What a root.

On the Menu: Stuffed Flank Steak with Creamy Horseradish Sauce

A recent round of recipe testing for food52 led to this delightful dinner. We had experimented with flank steak when we made fajitas a little while back, and we were looking forward to trying it with a completely different set of flavors. More specifically, we were excited about the horseradish element of this dish. Our grocery store started stocking horseradish root about a month ago, and every time we perused the produce section, I had to pick up one of those knobby roots and turn it around in my hands, trying to think of what could be done with such a strange looking thing.

The easiest (and perhaps most obvious) way of using horseradish root is to make horseradish sauce, which is what we did for this dish. On the day we made this, Kevin went out on a 45 mile (!!!) bike ride, so I prepared the horseradish while he was gone. I used the method described on Simply Recipes, beginning the process by peeling the horseradish root. Peeling a horseradish root was not a very enjoyable experience. Simply Recipes says you can use a vegetable peeler, but the peeler was quickly replaced with a crow’s beak paring knife, which got through the thick skin and into the nooks and crannies of the root. Even still, peeling that root took forever. Once I had finished, I chopped the root into pieces and used the food processor to grind those pieces into a fine paste. I added water and vinegar to finish the horseradish prep and put it into a jar to use later.

Once Kevin had returned from his epic bicycle excursion, he cleaned up and we set to work on dinner. We sliced a 1 1/4 lb. flank steak into four pieces against the grain and seasoned them with salt, pepper, and Montreal steak seasoning. While the steaks rested, we made the blue cheese stuffing. We chopped and sauteed a shallot and a couple of garlic cloves, and then stirred in bread crumbs and tossed that mixture with blue cheese.

With the stuffing finished, we returned to our steak strips. We put a pile of stuffing on top of each steak strip and topped it with some baby spinach leaves. Then we tag teamed those steak strips to roll them up. I laid a piece of bacon on our cutting board and placed the steak and stuffing on top of it. Then I rolled up the steak, wrapped it with the bacon, and held it while Kevin tied a piece of kitchen twine around it. We did this four times and only had to re-roll once! That’s the power of teamwork.

We heated some olive oil in a skillet and seared the steak rolls before placing them in the oven for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, we removed the steak, tented it with foil, and let it rest for 15 more minutes to cook to medium-rare.

While the steak was cooking, we put together the horseradish cream sauce. We tested the horseradish I had prepared earlier in the day, and to our dismay, it did not have much of a kick to it. We both blamed the root. Here is where I’m going to digress for a bit: last week, Serious Eats posted a recipe for prepared horseradish and noted that if you add the vinegar to the finely chopped horseradish too soon, it loses it’s characteristic kick. I had added the vinegar right away when I should have waited at least 5 minutes. Back to the cream sauce: our quick fix was to add a lot more horseradish than the recipe called for. The horseradish was tempered with heavy cream and sour cream, and it was complemented with shallot, lemon juice, and dijon mustard.

The recipe notes that I sent to food52 best describe how this turned out: There’s a lot about this dish that could be raved about. The steak itself was well seasoned and tender, thanks to the bacon. The warm cheese stuffing was tangy and creamy, and the slight freshness from the spinach was a welcome addition to the heavier, heartier components. The horseradish cream sauce was so wonderful…even after all the textures and flavors of the steak came through, the sour cream mellowed everything out and then the horseradish came out at the very end with an addictive lingering heat. We’ve been dipping everything we can into that sauce; it really made the meal!

Flank Steak stuffed with Blue Cheese and Spinach with Creamy Horseradish Sauce
adapted from food52

1 1/4 lbs. flank steak, cut against the grain in 4 strips
salt and pepper to taste
Montreal steak seasoning
2 t. olive oil, divided
1/2 c. blue cheese, crumbled
1 shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/1 T. panko bread crumbs
1/4 cup spinach leaves
4 slices bacon, optional

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Now, take your strips of flank steak, pound them until about 1/2 an inch thick, basically just enough so you can roll it, and season both sides with salt, pepper and montreal steak seasoning, set aside. Now, in a small skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add your shallots or onions and cook until softened. Next, add your garlic and cook for about 30 seconds before adding your panko bread crumbs to the mix. Finally, add blue cheese and cook until warm, about 2 minutes. Pour mixture into a bowl.

Now take your seasoned strips of flank steak and spread the blue cheese mixture down the middle. Place several spinach of leaves on top of the cheese. Before you roll that pretty little piece of meat up, make sure you’ve cut a couple of pieces of kitchen twine, and have them ready. Next, roll the meat up tightly and secure the roll with your twine. If you’d like, before you tie the roll up, wrap it in a piece of bacon, it’s yummy.

Get out a large oven-safe skillet, and put the other teaspoon of olive oil in it. Heat over medium-high heat until shimmering. Next, take your rolls and sear them in the skillet on each side to get that lovely color. Once they’re seared on all sides, take the entire skillet and put it in the oven. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until a meat thermometer registers 145 or so. Now, take the skillet out of the oven, tent foil over the top and allow to rest for 10-15 minutes. At this point, you should have medium-rare meat. If it’s not there yet, feel free to pop it back in the oven for a couple of minutes to warm it up and finish it off. Serve with Horseradish Cream Sauce.

Horseradish Cream Sauce:

1/2 c. sour cream
1/4 c. prepared horseradish
1 shallot, minced
1 t. lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 T. dijon mustard
1/4 cups heavy cream

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl until well-combined. Thin with more heavy cream if you’d like.