How to cook the Perfect Steak

What can be more romantic on Valentine’s Day than to cook and share a delicious steak with your partner, served with a rich buttery Bearnaise Sauce, some thick cut chips, and a crisp green salad? Here are the steps you need to prepare a fabulous steak just like a professional grill chef;

Buy the Best Meat You Can

You need to find a butcher who knows the provenance of his supplies, even better a farm shop or butcher who breeds his own cattle. Well hung ( matured ) grass fed beef is best. Good meat is expensive, but you are better buying less and better quality than more of an unknown piece of meat. The choice of cut will affect the flavour of your steak, rump and flank are very tasty but require perhaps a little more skill to cook correctly, a fillet is the most expensive cut and very tender but perversely not as flavoursome as the cheaper pieces of meat. I would settle in the middle for a piece of rib eye steak with some nice marbling of fat. The best ever Rib eye I have tasted is from the tiny island of Alderney and the grass-fed, twenty-eight day aged beef from Kiln Farm.

Fat is your Friend

Marbling is the small specks of white to yellow fat you can see in some cuts of meat they will render down during cooking and help keep the meat moist. Most importantly remember fat adds flavour to any cut, this is why beef joints such as silverside are often wrapped in fat by the butcher for a roasting joint.

Buy a Big Steak

For maximum flavour we want to get a good char on the outside of your steak while keeping the meat juicy and tender inside and this can be difficult with a thin cut for even an expert. The solution is one supersized steak to share, instead of two 350 gr steaks get one thick cut 750 gr steak.

Cook from Room Temperature

It can be difficult to cook a steak and raise the temperature in the center if it comes straight out of your fridge at three to five degrees. Take your steak out of the fridge at least an hour before you want to cook it.

Hot, Hot, Hot

This is very important if you are barbecuing, using a griddle pan or just a big old heavy-bottomed cast iron frying pan, the choice of award-winning steakhouse Hawksmoor, it needs to be hot. Very hot. You don’t want to be able to hold your hand close to the grill or pan. Barbecuing over charcoal will give the steak a lovely smoky finish.

Seasoning

If your steak is in a plastic bag or container, remove and pat it dry with kitchen paper.  Immediately before serving generously season with sea salt and pepper. Chef’s season meat exceedingly well it is probably the biggest difference between them and a home cook so don’t be afraid. I would use about a four to one ratio sea salt to fresh roughly ground black pepper. You don’t need to add anything else unless you want to add a little freshly ground coriander or smoked sea salt for a little extra flavour.

Oil and Butter

You don’t need any oil in the pan but if you want you can add butter towards the end of cooking and turn the heat down to stop burning. You can add a few thyme sprigs and a crushed clove of garlic for extra flavour if you desire. This will give your steak a buttery, creamy finish but you can finish the steak without the butter maintaining the extra crisp finish.

Cooking

Carefully place the steak on the grill or in the pan and leave it for a couple of minutes and then using a pair of tongues turn over. As long as the pan or grill is hot enough you should have no problem with sticking. WARNING you may get some smoke so open a window the pan needs to be hot enough for your steak to develop a delicious crust, so don’t overcrowd the grill or pan. Carry on turning the steak to prevent burning. If there is a thick layer of fat on your steak, hold it vertically, with tongs, to brown the fat. For cooking times follow this link, remember your steak will continue to cook after you remove it from the heat.

Resting

When the steak is ready it is vitally important to let it rest, at home place it on a warm plate cover with foil and wrap in a couple of T-towels and leave for at least five minutes this allows the meat to finish cooking and suck all the juices back, otherwise they will leak as soon as the meat is cut, and it will be dry.

 

Slice the meat against the grain, rather than parallel to the fibers in the meat and serve with Bearnaise Sauce.

What to Drink? Steak and Bearnaise Sauce requires some out of the box choices to match the richness and slight acidity of the sauce try a bold, slightly acidic Chilean Cabernet or a big, bold in your face oaked Californian Chardonnay if you prefer beer try a hoppy English IPA beer.

Allergens in this recipe are;

     If you use butter

Please see the Allergens Page

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