Why Your Next Chopped Steak Needs “Board Sauce”

I don’t usually season my steaks too much – I love it when the meat speaks for itself – but there is something deeply seductive (and summery) about a pile of grilled beef seasoned with a bright, aggressive herbal sauce. Like most people, I prepared the sauces separately and served them along with the beef. Then I learned about cardboard dressings, also known as “cardboard sauces,” and my life improved.

Chalkboard decor is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a decoration that’s done right on the cutting board. You take some olive oil, fresh herbs and garlic. You grind the last two and mix them with butter in a coffee cup. When the steak is done cooking (whether grilled or in a skillet), you pour the contents of the mug on a cutting board, place in- hot, remove the rest of the red- steak in this delicious mess, and slice and toss it, mix the butter with the meat juice. to get an incredibly flavorful sauce. It’s great for large-format steaks, especially side steaks and skirts, but you can use it for pork, lamb, and even shrimp (which don’t have to be chopped up, just tossed).

If you’ve been grilling for a while, you may have already heard of onboard sauces. Created (or at least popularized) by Adam Perry Lang, the plank sauce has been around for over a decade. (Since then, Perry Lang has been associated with Jeffrey Epstein, who he worked for in the early 2000s; you can read about it here , but there are enough recipes for sauces that you can not support Perry Lang if you want – AmazingRibs.com He has a delicious recipe .) According to Meathead Goldwyn , “Nothing saves overcooked steak like the cardboard sauce … The cardboard sauce keeps the meat moist and gives an interesting flavor to the insides of the meat. Surprisingly shocking, herbs don’t suppress meat. “

And while you can find quite a few recipes for dressings and sauces on the Internet, you really don’t need one. Aim for a ratio of 6 tablespoons of fat and 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh meat to 2 pounds of meat. Olive oil is a great base, but you can use ghee or whatever oil you like. (I’m going to make my next one with a mixture of plain vegetable oil and toasted sesame seeds.) “Fresh” can also be varied; I made mine with a mixture of fresh marjoram, thyme, oregano and parsley, plus a couple of cloves of minced garlic and a few pinches of salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes, although I didn’t measure every single ingredient.

The keg I filled with the resulting sauce is amazing; even the most well-done parts of the steak on a conical shape felt tender, moist and delicious to the taste. I think next time I’ll add some fresh chili and maybe some citrus zest and / or juice, and I’ll definitely add more onions (maybe green onions). With so many potential flavor combinations, I suspect I will be making cardboard sauces all spring and summer.

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