You can have steak during Whole30, y’all. Did you hear me? You can have steak. With so little left of my former diet (which consisted largely of food-centered hugs made of cheese, sweets, loads of carbs and red wine), I really struggled at first with the idea that all I could basically eat for 30 days would be meat and plants. Then I found out I could have steak, and the world was right again. (For those of you unfamiliar with Whole30, it’s a temporarily restrictive diet that prohibits consumption of alcohol, dairy, grains, processed sugars and legumes for 30 days. You can read more here.)
Today’s Whole30 compliant recipe is steak, chili mango and brussels sprouts, a grill-centered dish made for warmer summer weather. I got the idea for this recipe, which was a hit with the whole family, after I heaved a $12.99 case of champagne mangoes into the enormous mound of produce in my cart at the grocery store. I figured that eating mangoes during the first week of Whole30 would help lessen the burn of my crazy, inevitable sugar withdrawal. Plus, I’ve always wanted to try this (peel mango using a glass). Have you done it before? It’s crazy — once you learn, you’ll want to peel about a hundred mangoes in a row. There’s something oddly satisfying about watching the mango separate from its peel, dribbling sweet nectar into the glass as you move the fruit slowly down the outer edge. It feels kind of like peeling dried Elmer’s glue from your fingers. You did that too as a kid, right?
