Idaho. Steak with our 'taters.

Ever wonder where Idaho got its name? Idaho means “gem of the mountain” or “the sun comes from the mountains”. A precious gem, the star garnet, is only found in two places in the world: Idaho and India.

It holds the title of biggest potato grower in the US and it also supplies the majority of the countries’ trout. So of course, potatoes were on the menu for our States on My Plate meal. But we needed something to go with it.

Chicken tenders: we’ve all had them at some point. What we made were chicken tenders, except they were made of steak. They're called finger steaks, and they're another well known Idaho food to go with our 'taters.

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Cutting fingers.

We started by cutting up the steak. While cutting the steak, we made sure to cut off and dispose of the white, chewy, and rather unpleasant veins of fat often found in sirloin. Then we sliced the steak up into long, thin strips to implement the “finger” part of the name.

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I love getting my hands dirty (sarcasm).

Once the sirloin was sliced n’ diced, we got ready to make the batter/marinade. It was a mixture of buttermilk, flour, and some Montreal Chicken seasoning among other ingredients. We made the batter, and put our steak fingerlings into our buttermilk batter, mixed it all together to marinade in the fridge for an hour.

After the one hour duration, we made a breading consisting of flour and garlic. We got our steak pieces out of the fridge and rolled all the individual pieces coated in slimy sauce (aka our buttermilk batter) in the garlic breading, and it was so fun. Once the steak was breaded, we then put the steak pieces into the freezer to freeze.

While the steaks were in the freezer, we started the potatoes. We scrubbed them and cleaned them. Then we poked them with a fork to help release steam in the baking process so that our potatoes didn't go out with a bang.

Next, we got a large bowl and drizzled olive oil onto the potatoes and gave them an olive oil bath. Onto the baking sheet they went. We sprinkled them with salt to help keep the moisture in and into the oven.

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Bubblin' boilin'.

Once the freezing process was over, we took the steak out to deep fat fry them.

Whenever we put one of the steaks in, it splashed a little bit of oil out that was quite hot. Be careful!

A batch fried for 3-4 minutes in the scolding hot oil. We cut into one steak from every batch to make sure that they were properly cooked through.

By this time, our potatoes were ready to come out of the oven. Look at that timing!

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Enough with the chicken tenders. Give me some finger steaks.

My grandparents heard that we were having a SoMP meal and decided to come enjoy it with us. We plated the finger steaks, potatoes, and added some green beans for good measure.

The steaks had a crispy outside, and a tender inside. They were great! They were delicious both plain, and when dipped in a little something called ranch.

The potatoes were soft and delicious when sprinkled with cheese.