[Cooking] Sirloin steak cooked the Heston way, boulangere potatoes, new season asparagus

[karohemd]

After my light lunch, I fancied a nice piece of meat for dinner. I'm pretty confident in cooking steak my usual way (fast sear and then finished in a low oven) but I wanted to try the method Heston Blumenthal demonstrated in his last TV series.
The steak had quite a chunk of fat on one end so I cut that off, chopped it up and rendered it on a low/medium heat. There was enough fat to lubricate the steak so I didn't need any oil. It most likely helped with the flavour, too.
With the extractor fan on full and window open, I added the steak to the smoking pan and flipped the steak every 15 seconds (roughly, by counting, I didn't actually use a timer), seasoning with salt and pepper halfway through. After four times on each side, so for a total of two minutes, the steak felt as if it was done so I removed it from the pan to a warm plate to let it rest for five minutes. I poured off the fat as suggested in the linked recipe but made a standard red wine reduction instead to which I added the resting juices later.
After resting, the steak was just how I like it, dark pink throughout, wonderfully juicy and with a really nice crust on the outside, quite possibly the best steak I have cooked.
This I served with boulangere potatoes and fresh, blanched asparagus.

 

I remember watching this episode on TV and myself and many others on twitter found it a bit odd but it really works. I mentioned this to an American friend and she thought it completely normal. Different cultures, different ways of cooking steaks.

Comments

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

Aggh I wish I could eat steak! :'(

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Sorry. :/

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

lol don't apologize.

I'm just whining out loud. :)

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Hehe!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a perfectly normal way of cooking steak to me as well. I don't count to 15 though, I just look at how far up the side the front of brown-ness has propagated and take off about 3mm in my head.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

I usually do it the River Cottage way -- maximum heat griddle for 60 sec each side, then rest for 10 min.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

That's what I used to do (and in a low oven afterwards if thicker to get to medium rare). This way you get a better crust and it's equally evenly cooked.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Oh god! Juicy meat! My mouth is watering just looking at the photos.
I'm dreadfully skint until payday, so my meat ration has dropped considerably - it's AGONY!

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Hope you get paid quickly.! I don't eat meat every day (if you discount things like cold cuts for lunch) so when I do, I buy a niece piece.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

I have a similar attitude, but I've had to go super frugal both before and after my Budapest trip and it's getting me down! I want a quality morsel too.

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

Sounds quite similar to how I usually cook steak as well, although I wouldn't trim the fat off first, personally. I have tried cooking a la Heston myself, specifically his way of doing chips. It was time consuming, but it was very good.

Annoyingly however, it was not *quite* as good as the chips served at the Booths bookshop cafe in Hay, which are just extraordinary (probably done using a similar method, but they do it better than I can). The fact that I grew up in Whitby, the Fish & Chip Capital of the World, should give an idea of just how good the chips at booths are, that I should cite them rather than some from Whitby.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

It was an inch wide chunk of fat I trimmed off one end which wouldn't have rendered fully during that short time in the pan in the pan. As you can see, there's still plenty of fat left.

If I ever make it to Hay, I need to try those chips!
I could imagine that a professional fryer will be bigger and more powerful so the temperature won't drop as much when you put in the chips which should help with the final result.