Grilled Steaks with Sweet-Spicy Hoisin Sauce

Hands down, the best sauce for steaks I have ever eaten in my life.

This one doesn't need much more of an intro than that! After every bite I was exclaiming how good it was and mmm-ing (you know, saying Mmmm! several times). Jon finally looked at me and said, "I get the point!!"

I found the recipe in the August 2007 issue of Food and Wine Magazine and put it on the menu for Sunday night. I served it with another Food and Wine dish, Caramelized Broccoli with Garlic.

One more picture before I get into the recipe -

Ingredients

• 1/4 c vegetable oil
• 4 medium shallots
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tbsp finely grated ginger (I used the microplane)
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
• 1/3 cup chopped cilantro
• 1/3 c hoisin sauce
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 c chicken stock
• 3 tbsp honey (I used just a touch less, maybe 2 tbsp, for fear it would be too sweet)
• 3 tbsp unsalted butter
• 6 steaks (I used filet mignon that Jon grilled to medium)
• 2 large sweet onions, sliced crosswise 1/2 inch thick (I cut our onions into large rings)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

• In a medium saucepan, heat 1/4 c oil
• Add the shallots, garlic, ginger, crushed red pepper, and cilantro and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 7 minutes.
• Add the hoisin, soy sauce, and chicken stock. Raise the heat to moderately high and boil until thickened, about 5 minutes.
• Stir in the honey.
• Remove from heat and stir in the butter until blended; keep warm.

Cooking and plating the steaks -

• Rub the steaks and onions with oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill the steaks over high heat for 4 minutes per side, or until nicely browned and medium-rare (we grilled them to medium). Transfer to a carving board and let rest for 5 minutes.
• Grill the onions for 4 minutes per side, or until charred. Transfer to a platter.
• Thickly slice the steaks and arrange on the platter over the onions. Serve with the steak sauce. Since we grilled filet, we each plated our own over the onions instead of slicing the steak on a serving platter.

This had a very distinct Thai flavor to it (Jon thought it just tasted very Asian, I guess the cilantro did it for me). I am so in love with this sauce and could have licked the pot clean. It's not hard to make either - there are a lot of ingredients but once you chop and prep, you only have about 15 minutes of cooking time. Try this!!