Cowboy Steaks Cooked on the Griddle

My husband is currently working some very long hours, leaving between 4 and 5 am daily and arriving home between 7 and 8 pm. There have been quite a few times that we eat dinner that late but right now by the time he gets home he doesn't feel like a big meal. What I've been doing is making dinner as normal then plating his up for his lunch. So his big meal is mid-day with a smaller meal when he gets home. I'm relying heavily on the freezers and pantries because growing season is just around the corner and our beef bought on the hoof will be ready soon. That means I need to clear space especially in the freezers. Wednesday night I cooked up a couple of cowboy steaks using the griddle.

Using the Griddle

I previously wrote about the cowboy steaks we bought to support a local group. Pan frying is actually recommended because these steaks are marinaded but they were good prepared that way. This time I decided to try using the George Forman Griddle we were gifted with. Yes I have an indoor grill cartridge for my stove and a tabletop indoor grill but I wanted to see exactly how the griddle would perform. I know it performs well for breakfast foods and making English muffins. The best way to test this is to see what else it can cook well!

The meal consisted of a cowboy steak with a side of sautéed onions and zucchini, nothing that could not have been prepared using a couple of frying pans. I set the griddle to 350ºF and added just a little olive oil. First on were the steaks followed by the onion slices and zucchini pieces.

Cowboy Steaks

Cooking these marinated steaks on the griddle was entirely different than cooking in a fry pan. I found the steaks caramelized better without losing much in the way of moisture. The onions even crisped up and caramelized better. The zucchini that was added last maintained its great green edging. In terms of taste this meal was a real winner hands down. The meat was cooked nicely to medium rare and the vegetables were nicely caramelized. It was a very nice meal.

In terms of energy usage the griddle used 1500 W per hour (18¢/hr) per hour compared to using the large burner at 2000 W (24¢/ hr) and the small burner at 1250 W (15¢/hr). For 18¢/hr I cooked a meal that would have cost me 39¢/hr to cook my conventional means. That's not a lot of saving but every time you can save on cooking costs it is one more way of reducing those food costs. Don't forget you are saving those all important kWh and every kWh does count!

The meal tasted great and I saved energy so what was the negative? There really wasn't a negative. In fact I enjoyed using the griddle so much for this purpose that I will likely choose it over the frypans in future. Clean-up was ever so easy so that was not a negative. However, I wiped down my back splashes simply because cooking this way will add a bit of a greasy film into the air that will settle on surfaces. This really is minor but still more than what you would get using splatter screens on a frypan.