London Broil

Monday I had a bit of a dinner failure. It's not that the recipe was bad, it was all in my execution. I just screwed up.

I made a London Broil that I marinated for a short time prior to cooking. I served it with some creamed spinach and brown rice which both turned out quite well if not a little boring.

The marinade was pretty good. In a plastic storage container, I mixed the following:

London Broil Marinade
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestshire Sauce
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper

Combine all ingredients. Cover plastic container and shake.

For my london broil, I then sliced one small onion, added it to the marinade and then coated the london broil with the marinade in a zip lock bag. That made it easy to refrigerate as I marinated.

Sounds pretty easy and decent. Right? Well, I used a pretty thick cut of london broil. So, when I went to broil it in my shitty broiler, I wasn't quite sure how long it would take. I placed my piece of meat along with the onion and all of the marinade in a baking pan. I decided to broil for 10 minutes per side. Sounded reasonable to me.

The meat looked really nice. It was browned on both sides and the marinade had turned into a beautiful looking sauce. So, I took it out. I cut open the meat to see if it was cooked enough. It was definitely pretty red in the middle, but trying not to overcook it, I just put it on the cutting board and covered it with aluminum foil hoping it would continue to cook while I made the spinach. (I had made the brown rice much earlier so I could give it to the baby. It takes about 45 minutes to make brown rice, so plan accordingly.)

At this point I also took the pan I had cooked the meat in, put it on a medium heat on my stove top and added just a bit of water to scrap up the delicious browned bits at the bottom. That was the last of my good cooking.

I put a gravy boat in the sink so I could pour the sauce into it. But, as I was trying to pour the sauce, I knocked the gravy boat over ruining 90% of my delicious sauce. Then when I went to slice the meat, I realized it was really way too rare. Dammit! I just basically threw away the cooking juices and I needed to return the meat to the oven!

Meanwhile I had already spooned out my rice and spinach which were now getting cold on the plate. It was so annoying.

I finally got the london broil appropriately cooked and was able to salvage enough of the onion sauce for Damien's serving, but I had to resort to A1 sauce which I barely had enough of.

I think I should have marinated the meat for much much longer. Maybe 6 hours or so. Overnight would have been even better. It was fine, but not nearly as tasty as I thought it would be.

Anyway, not the best cooking night. So last night we decided to order the pizza we skipped on Sunday. Damien insisted that maybe I needed a break.

(NO PICTURES TO DOCUMENT MY FAILURE.)