Cooking tips

 From blue to well done …its your choice

  • Always allow the meat to come up to room temperature, this should take about 10-15 minutes, and you ideally want to cook in a heavy based frying pan and place on the heat until gently smoking.
  • Make sure that the steak is dry so pat with a paper towel, by doing this the meat will get a thicker more flavoursome crust when it goes into the pan, (we call this caramelisation the Maillard reaction), then season well using sea salt
  • Carefully place the steaks in the pan and let them sizzle away, don’t worry about the smoke !!! Do not flip to early as you won’t get that all important maillard- the golden browning of the meat, flip over and cook the other side, once both sides are caramelised and if you are eating them either blue or medium rare, take them out and leave to rest for 5 minutes or so in a warm place.
  • If you are cooking for a bit longer, then you can throw in a knob of butter, perhaps a crushed garlic clove and some fresh thyme and baste the meat as its cooking.
  • Do not be tempted into cutting open the steak mid-cook. Instead, go with the finger test. To do this, relax your hand. With the index finger of your other hand, push on the area between the base of the thumb and the palm. This is what steak cooked rare feels like. Now gently touch your thumb to your index finger and apply the same pressure with your other index finger as before this gauges medium-rare. Now try your thumb to middle finger. This indicates medium well. Up from that, thumb to pink is what well done feels like. Now, by applying the technique to the meat as it is in the pan, you should have a good idea of how well it’s cooked.
  • “When the cooking’s done, don’t forget to rest the meat. Resting the steak for at least five minutes helps the meat retain its moisture, leaving you with a juicier steak.”

 

Steak Perfection

The cuts

Fillet

It comes from the lower middle of the cow’s back and does the least work of all the beef cuts, making it incredibly tender. It also contains little fat, which means there’s no need to cook fillet for a long time to break down any collagen. A fillet steak should be cooked over incredibly high heat as quickly as possible, to prevent the meat drying out. However, larger pieces of fillet are used to make dishes such as beef Wellington and chateaubriand, which are cooked in the oven for longer.

Rib eye

Is cut from just above the ribs, an area which does little work and makes rib-eye exceptionally tender. There are also ribbons of fat found throughout the meat, adding plenty of flavour, and an ‘eye’ of fat in the centre, which needs to be rendered down during cooking. While every person has their own preferences on how rare or well-done, they like their steak, with rib-eye it is generally suggested to cook it until medium at the least, as this gives the fat time to render down and baste the meat.

Rump

Another classic steak cut; rump is at the opposite end of the spectrum to fillet. What it lacks for in tenderness, however, it more than makes up for in flavour. Cut from the backside (Rump) of the cow, it is a muscle that is used quite a bit during the animal’s life, which means it’s tougher than other ‘prime’ steaks. However, it is still tender enough to be fried quickly and served rare.

Sirloin

Sitting somewhere between rump and fillet in terms of taste and texture, sirloin steak has the perfect balance of fat and tenderness. It comes from between the fillet and the rib, and we also offer this as a rolled and boned joint, ready for roasting whole. Sirloin steaks should be cooked in a similar way to rib-eye, allowing the fat to melt into the meat and to prevent chewy gristle. If roasting the joint whole, make sure there is a nice thick cap of fat on top of the meat to prevent it drying out, and regular basting during the cooking process helps keep everything tender.

T bone

T-bones are one of the few cuts of beef that are always served on the bone (which is shaped like a capital T, hence the name). On one side is a piece of sirloin and on the other is a smaller piece of fillet, which means there is more variety, flavours and textures going on. The fillet will always stay slightly rarer than the sirloin, as they cook at different speeds in the pan, and often the steak is seared and then finished off in the oven to ensure even cooking.

The flavour of a T-bone steak is big and bold, gaining an extra boost from being cooked on the bone.