When I was little, my Mom used to make fabulous steaks, but they were always marinated before cooking, usually in some variation of soy sauce and garlic. If they weren't marinated steaks, then they were "sauced" after cooking with either a homemade Asian version of mushroom sauce, or with...A-1. After that, I couldn't eat a steak without saucing it with everything from bottled steak sauce to Tabasco to sriracha to even regular ol' gravy.
Today however, when I eat a steak, I like it rubbed with salt, maybe a little pepper, and I never ever put any kind of sauce on it. It's so wrong. It feels like cheating. It feels like I am taking away from the point of eating a medium rare steak. It feels like I am tainting the meat. So many steakhouses offer their steaks with a variety of sauce like Bearnaise, a Cabernet reduction, etc. Obviously, there are people out there who love sauce on their steaks, but I can't do it. I want to taste the beefy goodness of my medium rare steak. The strange thing is, for everything else, from salads to fish, I over sauce.
Do you "sauce?" If so, with what? If not, why not?
