey. I know it seems kind of strange putting honey on cucumbers, but it works really, really well. Super tasty. So, I’m going to give that a good mix together just to combine. And this salad is one of those ones that gets better the longer it sits cuz it’s just going to draw out some of the moisture from those vegetables, kind of intensifying their flavor and giving them that beautiful kind of acidity. All right, now it is summer and for me, the summer means my herb garden is going banana bones, which is very exciting. So, I’m going to add in really whatever soft or fine herbs you’ve got growing in your garden. I usually have some basil, tons of chives, maybe some parsley, but if you have things like teragon, um even oregano would work. Um those would be really really nice. Those are what we call fine herbs. Basically, herbs are divided into the fine herb category or the woody herb. Woody herbs are things like thyme and rosemary. Those wouldn’t be as great in here because they’re a little bit too kind of stiff and I don’t want that. So, just going in with those chives. Little bit of parsley and that basil. Give that a nice chop up. I’m going to chop them nice and big cuz this is kind of acting as the salad greens in my recipe. This is the thing. I think in the recipe I call for four to six tablespoons. Clearly I am not following my own recipe. But when it’s herbs, just measure with your heart. Do whatever you want. That’s going to give a ton of flavor. It’s absolutely beautiful. See, it kind of acts like the greens. Isn’t it beautiful? Super tasty. All right. Right. Now, into there, we’re also going in obviously with some of that feta cheese that I bought at the market. You gota just crumble that right in. But if you wanted to, if you’re someone who likes a blue cheese with their steak, a little blue cheese in here would be absolutely beautiful. Or fry up some halumi, pop that in there. Oo, that would be nice. I’ve got about I’d say half a cup to one cup of that beautiful feta. Give that a nice mix together. And like look at how good that salad looks. I am thrilled. All right. Now, I’m going to go check on my steak. See how he’s doing. I’m going to give this one a little bit of a flip. Oh, yeah. You got that char. That is absolutely stunning. I’m very excited about that. But while that keeps doing its thing, obviously this is TV and we are live, so we already have one cooked right here, which is a dream. All right. Now, for flank steak, like I said, anytime you’re looking to cut the flank steak, you want to cut it against the grain. Now, it gets more obvious as you cook that flank what way the grain goes. So, if you look at this flank, do you see these lines here? That’s the muscle fibers. So, what you want to do is you want to cut it against that. So, just get your knife and run it along. Oh, look at that be. That is a beautiful medium rare flank steak. Super nicely cooked. Oh my gosh. So, when you’re cutting it against the grain, basically what you’re doing is making your job of eating much easier because you’re cutting through that fiber, cutting through that muscle, making it absolutely beautiful and tender. I’m going to plate this baby up. Just pop it onto a board. Just make it nice and fanned out, looking absolutely beautiful. And then I’m going to go on next to that with this wonderful salad. Like to me, that looks like summer in a bowl. All right. Now, real quick, I’m gonna get my friend Alvin back out here to give this a taste. You might remember him from last week. Hey, Alvin. How’s it going? I know. For me, anyways. Alvin last week was out here and he was like he’s starting to petition to come taste all the food. You should make a regular 100% regular occurrence for sure. I’m going to give this a shot. Okay. Give it a taste. Give it a taste. All right. Let’s I want to get a little bit of everything. A little everything. Yeah, you got to do it. Little tomato. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. A little little cucumber. Alvin, you look at that. Look at that. That is nice. How’s it tasting? Oh, wow. Right. Not too shabby. I love it. Right. Another winner. Another winner. You heard it here first, Ellen. Thanks so much. Hey, Mary here. What did you think? Drop your comments below and don’t forget to like and subscribe for more of the good stuff.