Old Fashioned Steaks

Inspired by the classic cocktail, this sauce for steak turned out silky and savory and a great compliment to really meaty cuts of beef.

Steak (8-10 oz. portions)
1 cup bourbon whiskey
1 cup soy sauce
juice of 1 orange
juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp. bacon fat
dash Angostura bitters
dash maraschino syrup
1/2 sweet onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
salt
black pepper
cayenne pepper
1 cup flour

In mixing bowl, combine whiskey, soy sauce, garlic, and spices.  Tenderize steaks.  Marinade steak in whiskey solution.*  Preserve marinade.  Finely dice onion, and sweat onion in medium saucepan.  Add marinade to saucepan before onion begins to brown.  Mix flour with cold water.  Fold in remaining ingredients, while bringing mixture to simmer temperature, stirring constantly.  Meanwhile, cook steaks.†  Strain sauce, keep warm in double boiler until ready to serve on meat.


* There are two schools of thought about marinading meat.  One is that the meat absorbs pretty much everything it's every going to in about twenty minutes.  The other is that you pretty much can't marinade too much, unless you keep the meat marinading so long that the meat spoils.  I'm closer to the second school of thought than the first -- although I'm finding that if I marinade the meat in a vacuum container, acceptable results can be achieved in a short time.

† I used 2" cuts from an eye of round, in the sous vide for 6 hours at 56 C and then seared them in some more bacon fat.  I should have trimmed more fat off the steaks than I did and relied on the fat in the sauce to get the job done and I'm realizing why sous vide cookbooks rely on bacon fat so much -- it has a very low melting temperature so it's very easy to work with.  There's no reason you can't grill or broil the steaks but man is it amazing to get a 2" steak cooked perfectly all the way through.