I believe that most every adult needs to be able to cook something solid — a go-to meal or slab of meat that’s more interesting than spaghetti but still easy enough that you can find the ingredients at most any grocery store.
I can follow a recipe, and pretty much get through it, but what I’m talking about is something you can remember in your head and whip it out at the appropriate occasion. I can make enchiladas at a moment’s notice, and if you slather anything with enough melted and crispy cheese, people will eat it. But I don’t consider it a go to stomach buster.
So what’s a stomach buster?
Anything that is a little different, is served up in copious quantities, and is so good that pretty much everyone wants to eat more than they need.
I had a buddy in college whose go-to meal was barbecue grilled fajitas. He would slice up some green, red, and orange peppers, onions, as well as chicken and beef in 3-to-4-inch chunks and throw it into gallon size Ziploc plastic bags with some secret marinade. Was the marinade really a secret or something he bought out of a jar? I have no idea. But after grilling it over charcoal and slapping it inside a tortilla with a little sour cream and fresh guacamole, along with a cold beer pulled from a cooler full of ice . . . it didn’t matter. It was freaking awesome.
Plus, grilled fajitas are a really good excuse to drink margaritas!
I know another guy whose specialty is slow smoking some serious meats over 24 hours. It takes a heckuva lot of effort, including waking up every two hours to do some mysterious basting or charcoal stoking or apple-wood burning adjustments. But the results? Absolutely astounding. The guy is a smoking genius, clearly at a level far above most men. He’s in high demand around the holidays, as you might guess, and along with that comes some real pressure.
Another guy I know liked to hunt pheasant and quail. He would save most of the breasts over the course of the season, breaking them out during his annual Super Bowl party. The go to meal? Stuffed jalapeños wrapped with pounded-thin pheasant and quail breast wrapped in bacon.
Focus on the Protein
Let’s face it, lots of women tend to be way ahead of men when it comes to cooking without recipes. We could talk about culture and why that is, but let’s focus on finding a go-to meal for you. The easiest way to make a big leap forward by just figuring out one way to cook a slab of meat. You don’t even have to come up with the side dishes right away.
For me, it’s a London broil or a flank steak — a big slab of beef that will be marinated over night, ideally, then grilled on the barbecue. Served? Sliced up alongside some dipping sauce. Alternately, I’ll smoke it on a pellet grill.
It’s crazy easy, and the large slab of meat is usually cost-effective, can feed quite a few people, and when you find a good flank steak, it’s something less ordinary. The dipping sauce is just the marinade brought to a hearty boil just before the slab comes off the grill.
The thing is, most everyone responds to a dipping sauce.
Easy Flank Steak Marinade and Dipping Sauce
Here’s the basics for the flank steak marinade, which you’ll just unceremoniously dump into a gallon-size plastic zip bag:
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 1/3 cup soy sauce
- less than a 1/3 cup of honey (I usually just grab the plastic bear-shaped honey container and give it a man squeeze)
- a few splashes of red wine vinegar, sometimes apple cider vinegar, about 2 tablespoons — something you can eye-ball when it pools up in the olive oil
- several cloves of garlic, chopped or minced or squished with a garlic press
- lots of pepper (and fresh ground is always more satisfying)
And now the flank steak:
- lightly score it (with a knife) across the grain of the meat in thin slits about a half-inch apart (both sides)
- place the meat in the bag
- seal the bag
- place in the refrigerator over night, turning it and sloshing the marinade around every now and then
- pull it out 45 minutes or so before you plan to cook it (so the meat isn’t so cold going right onto the grill with a sludgy marinade)
- toss it on a hot grill: if you’ve got a thinner cut of flank steak, you won’t have to cook it long, but a thicker, denser London broil type of cut can benefit from searing both sides over high heat for a couple minutes before turing the grill down and cooking it more slowly
When you pull it off, let it rest on a cutting board for a few minutes then cut it into thin slices and serve.
