This steak with soy sauce is one of those non-recipe recipes that we’ve never thought to share on the blog.We’re not talking about a soy sauce marinade here.Just a seared steak, drizzled with soy sauce over rice.

This was how we often enjoyed steak growing up in a Chinese American family! To this day, however, it remains probably my favorite way to eat a steak—and it’s become my non-Chinese husband’s favorite way to eat steak too.And that’s saying something! How Chinese American Kids Eat Steak There are many great preparations that people have devised to enjoy a steak—Argentine-style with chimichurri, steakhouse-style with a big pile of mashed potatoes and creamed spinach, or like the French do, au poivre or with a pile of fries on the side.  Steak is not a common sight in China.Preparing a large piece of meat and serving it to a single person was not affordable or possible until recently.

In Chinese culture, meat is cut into smaller pieces, stretched with lots of vegetables and other ingredients, and shared amongst many (see our related post on eating meat-lite!) Beef is also less common in general.  However, for many Chinese American kids, steak probably showed up on the dinner table this way: pan-seared, sliced, and drizzled with a little soy sauce.The American part? The big piece of meat.The Chinese part? The soy sauce—and the concept of sharing that steak as part of a larger meal.  If you’re wondering why a steak dri

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