The first time I heard of “Minute Steaks” was at the farmers market last year. I saw a sign for them and having never heard of them I asked “What are minute steaks?” to which I was answered “Steaks that take a minute to cook.” I should have seen that coming and I bought them mainly because I felt like an idiot for asking that question. I am glad I did because they are great to make a Steak and Egg Salad with.
This is my favorite new garden recipe I have come up with this year. I saw these tiny little sliced steaks at the grocery store and remembered having them last year. They are not particularity cheap pound wise (I think they were $6 a pound) but you can make an awesome dinner out of just a 1/2 pound, some eggs, and lots of garden goodies.
I started dinner by cutting about a 1/2 pound of greens from the vegetable garden. Into the salad bowl I washed and put in kale, swiss chard, lettuce, and beet greens. The kale is doing really well this year and we can easily cut leaves everyday. I found out Em has been cutting greens from the garden everyday for lunchtime salads and not weighing her harvest. She is robbing me of my harvest totals for our Monthly Garden Reports.
On top of the greens go the other garden goodies. 1 carrot shredded, 1 small zucchini shredded, 1 cucumber shredded, a couple radishes shredded, 1/2 a yellow onion sliced thin, and one sweet pepper sliced thin. This year I started shredding most of the goodies I put in salad and what I found is, the kids will never eat plain zucchini (unless it is Zucchini Cake) but when you shred it with cucumber into salad they don’t even notice it or they assume it is cucumber which is something they both like. Right now only the carrot and onion wasn’t pulled from the garden and in a few more weeks I should be able to harvest them as well.
Now onto the cooking portion of the dinner. Since the minute steaks are thin and pretty lean the won’t have a ton of flavor so I am seasoning them pretty heavily. Each side gets a good coating of salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and my garden herb blend.
The steaks go into a very hot pan with olive oil to cook quickly. You want to cook them on high heat fast so you get them browned. It really will only take a minute.
I reduce heat in pan to medium and put 4 eggs in. I am cooking them over easy (sunny side up would work too) for myself. While the eggs cook I put the steaks into the fridge to cool them down a little, then slice them into strips for the salad. Em and the kids won’t eat runny eggs which is a matter of extreme disappointment to me. Over hard eggs are like the well done steaks of the egg world to me.
I don’t want to use regular salad dressing. I am using the runny egg yolk, the oil, and seasonings from steaks to coat the greens and make a delicious salad dressing without any work or extra ingredients.
The final touch is crumbled feta cheese over the top and you are ready to devour.
The best part of this dinner was when Norah came running through the door all excited that mom had told her that she and Spencer could have ice cream if they ate all their dinner. I immediately gave a chuckle and Norah could see in my face she was screwed. Salad for dinner on a night when eating dinner stood between them and ice cream! It was every kids nightmare.
Well both maniacs ate enough dinner to get their treat and Norah was genuinely pleased with dinner. Spencer picked out all the good stuff and begrudgingly tried the rest. It was a good effort from them on I night I didn’t think they would pull it off.
- 1/2 pound mixed salad greens
- 1 carrot, shredded
- 1 small zucchini, shredded
- 1 cucumber, shredded
- 2 radishes, shredded
- 1/2 onion, sliced thin
- 1 green pepper, sliced thin
- 1/2 pound thin slice steak
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon herb blend
- 4 eggs
- 1/4 cup feta cheese crumbles
- Into a large salad bowl place washed and chopped greens.
- On top of greens layer carrots, zucchini, cucumber, radishes, onion, green pepper.
- Heat pan on stove to high heat and pour in olive oil.
- Dust each side of steaks with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and herbs.
- Cook in hot pan for 1 minute until browned on each side.
- Remove and lower heat to medium.
- Drop in 4 eggs and cook through with yolks still runny (over easy or sunny side up).
- Slice steaks and layer on salad.
- Top with eggs and break yolks to allow to run into greens.
- Top with feta and serve.
- Enjoy!