Your Sirloin Steak Deserves A Garlic-Herb Butter Upgrade
Sirloin steak tends to be a more wallet-friendly option than, say, New York strip or filet mignon, but this is good news for people who prefer to embellish their steak with some sort of topping. With the pricier steaks, people can get a little judgmental about how they should really be enjoyed in their pure and pristine state, but with cheaper cuts of beef such as sirloin, it's generally considered acceptable to break out the A.1. or Heinz 57.
If you'd like to upgrade your budget-priced beef without too much time, trouble, or expense, though, you can always use a compound butter. Just as a compound phrase is a mashup of two different words — such as hot dog, ice cream, or blueberry — compound butter is a mashup (in fact, a literal one) of softened butter with one or more flavoring agents. In developer Christina Musgrave's sirloin steak recipe, she compounds her butter with garlic, basil, and oregano to give the steaks a little Italian-inspired flavor.
The compound butter can be used for things other than steak
Musgrave plops this garlic-herb butter on top of sirloin steaks that have been simply seasoned with salt and pepper and then pan-fried in oil. Before doing so, however, she refrigerates the butter until it becomes a nice solid chunk rather than a soft smear. "This helps it melt slower," she explains, adding that it should help ensure that "your plate isn't a mess right when you add the butter to the steak."
While Musgrave generously allots 2 tablespoons of butter to each steak, you might want to hold back a bit and save some of that compound butter for any vegetables or potatoes that you'll be serving alongside the meat. You could also double the recipe for the compound butter, thereby ensuring that you'll have plenty left over for using on rice or noodles, frying eggs, or making herby garlic bread. If you think this butter is the kind of thing you might want to have on hand for regular use, you can even make up a few sticks' worth, roll these into logs, wrap them in plastic, and keep them in the freezer for an indefinite amount of time.