Candy Steak

This is a delicious and decadent dish that plays with sweet and spicy tastes on a protein, in this recipe a fatty steak, typically I use Snake River Flank Steak. This recipe can be scaled, but is based around 2-4 steaks for a total of 1-2 pounds of meat. The premise is to build a caramelized sear of the steak, and combine sweet and spice tasting notes to play off each other. The honey and soy additionally will naturally help tenderize the meat with natural enzymes. I normally plate this with a stir fry and rice dish, but it can pair with many other arrangements, or be eaten by itself. I recomend experimenting with this recipe to find the taste you love by cooking small bite size peices and scaling the proportions down. That’s how I discovered this recipe, and currently I am playing with other spices to see what other combinations are possible.

The Golden Spice Ratio

Measure and combine the spices in the following ratios.

12 Parts Steak : 6 Parts Honey : 3 Parts Soy : 1 Part Spice

For example:

1 kg Steak : 500 g Honey : 256 ml Soy : 40 g Spice

I typically start with an entire honey container, and after adding the honey to the Ziploc bag, I use that container and a kitchen scale to mix the rest. Before cooking, the mixture should taste slightly spicy, or warm on the tongue with a lingering heat. After searing below, the flavor should mellow out and have a good balance between spicy and sweet.

• Pick any high quality honey you prefer, generally I use 400-600 grams of honey per cooking.
• A good quality soy of your choosing.
• For Spices, I’ve been using Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning - But I suspect other combinations are possible.

Recipe

• Add Snake River Flank Steak, or steak of choice whole to ZipLoc bag.
• Add Spice into Ziploc bag
• Remove as much air from the bag as you can, then seal. (I normally close the bag until there is a small opening I can use to suck the remaining air out of the bag using my mouth, then seal it.)
• Fill a pot large enough to submerge the bag with hot tap water, allowing it to cool. This will help the honey thin, and mix well.
• Let rest for at least 2 hours, gently massaging the bag to mix the marinade every hour or so.
• Place your Sous Vide machine of choice, for us a Joule
• Minimum 45 minutes -> Maximum 360 Minutes Sous Vide at 124 degrees Fahrenheit
• When ready to finish, use a cast iron, or heavy pan and warm to a medium high temperature.
• Melt 1 teaspoon of butter in the pan, and place the steaks in the pan.
• Drizzle extra sauce into the pan, and adjust heat as needed so that you are caramelizing the sauce. It should look somewhat bubbly, and start to smell sweet. Nothing should be burning at this point.
• When all sauce has been added, flip steaks to cook both sides, about every 2-3 minutes. Continuing for about 10 minutes, or until the outside has a shiny dark look. This is the the caramelized sear happening.
• When complete, remove and plate, it is ready to eat.
• Normally I pour the extra sauce into a pitcher that can be used to pour on other elements of the disk.

When Grilling

If you decide to finish the searing with a grill - it’s 100% possible, and how this recipe was discovered, but it will take a low and slow approach. Keep drizzling the extra sauce on the steak to keep it moist. The goal is to caramelize the honey, so avoid direct flame when possible.