Steak with Roast Potatoes and Radishes and Radish Green Salsa Verde
Welcome to our first Food Waste Feast Meal Plan! Meal planning is a great way to reduce waste - with a grocery list, you can save yourself from purchasing unnecessary food, and with multiple recipes in mind, you can easily repurpose ingredients across various meals. If you're just clicking around, you can of course enjoy this dish without cooking all the meals, but consider giving it a try!
Steak and vegetables is one of the favorite meals in our house - we don't eat a ton of meat, so when we do it's nice to get a really good grass-fed, pasture raised steak. I love the easy-to-cook, inexpensive yet flavorful butcher's cuts, like skirt, flank and hanger steak. I just give the steak a generous sprinkling of salt, sear it on both sides over high heat, then serve with some sauce on the side, like this easy radish greens salsa verde.
If you're participating as part of the Meal Plan series, you should already have cooked baby potatoes in the fridge, which will save you a step in getting deliciously crispy crunchy smashed potatoes. If not, just put your raw potatoes in a pot, cover with water by an inch, add a good-sized pinch of salt and bring to the boil, then cook until tender. You'll be smashing the cooked potatoes a bit, adding your roots of choice - we used radishes, but you could swap it for beets, carrots, turnips, or more - and then tossing it all in olive oil and roasting until browned and tender.
If you went shopping with the meal plan, you'll also have half a bunch of leafy greens left, which you can whizz up with raw garlic, olive oil, and the radish greens to make a zippy salsa verde. Perfect for dipping steak as well as potatoes and radishes. If not, just use any herbs or greens you may have - I just used the radish greens and chucked in some leftover snap peas to bulk it up.
If you really like steak, you may want more than a pound and a half. If you don't eat much meat or are cooking for one, leftover steak is delicious in quesadillas, on rice bowls or salads, or just on its own.
The Rough Recipe
This feeds 2 with leftovers, or 4 if people don't need a ton of steak. You can always increase the amount of steak. With potatoes already cooked, you can finish this up in about 30 or 40 minutes. Gluten-free.
Here's what you'll need:
- A sheet pan for roasting
- 2 to 3 cups cooked baby potatoes, or regular potatoes cut into chunks (if you don't have cooked potatoes, see above)
- 1 bunch of radishes, roots halved or quartered, leaves set aside
- Olive oil and kosher salt
- A good solid pan for searing steak - I love my cast iron
- Canola or other neutral oil
- 1 pound or more of skirt or flank steak, or the steak of your choice
- A blender or food processor (or the willingness to do a lot of fine chopping)
- A few cups leafy greens, chopped
- A few sprigs of dill, leftover from the salmon meal
- Garlic
- Olive oil
- Lemon juice or vinegar
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
Put all your potatoes on a lightly oiled roasting pan. Using your clean palm, smash each potato slightly so there are more bits to crisp up. Add the cut radishes to the pan, and drizzle everything with a bit more olive oil and sprinkle with kosher salt. Toss to combine, then put in the oven. You want them to roast until the surfaces start to get brown and a bit crispy, about 30 minutes. If you want a good browning on both sides, flip and continue to roast.
While the roots roast, cook your steak. Cut it into two pieces to fit into the pan and salt generously on both sides. Heat your pan over high heat with a light coating of oil until lightly smoking, then add your steak. Cook until well browned on one side, about 2 to 3 minutes, then flip and cook the other side until nicely charred on the outside. With a thin steak like skirt, this should be enough to get the inside to medium-rare, but you can always use a thermometer to ensure the center is at least 125 degrees, or more if you like it more cooked. Remove from heat and let rest for 5 to 10 minutes.
While the steak is resting, add your radish greens and any other greens to the food processor. Add in a few cloves of raw garlic. Pour in enough oil to coat the greens well, then pulse to chop. As the greens whizz, keep adding oil until you like the texture of the salsa verde. Season with salt, taste, and add a bit of lemon juice or vinegar for brightness.
Once the steak is rested, thinly slice it against the grain (i.e. across the meat fibers) . Serve with the roasted root vegetables and generous helpings of the sauce. Enjoy!
