Chile-Chorizo Steak with Garlic-Avocado Crema

Some dishes begin with a plan.

This one began with a memory.

We were recently in Milwaukee and had dinner at Amilinda, a wonderful Spanish restaurant downtown. We ordered several things, but one plate in particular stayed with me: a Spanish brisket, deeply flavored and incredibly tender, sitting in a rich red sauce that made you keep going back for another bite.

I'm going to have to take a real run at recreating my own version of that brisket eventually.

This isn't it.

But apparently some of those flavors came home with me.

A few nights later I was cooking for fun — which is usually when some of my favorite things happen — and started thinking about paprika, chile, peppers, lime, chorizo and beef.

Not really a recipe yet. Just an idea.

I had steak. I had chorizo. There was an avocado sitting there. Some peppers. A handful of cilantro. Potatoes are always useful.

So I started putting things together.

The steak went into a marinade with chorizo, paprika, chile, black and green pepper, salt and lime. A few hours later, I scraped all of that off, saved it, seasoned the steaks again and hit them with an extremely hot sear before moving them to the grill.

The reserved chorizo mixture went into a skillet with roasted red peppers and some hotter red peppers and became a smoky, spicy sauce for the steak.

The avocado became a crema with Greek yogurt, cilantro, lime, olive oil, salt and six cloves of garlic.

Six.

I like garlic.

The potatoes got paprika, chile, garlic, onion and a little Old Bay before going into the air fryer until crisp.

And suddenly dinner had turned into something I knew I wanted to make again.

That's one of the things I enjoy most about cooking. You eat somewhere good. You pay attention. Something sticks with you.

You don't necessarily recreate it. You let it become something else.

So this is certainly not the brisket from Amilinda. That deserves its own attempt someday. But it helped send me here. And for that, a tip of the hat to Chef Gregory León and the kitchen at Amilinda. Great food, great people, and exactly the kind of restaurant experience that makes me want to get back into my own kitchen.

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The Recipe

Serves 2 · Moderate

Ingredients

For the chile-chorizo steak

• 2 boneless steaks, preferably fairly thick
• 4 oz fresh chorizo
• 1½ tsp good-quality paprika
• ½ tsp chile powder, plus more for finishing
• ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
• ¼ tsp ground green peppercorn or freshly cracked green pepper (optional)
• ¾ tsp kosher salt
• Juice of 1 lime

For the garlic-avocado crema

• 1 ripe avocado
• 6 cloves garlic
• ¾ cup plain Greek yogurt
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 generous handful fresh cilantro
• 1–2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• Flaky or kosher salt, to taste

For the roasted pepper–chorizo sofrito

• Reserved cooked chorizo mixture from the steak marinade
• ½ cup sliced roasted red peppers
• 2–4 tbsp sliced hot red peppers, depending on heat preference
• 1 tsp olive oil, if needed
• Kosher salt, as needed
• Freshly cracked black pepper, as needed

For the crispy chile potatoes

• 1 lb small red potatoes
• 1½ tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp paprika
• ½ tsp chile powder
• ½ tsp garlic powder
• ½ tsp onion powder
• ½ tsp Old Bay
• ½ tsp kosher salt
• Freshly cracked black pepper

For finishing

• Fresh cilantro
• Flaky salt
• Lime wedges (optional)

Method

1. Marinate the steak. Combine the chorizo, paprika, chile powder, black pepper, green pepper, salt and lime juice in a bowl. Add the steaks and work the mixture over them so they are well coated. Transfer everything to a resealable bag and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and preferably 3–4. You aren't trying to cure the steak or overwhelm it with chorizo — you just want those paprika, chile, pork-fat and lime flavors spending enough time together to work their way into the surface of the meat.

2. Make the garlic-avocado crema. Add the avocado, garlic, Greek yogurt, lime juice and cilantro to a food processor or blender. Blend until smooth. With the machine running, add enough olive oil to loosen the mixture into a thick but spoonable sauce. Season with salt. You want something creamier and looser than guacamole, but still substantial enough to sit underneath the steak. Taste it. The lime should keep it bright. The yogurt should give it some tang. And the garlic should very definitely be there. Refrigerate until ready to use.

3. Prepare the potatoes. Cut the red potatoes into roughly 1-inch pieces. Toss with olive oil, paprika, chile powder, garlic powder, onion powder, Old Bay, kosher salt and black pepper. Air-fry at 400°F for about 18–22 minutes, shaking or tossing several times during cooking, until the potatoes are deeply browned and crisp on the outside and tender in the center. Cooking time will vary somewhat depending on the size of the potatoes and the air fryer. Keep warm.

4. Remove the steak from the marinade. Take the steaks from the refrigerator about 20–30 minutes before cooking. Scrape the chorizo mixture and excess seasoning from the surface of the steaks. Save it. Because that mixture has been in contact with raw beef, it must be thoroughly cooked before serving. Pat the steaks lightly dry if necessary. Season them again with a light dusting of paprika, chile powder, kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper.

5. Make the roasted pepper–chorizo sofrito. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the reserved chorizo mixture and cook thoroughly, breaking the chorizo apart as it renders. Once the meat is completely cooked, add the roasted red peppers and hot red peppers. Cook for another 5–8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the peppers soften and everything begins to come together. Add a little olive oil if the pan seems dry. You are not looking for a smooth sauce. This should stay textured — somewhere between a sofrito, relish and loose pan sauce — with visible pieces of chorizo and pepper and some of that beautiful paprika-red oil running through it. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Keep warm.

6. Sear the steaks. Heat your searing surface as hot as you can get it. I used a high-temperature sear burner running at roughly 900°F. Sear the steaks hard and fast on both sides. The goal here is color and crust, not cooking the steak entirely through.

7. Finish on the grill. Move the steaks to a grill running on high heat. Grill on both sides, rotating the meat approximately 90 degrees during cooking to create the crosshatched grill marks. Cook until the steaks reach your preferred doneness.

For reference:

• Rare — 120–125°F
• Medium-rare — 130–135°F
• Medium — 140–145°F

Remember that the steaks will continue to rise a few degrees while resting. Transfer to a board and rest for 5–10 minutes.

To plate

Spoon a generous pool of the garlic-avocado crema onto each plate. Place the steak over the crema. Spoon the warm chorizo and roasted pepper sofrito over the top. Don't worry if some of the red paprika oil runs down into the green crema — that is part of what makes the plate work. Add the crispy potatoes alongside. Finish with cilantro, a little flaky salt and, if you want more brightness, a squeeze of lime.

When you eat it, try to get some steak, peppers, chorizo and crema together. The steak brings the char and richness. The chorizo gives you smoke, paprika and heat. The crema cools everything down while the lime keeps it from becoming heavy. That contrast is what makes the dish.

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Cook's notes

About the garlic. Yes, six cloves. If you're particularly sensitive to raw garlic, use four. I wouldn't go much lower. There is enough avocado, yogurt and fat in the sauce to carry it, and the crema needs some backbone against the chorizo and heavily seasoned steak.

About the chorizo. Use a chorizo you actually like. This isn't a background ingredient — it touches nearly every part of the dish, first as part of the marinade and later as the foundation of the pepper sauce. A strongly paprika-driven chorizo works particularly well.

About the peppers. I like using two kinds here. The roasted red peppers bring sweetness. The hot peppers bring acid and heat. Together they make the sauce more interesting than simply adding more chile powder.

About the potatoes. Treat the potato seasoning as a flexible house chile blend rather than a chemistry experiment. Paprika first. Then chile, garlic and onion. A little Old Bay gives the potatoes another layer of savory seasoning without making them taste like seafood-boil potatoes.

About the steak. The two-stage cooking method is intentional. The extremely high-temperature sear gives you crust. The grill gives you char, smoke and control over the final internal temperature. It also gives you those crosshatched marks — which admittedly have nothing to do with flavor, but sometimes food should look good too.

Make it your own

This is not a recipe I would be precious about. Use the steak you like. Make the potatoes hotter. Dial the garlic back if six cloves frightens you. Throw another pepper into the sofrito. Add more lime. Cooking should leave some room for instinct. That's how this dish happened in the first place.

From Milwaukee to my table

I think the best kitchens do more than feed you. They give you something to think about. Sometimes that means a flavor you have never experienced before. Sometimes it is a technique. Sometimes it is just a reminder of how much pleasure there is in sitting down somewhere and letting somebody else cook for you.

And occasionally, weeks later, something from that table shows up unexpectedly in your own kitchen. Not copied. Not reproduced. Just remembered.

That Spanish brisket at Amilinda still needs its day. Until then, this is what came out of the memory.

Pull up a chair.