hi my name is Rob Barrett and you're watching cooking for dads today we're gonna make flank steak it's awesome that's one of my favorite meals we're gonna make a tomato salad and we're gonna make healthy french fries come on let's go get our stuff you've been to the website you've got your list let's go get about a pound and a half of a flank steak this is a great cut of meat it's really flavorful and also really cheap you're gonna like it get an entire bulb of garlic and get two large Idaho russet potatoes you need some soy sauce also some vegetable oil and some olive oil get some Dijon mustard this is the strange ingredient for the day this is molasses to be found near the syrups this is Brer Rabbit I like it because it's got a great name but it's gonna be really useful for a lot of barbecuing stuff that we're gonna do get some ground ginger you can also use fresh ginger if you want get some fresh tomatoes all right we need to get some dressing for our salad for the tomatoes get like a blue cheese or a Caesar or something kinda creamy that kind of sticks to the tomatoes I love this Briana's cheddar to pull a salad dressing it's super good we're gonna make a grilled dessert tonight it's really good so get a fresh pineapple not too green make sure there's a little yellow showing and not too soft kind of give a little squeeze we also have need some vanilla ice cream some graham crackers and some chocolate syrup all right this is kind of controversial this is msg the original recipe actually calls for this we're gonna skip it and put in sugar instead the reason I like flank steak so much is the first of all it's really inexpensive second of all it's got a lot of flavor and it's also really lean so we're gonna make a yummy marinade for it let it sit for as long as possible it'd be great if you could do it for like overnight or like a couple hours we'll probably have this in here for like 20 minutes and that's should be enough we're gonna start with about a half a cup of soy sauce a half a cup of oil it doesn't need to be exact and I'm gonna show you exactly how much a half a cup is so you don't have to measure it out if you don't want to alright so this is what a half cup of soy sauce looks like take your soy sauce pour that in now we're gonna get about the same amount of vegetable oil and put that in as well I'm just gonna use the same cup pour about the same amount of oil in this is canola oil but you can use vegetable oil even use olive oil if you want to but I would recommend canola oil and the website will have like the exact amounts but if you're watching the video this will give you like a visual representation of how much you need all right it's time for the molasses we're gonna put in four spoonfuls and stir that around once again this doesn't need to be exact one two three that's basically the right amount next two spoonfuls of Dijon mustard you can also use mustard powder if you have that next two spoonfuls of ground ginger I'm using this rather than the fresh because this will keep a lot longer so if you're gonna make it again in the future you have some of this left just have to be exact just basically a spoonful instead of MSG we're gonna put in one spoonful of sugar next six cloves of garlic remember we don't need fancy presses we're just gonna smash them apart and cut them up alright we've got our six clothes just take it smash it down peel off that skin smash and peel just crush it get that skin off take your knife and just kind of chop it up into little bits on your cutting board you're not going to eat this so it's not all that important you're just using it for the flavor this is my new knife it is super awesome it's from that's income but it made the ultimate pan get the right tool for the right job and it really makes a big difference all right we're all chopped up we're gonna put that into our marinade you're gonna take a fork stir it up make sure that molasses is all dissolved we're going to cut open our flank steak lay that in a flat pan pour it i marinate over the top of it let it sit for as long as we can mmm-hmm this is gonna be awesome yeah we're gonna do some quick viewer mail a lot of you have written and asked what's sure I do the shopping in so the store web we do the shopping is called qual ski just awesomely and the best experts the best food we have awesome prices during the Twin Cities area don't shop anywhere else my friend April next we're gonna get our fries ready this is a not a baked fry it's actually gonna be a fried fry but it's gonna be really healthy and it's gonna be low fat or as low fat as fries can be I found baked fries just to be it's kind of tough and that's so good so we're gonna cut these up into fries we're gonna cook them in the microwave first then we're just gonna Brown them in a pan real fast with just a little bit of olive oil and salt they are gonna be awesome first we're gonna wash them make sure all the dirts off it's really bad you can use a brush now if you don't want the skins on you're gonna have to peel them but I kind of like the skins on so next thing we're gonna do is cut them in half so you can get the right knife and we're gonna cut them lengthwise so they have a flat bottom they're a lot easier to cut then just cut them in slices start with your hand as the guide and then back your hand off a little bit each time kind of like a claw so you're here blades hits right up against your hand every time that's how those guys do it the state fair and do all that fancy cutting you want to cut them as evenly as possible because you want them to cook all at the same time once they're cut into slices put them in the fries try to keep them as uniform as possible now we're just gonna cook these with little olive oil and salt cook them up if you really want them to taste like McDonald's fries you got to soak up in sugar water for about a half an hour I've done it I think it makes a little bit of a difference but probably not enough to make it worth it and then you know you've got your potatoes in sugar water too okay the next thing we're gonna do is Rex you can rinse these off when you cut them they kind of move out the starchy liquid we're gonna rinse that off and they won't stick together so bad we're gonna put them in our colander give them a quick rinse all right you've rinsed off our fries we're gonna put them in a bowl that you can cook in the microwave we're gonna put this in for about three minutes or three and a half minutes just until it starts to feel soft right now the edges are really hard just cook them until they're basically done all right the actual cooking time for these there's about five minutes or just over five minutes it depends on your microwave and exactly how many potatoes you have but you want them to stick kinda just start to soften up and then they're ready to go we're gonna put them in this bowl cover them with a little bit of olive oil and kosher salt and then we're gonna fry them in the pan just give a splash of olive oil kosher salt or salt stir those up how to separate them as much as possible we're gonna cook our steak next because we want the kind of the fries to come out and be hot ready to go to the table and the steak needs to sit for about ten minutes after it's cooked anyways so this will work perfectly let's go get our steak on the grill okay we haven't done any grilling on this show yet because there's a lot of grilling shows out there and I'm sure a lot of you know as much or more about grilling than I do but this is a just such a great meal that I thought it was worth going out and doing i grill all winter long here in Minnesota like right now it's like -5 degrees Fahrenheit and so this may go a little bit quicker if you're in a warmer climate if you don't have a grill you can roast this in your oven for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees again it depends on how thick your steak is and how hot your oven gets but we're gonna put this on our grill basically get it warmed up these are the basics and you know them make it so you're you can't keep your hand over for more than a second about 400 degrees we've got this all nice and marinated up again if you let it marinate as long as possible do it the night before if you can and then we're gonna drop this on that is a good sound we are gonna do four and a half minutes to five minutes on each side depends on how thick your steak is a little bit and we're gonna end up slicing the steak so don't be afraid to cut into it to check it so set our timer for four and a half minutes for our salad we're just gonna take tomatoes slice them and then cover them with a dressing it's really easy and it's it's super good it really goes well with the steak especially so we're gonna wash them first peel off those green things I got both yellow and red because I think the colors are gonna be kind of cool let's see with this Brianna's dressing I'm just gonna cut out this white part and slice them up all right to put these together take your tomato and just kind of spread it out over the plate now in this case we're going to take half of the red and half of the yellow just take your dressing or a little stream right over the middle there you go alright five minutes up flip it over four and a half to five minutes this side alright our times up we're gonna cut into this just to make sure you want a pretty pink on the inside so this is just right we're gonna pull her off let it sit for ten minutes alright our steak is done we're gonna cover it with foil let it sit for ten minutes there's actually complete to the cooking it brings the juices back in and finishes it all up now we're gonna go do our fries everything will be hot and ready to go okay we've got our fries are covered in olive oil at this point if you want to bake them on a tray with some parchment paper you can do that we're not gonna add any more oil so it doesn't make a big difference but I think the frying gives it a better texture it just tastes more like fries than than baked you'll notice we actually have some half-decent pans finally thanks to the guys at Anolon they are awesome I love these pants who they have these glass lids they also clean themselves essentially and they're nice and big you have these rubber handles there's nothing not to like we're gonna get this pan as hot as we possibly can that way these will cook you know or Brown it up in the shortest time possible we don't really need these to cook too much because they've cooked mainly in the microwave basically we're just trying to add some texture okay we're gonna check our pan we're gonna take a fry and touch it and see if it sizzles this is ready to go you might need to work in smaller batches you want to have one layer of fries so that it touches the the pan you don't want to have them stacked up on top of each other but they should cook pretty fast dump them in again we're not adding any of you any oil to the frying just the oil that we added before try to get them as flat as possible on the pan doesn't have to be perfect anything that are sticking together cut them apart do as many as you can we're just gonna let that brown probably about a minute and we're gonna flip them over shake them around this much get as many sides browned as possible all right these are starting to brown them up so we're just gonna flip them over again don't need to be exact we're gonna cook them on a variety of sides you can see them getting nice and brown on the side that hits the pan once you got a lot of them flipped over how to smooth them out so there's one layer you can always deep-fry if you want if you just want to add a bunch of oil and you know make sure they're completely coated but this is olive oil and it just has a little bit on there so it gives you that flavor and that taste without all the saturated fat and stuff alright our fries are pretty well done once again you can bake them if you want I just find this mimics the deep-frying experience better dump them out on a paper towel haven't already give them a shot of kosher salt or even if you have alright we're gonna slice up our flank steak it's been sitting it's still nice and hot take it to a cutting board we're gonna cut across the grain cut up on an angle and down like this this is kind of done medium here if you want it cooked more you can always put it back on you can never cook it less now put that back on our plate to serve that up we are ready to go all right marinated flank steak with tomato salad and french fries does it get any better than this you'll love it all right this is a great meal and you should serve it this way and have everyone sit down once that's done there's a great grilling dessert I want to show you as well so go ahead and eat and then afterwards we'll make the dessert real quick all right this is a super easy grilled dessert you're gonna love it take your pineapple cut it into chunks put it on the grill just until it turns brown take some vanilla ice cream put that in the bowl while your pineapple still warm cut it into smaller chunks and put that over the ice cream add some chocolate syrup crumple up some graham crackers and put that over the top you are ready for a treat that's it my name is Rob bear you're watching cooking for dads cook well it's worth it you