Churrascaria Marinated Steaks with Chile-Lime Sauce

Here is a recipe I adapted from the Best Barbecue on Earth. The original recipe is from Brazil (you will love this book – it is set out by countries and each and every recipe looks exquisite).

In my copy, just like my copy of The Barbecue! Bible, you can tell which recipes I have made, as the pages have oil or food stains. Okay, so that is virtually every page. What can I say? My short term memory has been … well it is gone so I have to constantly refer to the recipe and that means it comes in contact with my hands and food in the process of preparation all the time!

I am doing memory exercises on my iPhone, when and if Dylan ever lets me actually use my iPhone. He has more applications on it then I do, way more, and some of them I think he downloaded himself because I have no idea how they got there!

I was a little hesitant about making this dish as it uses jalapeño peppers and Belle is not a spicy food kind of person. However, lately she has fallen in love with a fish sauce and red Thai chile pepper sauce I made and uses it on everything, so I asked her if this sounded okay to her.

Yes! So off I went. It was a night when the two older children…um, I mean the teenagers, were out of the house for dinner or at least that was what I had thought. Hayley decided to stay home for dinner at the last minute, though, and that is why we also had the Spinach Tofu Salad with Spicy Miso Dressing, which I posted about yesterday.

Belle says: I really enjoyed this steak, and didn’t find the jalapeño peppers too spicy at all. Ward served this done to the perfect point of rareness for me, beautifully red-pink throughout. He thoughtfully left the chile-lime sauce in a small bowl to the side for me, so that I could adjust the amount of the spicy sauce to my liking – I discovered that I really enjoyed the sauce, which added a lot of flavor to the steak, and ended up slathering it on all of my steak!

Churrascaria Marinated steaks with Chile-Lime Sauce
Adapted from Best Barbecue on Earth by Rick Browne

4 jalapeño peppers, seeded and chopped
2 tsp kosher salt, divided
2 yellow onions, chopped, divided
14 cloves garlic chopped, divided
2 strip-loin steaks
1/2 cup organic lime juice
1/3 cup dry red wine
2 tsp dried oregano
2 fresh bay leaves
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 cup Italian parsley, chopped

1. In a food processor place the jalapeño peppers, 1 tsp salt, half the onions and 5 cloves of the garlic. and process until you have a smooth paste. Place in the fridge until ready to use.
2. Place the remaining 9 garlic cloves and the remaining half of the onions in a large bowl. Whisk in the lime juice, red wine, oregano, bay leaves and 1 tsp salt and pepper.
3. Put the steaks in a re-sealable freezer bag and add the garlic, onion, lime juice and red wine mixture. Refrigerate for 4-6 hours.
4. Pre-heat the BBQ to 450 degrees F (make sure you clean and oil the grill as well). Remove the steaks from the bag (wipe off the marinade) and remove the jalapeño pepper sauce from the fridge. Let both come to room temperature.
5. Cook the steaks for 4-5 minutes per side for rare, longer if you prefer your steak more well-done. Remove from grill and tent with foil for 5 minutes. Serve with the jalapeño pepper sauce and garnish with the parsley.