Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Mojito Steaks



Mojito Marinated Steak with Pico de Gallo


One of the best things about the summer is using the outdoor grill and having minimal clean up! Another great thing about the summer is lazy evenings spent with friends sipping light and refreshing grown-up beverages. Putting them together in one dish beats both options in my opinion which is why we tried out this genius recipe for a Mojito grilled steak!

Mojitos are a scintillating combination of rum, mint, and lime juice. (If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a huge fan of lime juice. It’s a shame that too much acid from citrus causes cankersores and strips the enamel from your teeth otherwise I’d have lime juice with everything!) When we mix these flavors together, we get a drink that just screams “RELAX WITH ME!” Mostly because the rum makes us loose and lazy.

Why not marinate your steak in this happy marriage of flavors? Marinating not only makes the meat more flavorful, but also brings out the tenderness. You got to try a little tenderness! Especially when you’re grilling – it’s very easy to dry out your food on the grill so marinating serves a double purpose.

I found this recipe in a Cooking Light Fresh Food Fast Weeknight Meals publication a couple years ago and finally got around to testing it out. You can find it online here.

I like my steak medium rare - cook yours to desired doneness!


My only suggestion is to marinate for an extended amount of time so more of the marinade can sink in to give this dish more POW! Since it’s supposed to be something you can whip together fast after work, they only allow for 30 minutes of soaking in that yummy mojito bath they call a marinade. I trimmed my steaks and got them in the marinade around two in the afternoon so by the time we were ready to prepare dinner all we had to do was get the grill ready then take the steaks out after they had bathed for a few hours. It was worth it.

I confess that I did not serve pico de gallo with the steaks as the recipe calls for. I had made an avocado salsa earlier in the day that I will share with you in a later post. (It’s amazing!)

To save on calories, we sipped on No-jitos with our Mojito Steak. Thank you Crystal Lite for making low calorie grown-up beverage inspired drink packets!