Flat Iron Steak

I love Kroger's flat iron steaks.

What is a flat iron steak? It's a chuck steak, also sometimes called a 'top blade' steak. It's a relatively new cut of meat--apparently, it used to be a part of the cow that was normally sold as a roast or ground for ground beef. But some new butchering technologies have allowed them to cut out just the tender part of the top blade steak (without some of the nasty fascia in the middle that made it normally a steak only fit for grinding).

Why do I love it? It's a nice tender cut, but it's super cheap...I can buy 1 long 1-pound steak for about $5 when it's on sale, and then feed steak to my whole family, and I swear it's as tender as a sirloin.

I go simple with my marinades...I marinate in worcester sauce with bottled minced garlic, and then sprinkly the steak liberally with pepper while I cook it. The hubby likes his steak medium-well and I like mine medium rare, so I normally pull the steak off the grill, hack off some for me, and then put it back on for a few more minutes so we're all happy.

My husband doesn't like steak, but I do, and the kids often do (although not tonight). So I can't make it much, but I do treat myself. My husband will normally eat it happily enough, although it's never going to get a rave from him.

I served it with:

1) Some delicious yellow squash, sauteed with butter with some Italian seasonings, that we picked with the kids at a pick-your-own farm in Dacula. (Husband ate the veggies, which is always a coup; the children did not)

2) Roasted new potatoes, which my family has been loving lately.

I cut the potatoes up into long pieces, with the skin (about six pieces per new potato), stir them with a tablespoon of olive oil, sprinkle them with some fresh rosemary from the yard (we have a perpetually out-of-control rosemary bush, so I am always looking for ways to use it), and then roast them at 450 for about 25 minutes. They are easy, and come out DELICIOUS.

The kids ate pretty much nothing, and B wouldn't stop asking for cheese. But I enjoyed it, as did my husband, and the dog was stoked that he got to eat leftover steak.

I was kind of proud that I actually made three different fresh items--normally my family gets one, complimented with things out of the freezer or a can. But when everything is super-easy, it's worth it.