Outback vs. Top Mart

When I was in college, I had some stupid room mates. I used to live in a house with 7 other people. I brought a gas grill. On that grill I would occasionally make things like steaks, burgers, or beer can chickens.

Two guys I lived with were convinced that making steak on a grill was some kind of refined skill. It isn't, you get some good meat, turn on the grill, set the meat on the grill, wait, turn it over, wait, eat, it is the easiest fucking meal to make.

Steaks in Korea are not cheap. Korean beef is pretty expensive, while imported cuts of beef that are good for steaks can be pretty hard to find. In Jinju, I found a place that sells, or sold American black Angus beef from Montana. This shit costs the same as the Korean stuff. For an occasional steak, biting the bullet and buying Korean beef isn't a terrible idea. A Korean tenderloin steak is actually like eating a nice plate of orgasms.

In Jinju, there are a couple of family style steakhouses, VIPs and Outback. I had a steak at VIPs once...Eh. I like to go to those places for their ribs. I can't really make ribs like that. If I could I'd just buy the meat. But these days Top Mart also sells those ribs for about 5000 won. Outback sells them for 33,000 won. Both Outback and VIPs sell steaks for as high as 50,000-70,000 won per meal.

Challenge: Go to top mart with 50,000 won. Buy an uncut Korean tenderloin 안심 with that much money and then cut it into steaks yourself. You can probably get about seven small steaks out of that. Make some mashed potatoes. Grill the steak if you have a grill. If you don't have a grill, fry it in butter. When the steak is cooked, take some minced onion and fry them in the steak's juices. Deglaze the pan with some white wine, and add some butter to make an onion wine sauce that you can serve on the steak. Take that Outback.