Flank Steak with Hot Peanut Sauce...

You know we love spicy dishes by now, so I apologize if you're not a fan - you can still give most of our recipes a chance and just reduce the spices or peppers to your own tastes. However, I wouldn't tinker too much with tonight's Flank Steak with Hot Peanut Sauce as we thought the dual layers of heat worked magic for this dish.

Prices for flank steak have gone through the roof it seems, so we don't enjoy it as much as we used too, but I do get a large pack from Costco every once in awhile and break it down into portions for us to store in the freezer. Fully thawed, this cut of beef is not always easy to slice into thin pieces (always against the grain please!), so to make life a littler easier, I try to do this part while the meat is still partially frozen.

The thin strips of steak are placed into a bag containing green onions, soy sauce, brown sugar, fresh ginger, lime juice, toasted sesame oil, crushed red pepper and a couple minced cloves of garlic. Half of that same marinade is actually set aside, before the steak is added, to create the base for the sauce later on. Be sure to give the steak at least 2 hours so the marinade has a chance to do its thing - since there is very little acid in the recipe though, feel free to assemble this part the night before if you won't have time before dinner.

While the skillet for the steak was coming up to temperature, we finished the peanut sauce by combining the remaining marinade with a bit of water, crunchy peanut butter and a touch of cornstarch to thicken it up. Once it comes to a simmer, it takes just a minute to activate the thickener and the sauce is good to go. Since the steak was sliced thin, it literally took just a couple minutes per side to get to a doneness we prefer. Because there was about 1/4 cup worth of sauce per portion, we decided to serve the tender strips over a nutty bed of brown basmati rice. Don't expect an intense peanut flavor as there is only a tablespoon of peanut butter in the sauce, but you could still tell it was in the mix. Between the fresh ginger and crushed red pepper, there was quite the wallop of heat in each bite, but with a forkful of rice, it was not overbearing at all.

Recipes
Flank Steak with Hot Peanut Sauce