I Make a Mean Pepper Steak on Wednesday Night

It's Thursday.  It's cold, snowing, the sun is beneath a blanket of clouds and that can only mean one thing.  It's time for pepper steak.  Okay, so that could mean a lot of things but pepper steak sounds good and I have all the fixings here at the homestead.  Pepper steak is one of those meals that I don't have very often.  Maybe once or twice a decade.  But it's good, it's cheap, and if you pair it with the right beer, you are on the road to happiness.  Here is what you will need to start.

This is about 2 lbs of flank steak.  I like flank because of the texture and taste.  It has a lot of beefy goodness that different cuts of beef hide with the richness of the fat.  As you can see, flank is pretty lean.  However, if you are a fan of New York strip, use it.  You want to use filet with this dish, go ahead.  The major reason I bought the flank today was that it was on sale.  I forgot to tell you, flank is not the cheapest cut.  It is the "in" cut of beef these days and you will pay for it.  For these 2 lbs I paid about $7 and that was on sale.  The basic point I am trying to make is that it doesn't really matter what cut of beef you want to use.  Use porterhouse if you want.  Just find a nice steak and buy it.  One of the most important things that you will want to do with pepper steak is marinate the beef.  The ingredients are pretty plain so a little extra bite in the meat will just help the dish along.  Use whatever marinade you like.  If you have read previous posts, you'll know that I am a fan of making my own marinades and rubs.  Not that a commercial rub or marinade doesn't taste good, it's a matter of cost.  I refuse to shell out $5 for a 8oz bottle of stuff that I already have at home.  Most rubs and marinades are extremely salt based.  So, if you look at the cost of salt and the few other ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry, you are further ahead to make your own.  That way you can put in exactly what you want.  If you are not a salt lover, reduce the sodium and add herbs.  You see what I am getting at.  It takes about 2 minutes longer to make your own rub or marinade as it would using something pre-packaged.

All you will need to mariante your meat is a 1 gallon Ziploc bag.

Throw the meat in the sack.  I added the following for my marinade:
1/2 cup of worcestshire
2 heaping TB of brown sugar
2 cloves of minced garlic
3/4 cup of white wine (I used a moscato)

There it is.  Marinade is going to do 2 things for your meat or fish.  1. Give it flavor.  2. Tenderize.  Most marinades consist of salt and sugars and possibly some form of citrus or acidic based liquid.  These componets help break down the hard tissue of the meat while giving it flavor.  There definitely is something to be said about marinating the meat too long.  A good rule of thumb is no less than 2 hours and no more than 12.  If you leave your meat in the marinade for 3-4 days, you will end up with a gnarly piece of something that used to be edible.  Trust me, no more than 12.  There is only so much flavor and spice the meat can take and then it is just causing harm.  Throw this in the fridge and move on.

Beer.  Yes, this IS a beer blog.  I am reviewing two beer today on the blog.  First up:  Little Kings.  An eastern United States beer, Little Kings hails from Wilkes-Barre, PA.  You might have seen these cute little devils in the store before.  LK comes in a 7oz 8pack form.  They are just tiny little fellas.  The brew is cream ale, a top fermented American style beer that resembles the German Kolsch.  The cream ale is a thirst quencher.  Cream ales are meant to be drank in large quantities (due to their low alcholic content) and their neutral taste.  A dying art, the cream ale survives in few markets today.  Schoenling, the maker of Little Kings, as well as Genesee Brewing company (Rochester, NY) are the major marketers of cream ale in the United States.  The 7 oz bottles kind of bother me.  I am a beer dinker and when I go for that first beer of the day after a long hot day at work, I can drink 7oz's in a New York minute.  I like my beer to come in the standard 12 oz's or higher.  I think these bottles could be a lot of fun if used at a party or you bought a few buckets of these on ice at a bar, but to just take the 7oz's home to drink really bothers me.  The taste is decent.  I can see how this beer could be drank in large quantities on hot summer day.  It has low alchohol content so you won't wind up in the weeds after a few hours.  Personally, it is a little too sweet for my taste.  By sweet, I don't mean it has been brewed with maple syrup sweet, but the malt content is just a little too high for me.  Then again, I am a fan of the IPA's

  A king with his Little King.

Great for a theme party......but.....get rid of the little bottles.

Destroying the King! 

Back to the pepper steak for a minute.  While downing a few Little Kings, I went ahead with prepping the vegetables.  A lot of diners and family style restaurants will prepare their version of peppersteak with simply green bell peppers.  I decided to use a trio of bell's that give the dish a little color.  The reason?  I had them on hand and they looked like they might go bad in the next few days.  Green peppers are much cheaper than the red, yellow and orange variety and really have the same exact taste as the greens.  However, you will pay dearly for the different colored peppers at the market.  You can usually pick green bell's up for 99cents/lb or less and the others are usually around the $4/lb mark.  A huge difference in price when we are just talking about color.  I suggest going to the local farm market and buying the peppers there.  Of course, when you live in Michigan, the growing season is only so long.  However, peppers can be processed and frozen and hold up pretty well if you want to take the time to do that.

Three peppers and 2 onions.  There it is.  You may want to use only 1 onion, but I like onions so I am using two.

Thin strips is what you want.

Nice thick slices of onion.

Drizzle a little olove oil into the mix.  You don't need a lot.  Because the peppers are thinly sliced, you aren't going to cook them very long.  They need a small coating of oil so they don't stick to the pan.  Maybe 2-3 TB of oil.

If you like, add some other veggies to your mix as well.  I am purest when it comes to pepper steak, but I do occasionally add a can or two of mushrooms.

You can use fresh mushrooms if you like.  Thinly sliced portabellas go great with this dish, but this is what I had on hand and I am going to use the canned.

That is it for prep work.  There is not a whole bunch to pepper steak.  Now that you have finished all the hard work in the kitchen, relax and enjoy a beer.

My second review today will be of the Sam Adams Latitude 48 IPA.  I, like a lot of people, jumped on the Sam Adams bandwagon years ago because it was a very reasonably priced brew for the big taste that you got.  For some reason or other, I jumped off that wagon years ago and really haven't had any Sammy A stuff in awhile.  I saw it in the store and had never tried it so I thought why not give it a review?

It's scary sometimes buying a beer that you have never had before because you obviously are buying it to enjoy it.  However, when you want to expand your horizons and go outside the box a bit, it can be dissappointing.  I have bought my share of 6 packs of odd brews over the years and have been inspired as well as deeply dissatsified.  That is the chance you take when you go out of your comfort zone.  It's easy to get stuck in the beer rut and buy the same old song and dance.  You get used to it.  You know what to expect and I can understand the thought of going with what you know.  If you never reach outside that comfort zone you will never know what the world of beer is all about.  There are miraculous things being done with beer these days.  Some of them might make you want to vomit.  You will find that if you keep trying and experimenting, you will find barley and hop heaven.  If that isn't a reason to branch out, I don't know what is.

I'm going to hop off my soapbox now.

 
Look at the deep color of this brew.  Not the best picture in the world, but I think you get the gist.  When people think IPA, they usually think pasty looking beer.  Look at this though!  It looks like an amber or even a heavily malted Bock.  This is IPA that is really not IPA and I love it.  SA has taken the concept of the hop and realized that just because the bottle says IPA, it doesn't mean that that is all you should taste.  The Latitude 48 brings a lot of sweet maltiness to it that you won't find in a lot of IPA style brews.  There is definitely a lot of added hops to it.  It hits your pallatte like a freight train with the initail bitterness, however there is something more.  It finishes with the sweet malt and caramel tones and doesn't leave you with that bitter IPA taste.  It's good.  Because of this, it leaves you very full after a few and you feel like you've had a meal instead of a beer.  I think this would be a great beer to have with beef, pizza, fowl or fish.  However, realize that if you are going to have more than 2 of these, you might be too full for your supper.  Definitely not a beer to be consumed in mass quantities but would complement a meat laden meal very well.  I expect to have one with my pepper steak tonight.

Ummmmmm, yummy!   The earrings?  Please note that I don't walk around with 1 inch hoops dangling from my ears.  This was done as kind of a joke.  I had my ears pierced years and years ago and wondered if I could still wear them.   Well, I can.  I used to think it made me look cool when I was 21, however, at 36 it makes me look like a balding and fat pirate.  Not quite the look I am going for.

Okay, so there are no more posts on the pepper steak.  Reason being, I ruined it.

Here are a few things that are sure to ruin your pepper steak.

1.  Over cook the steak
2.  Over cook the vegetables

I did both.  So, what I ended up with are pieces of leather mixed with gooey bits of peppers.  Not appetizing at all.  I was mad.  I ended up throwing the whole dish out.

The beer was great.  The pepper steak-not so much.  This kind of thing happens every once in awhile to all cooks.  Sorry for no final pictures of the dish, but you would not find it very pleasing.  

And it's Classic Day at the Blog

One of the great things about beer is that there seems to be a never ending selection available to suit everyone's tastes.  There is beer brewed with fruit, beer brewed with tomato, beer brewed from sorghum.  You've got wheat beer, light beer, beer with tons of alcohol, beer with no alcohol at all.  It comes in a can, it comes in bottles, even in plastic.  There are lots of choices out there for us beer lovers who know what we want or want to try something different.

For people that just dabble in beer or who are not sure what their likings are, I have chose to review two classic brews that I don't think you can go wrong with.  To make it more interesting, I have chosen these two classics at different ends of the spectrum.  Today we are going to delve into Miller High Life and Guinness.

Miller High Life:  The Champagne of Beers!  I can hear the jeers coming through my screen from all the beer snobs out there.  To them I say phooey!  The fact that some folks think that their beer has to have a high price tag on it to be considered "good" are treading in a sea of retardedness.  Real beer drinkers know that it makes no difference if your 6 pack costs $4 or $20.  If you like it, then you like it.  Deciding what beer to buy at the local party store also depends on your mood, the time of year, etc-not just how much money you have in your wallet.

High Life brings back a lot of good memories for me.  As a child, it was the beer that I would shuttle to my father and neighbors on a bright blue skied July afternoon.  My dad drank it, his dad drank it, and I'm sure his dad's dad drank it as well.  There is something to be said about longevity.  High Life was introduced in 1903 and has had a remarkable run even winning gold at the 2002 World Beer Cup in the category of American Style Lager.

High Life is a great everyday beer.  When your buddy drops by while you are out mowing the grass, it's a beautiful thing to bring out a couple bottles of High Life and discuss if the Tigers have a chance to win the pennant.  Call me sentimental, but sitting on the porch in the heat of the afternoon with a glistening High Life bottle is Americana at it's best.

Like any beer, High Life does have it's quirks.  It's high carbonation can be a turn off to some.  The bubbles are in there to mirror the "champagne" qualities.  High Life is best served extremely cold.  It's taste will vary greatly depending on the temp.  I've had High Life that has been chilled in a semi cool fridge and thought it disgusting.  If the option is available, the best way to drink it is after it's been chilled with ice.  A galvanized tub full of ice and High Life will be a welcome addition to any summer day.  If ice isn't an option, set the temp to your beer fridge a little cooler than usual.  You will thank me for this.  

 Forgive the Hamm's glass.

Guinness.  I used to hate this brew.  I detested all it stood for and everything about it.  People would ramble on and on about how good Guinness was.  To me it tasted and looked like outhouse drippings.  This is a time in my life where quantity was much more important than quality.  The beers that I drank around this time consisted of Blatz, Milwaukee's Best and assorted 40 ouncer's of malt liquor.  It took me years to really sit down and give this one a try.  When I finally did, I saw a light.

I would be lying if I said that this is the end all be all beer.  I do like it.  I like it in small doses.  I like it at a certain time of the year.  For those occasions, nothing else will do.

The inky blackness of Guinness provides you with a very smooth tasting stout-perfect for extended discussions and cricket tournaments at the local pub.  For people who have never tried Guinness before, don't let the look of it fool you into believing you are about to drink a glass full of motor oil.  It's smooth.  It is surprisingly refreshing.  It's not a beer I would grab on a 90 degree day after I mowed the lawn, but it is semi thirst quenching.  For a stout, that is a pretty interesting thing.

The thing I enjoy about Guinness the most is the complex flavors.  Slightly acidic, hints of the dark malt lends to an almost coffee taste.  It pairs well with food.  I would recommend almost any sort of meal with this beer.  Pizza, burgers, wings all go great and compliment each other nicely.  Guinness can also be used as an ingredient in a lot of recipes.  I have used it in place of stocks for soups and stews.  Use it as a marinade for red meat and you won't be disappointed.  My wife makes a chocolate Guinness cupcake that is out of this world.  And while we are on the subject of desserts, Guinness is one of the few beers out there that actually lends flavor while eating your dessert.

Again with the Hamm's glass.