Recipe: Lao Steak

Lao Steak, sliced for serving.

Here’s the Lao Steak recipe from House of X Tia. The author says the marinade would be good on chicken or pork as well. Serves 4.

Ingredients:
2 steaks totaling 24 oz or so. We used New York strip but ribeye would work as well
2 T oyster sauce
1 t fish sauce
1 ½ t brown sugar
1 T finely chopped garlic
½ t Kosher salt
½ t ground black pepper

Method: mix all ingredients except steak in a Ziploc bag until sugar is dissolved then add steaks and mush in the marinade. (You could also marinate in a dish, but this thick sauce takes particularly well to mushing.) Refrigerate at least 6 hours or overnight, mushing the bag from time to time to redistribute spices.

Here’s the steak after reverse sear. Cooking on a rack in the oven made some nice “grill marks”.

To cook, heat a grill or cast iron pan and cook to your preferred doneness; or use the reverse sear method in which you start with a 275 degree preheated oven. Place the steak in the oven on a wire rack and roast to a little rarer than you would like it. Christine Tia recommends 30 minutes for medium rare or until internal temperature reaches 115 degrees; we were going for rare and took our steaks out at 20 minutes. We found temperature control in the oven to be imprecise and would consider using a sous vide bath instead if you want to reverse sear. To finish the steak, which will be nearly done without browning, sear in in a very hot cast iron pan with a little oil for 1 ½ minutes per side.

Slice the steak into thin strips across the grain for serving. In Laos you would serve this with sticky rice and the diner would pick up a slice using a wad of sticky rice as a utensil, then dip into a chili vinegar sauce. The crispy charred bits (produced by the brown sugar) are particularly prized.