As you know, we partnered with the team at BeefItsWhatsForDinner.com to try out a new recipe using a cut of steak that was matched to me via their Lean Beef Personality Matchup Survey . The recipe they gave us to try was for Tender Pepper-Rubbed Strip Steaks with Grilled Vegetable Trio.

Using the gift card they provided to buy the ingredients I returned home with a nice collection of yummy ingredients to work with. What surprised me was that although I’ve bought lots of cuts of beef in my time, I’m not sure I’ve ever bought a Strip Steak at the store. A NY Strip is one of my favorite cuts to get when dining out, but these were a bit thinner than I was expecting.

It was a simple recipe to pull together and what excited me was that it was very different than any way I had ever cooked a steak before.

I’m usually a simple olive oil, pepper and salt sort of guy on a steak. Or I’ll marinade it for a bit or dry rub some seasoning on it. This recipe was basically a dry rub, but with the fresh chopped herbs and garlic it was extremely different then anything I had ever made before.

I couldn’t so much “rub” it onto the steaks as sort of press it into the meat so that it would stick a bit. If I make this again I think I need to chop the herbs up even smaller and perhaps add some form of liquid into the mix to give it a different consistency. But, as you can see here on the steaks, it does add a really nice fresh color to them.

The vegetable trio was interesting as well. With Emily still not eating steak when we made this she was all kinds of excited to try something new. Asparagus is not something I ever make, but was willing to try for this assignment. I’ve also never stuck a kebab spear through a potato to cook them in this way either. One word of advice is to keep the heat really low under the potato and onions or else they get a very weird shade of toasted marshmallow brown.

The steaks cooked up nicely and because I was going to slice them up before plating them I made sure they came in at perfect medium so that everyone in the house would be content with them.

Overall we loved the recipe, but it was weird because each bite of steak had a different flavor since the “rub” wasn’t completely evenly distributed. The girls also said that next time they wouldn’t put the liquid mixture on the onions because the lemon and onion mixture wasn’t as good as if the onions were just plain. I don’t eat onions so I have no comment on that.

So, now that I’ve got you craving some Lean Beef of your own, would you like to win a $100 gift card to help you buy some great steaks? All you need to do is take the their Lean Beef Personality Matchup Survey and leave a comment on what cut of beef you’ve been matched up with. We’ll then pick a winner and send you out the gift card plus some fun schwagg to help with the shopping and cooking!

Disclosure: The gift cards and schwagg for the give away were provided to us as part of the promotion from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. They also gave us a gift card to purchase the ingredients used in testing out the recipes.