A steak, seared to perfection in its own fat, beautifully browned spuds (i.e. potatoes), topped with delicious beef “crackling”, served with a red wine sauce. You can do this, in thirty minutes. And you can manage this on a Monday night, to reward yourself for surviving it. This is how I ensure I have something to look forward to on Mondays.
Four minutes
People tend to think of steak as restaurant food, too complicated and intimidating for the home chef. But, its takes only four minutes, and in that time, you easily triple the value of your steak.
Cooking steak is actually a great proposition for the home chef. In a top steak place, a steak for two will easily be $120 (Singapore dollars). You will find that you can get top range steak for two (400g) from good butchers like Huber’s Butchery for about $40. With some practise, and four minutes of cooking, you can get very close to that restaurant steak for three times the price. Not a bad deal! And, you dont have to pay another hundred bucks for a $40 bottle of wine!
Five tips
My five tips for good steak are
- Cut your steaks thick (at least an inch). Share them, don’t cut individual steaks.
- Rest the steak (outside the fridge) before cooking
- Cook on high heat, with lots of oil, in a fry pan (no, I don’t use a grill pan)
- Turn the steak often while cooking.
- Rest the steak after cooking
Steak is something I have been cooking for a long time, and I have tried it many ways. I have settled on the procedure based on the one by Julia Child in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking“. The recipe tries to make full use of the steak by cooking the steak and the sauce in the same pan. I take it a step further by frying the spuds, and the steak, in fat cut from the steak itself. The beef fat (normally discarded) is fried to render its oil, and to make delicious crackling. The spuds and steak are fried in the beef fat. A sauce is made in the same fry pan to scrape up all the beef flavour.
Six steps
An overview the steps :
- On getting home, take steak out of fridge. Rest at room temp.
- Peel, cut and microwave the potatoes.
- In the meantime, trim fat off steak and cube it. Fry the fat cubes till crispy, and set aside.
- Fry potatoes in rendered beef fat till they are beautifully golden brown. Set aside.
- Turn heat to high. Cook steak and allow it to rest.
- Deglaze pan with red wine, and stock. You just made sauce!
You are now ready to plate, and eat!
The ingredients (serving two)
The star of this dish is the steak. Good steak will be costly, but remember what you have to pay if you ate out. I prefer a specialist butcher who cuts to order, rather than to get my steak pre-cut from a supermarket shelf. My preferred cut is prime sirloin, and I find that Huber’s meets all my needs. Incidentally, I was in a top steak restaurant once, and peeped into their chiller. Guess who supplies them – Hubers!
A prime sirloin should have a well marbled core, capped by a thick layer of snow white fat. The thickness of the steak is important. I ask for my steak to be cut at least an inch thick, or slightly more, depending on the size. The butcher will be happy to trim the fat off for you, but I have other plans. Keep the fat!
A steak that is an inch thick will come in at around 400 grams. This might be two much for one, so share your steaks. I find that supermarkets tend to pre-cut their steaks into individual servings, about 200 grams. They end up too thin and this causes some issues.
So the list goes, ingredients for two :
- One prime sirloin, about an inch thick (400grams), with fat cap on
- Several waxy spuds
- Pepper and if desired, rosemary and a clove garlic
- Some red wine, a few tablespoons stock (more on this later)
- A knob butter.
The Mise
On getting home, take the steak out of the fridge. The rest time is very important. You want to steak to be at approximately room temperature when it goes onto the hot pan. This produces a more even transition of the steak from the seared exterior to a nice, warm center. As a good food safety practise, leave the steak aside in the wrapper first, letting it to rest at room temperature. You don’t want it on your cutting board at this point – prepare the spuds (and veggies) on the board first.
Peel and cut spuds to desired shape. And cut any veggies you want to serve with. Microwave the spuds, aiming to get them just cooked.
The recipe requires some stock. You need just a few tablespoons. It’s fine to use some instant beef, chicken stock granules in a few tablespoons of water. Anything else that is savoury and umami (dorchester sauce, marmite etc) is likely to work well. Prepare and set aside
Unwrap steak, trim fat off it, and cut the fat into cubes.
Set the trimmed steak aside, you can season it with pepper, but don’t add salt. Pour a glass of red wine and take a sip. You are now ready.
The cooking
The order is, to first fry the fat, then the spuds, and finally the steak.
Heat up a fry pan on medium-low heat, add in a drop of oil if needed, and toss in the fat cubes. Your kitchen will soon start to smell wonderful.
This will require somewhat close attention, but in about a few minutes, the oil should render and you will get beautiful brown crackling. Just be sure that once the beef fat starts to turn a little brown, watch it carefully.
Scoop the browned crackling, and most of the oil, out of the pan and set aside. I leave less than a tablespoon of oil in the pan for the spuds.
Turn heat to medium, toss the microwaved spuds in, and allow them to colour. Toss often, aiming to get every surface of each piece of potato nicely browned. The spuds should be mostly cooked from the microwave, you are just colouring and crisping the outside.You could easily use the oven for this step, but I find that panfrying achieves better results.
It should take close to ten minutes, you can toss in some rosemary to flavour the spuds. The spuds will become more and more beautiful, golden brown all over. When done, set aside in a low oven.
Its now time for the main event. Have another sip of wine.
Pour all the remaining oil from the crackling into the pan, retaining the crackling for later. Turn the heat up high and wait till the oil shimmers and smokes a little. Its time for the steak to meet the pan. It should immediately sizzle. I like to hold the steak on its edge, fat side down, for a minute. If helps to crisp the remaining fat to a nice golden brown.
I cook my steaks medium rare, about 2 minutes a side. If desired, you can add some rosemary (or other herbs) and a clove of garlic. This will flavour the oil and send wonderful aromas wafting around your kitchen!
It’s best to turn the steak often, keeping track of the time so that you give each side two minutes. Turning often allows you to monitor the cooking process, and prevents one side getting too seared and the steak from curling up.
When done, I take the steak out and allow it to rest, draining on a rack. This is a very important step. The temperatures in the steak even out in this step, giving you a nice warm but red center. Studies quite clearly show that a steak that is allowed to rests loses less liquid when cut. The rest allows any liquid to drip off, and the steak plates nicer.
In the meantime, make the sauce. Pour away the excess fat in the pan, then introduce the wine and stock to deglaze the pan. Use the back of a spoon to rub the bottom of the pan. Stir and reduce, tasting often. You can add a knob of butter towards the end to enrich the sauce. It will be a somewhat watery sauce, one that will coat a spoon, but still flow easily. You will need no more than a few tablespoons.
Plate!
I like to serve this on a cutting board (make sure you wash it well first!). Plate it casually. Pile the spuds high, and sparkle the cracking over. Pour the sauce into a serving dish, and slap the steak on!
Viola!
Eat, slicing the steak up on the board and sharing from there.
If you have guests over, you can scale this up, and serve several steaks this way. If serving guest, prepare everything up to the fried potatoes, and hold them in a low oven. Cook the steak when ready. Everyone will love it!
