Alex Rotherham, of the Bay Tree Café, in Bury St Edmunds, serves up his recipe for getting the best out of your steak
I thought I would continue the beef theme from last month. As picky as I am with my burgers, I can be even more so with my steaks.
Due to insufficient equipment, like with burgers, we do not serve steak at the café. So now, going into the summer months, I felt this was the perfect time to share my thoughts on steak.
I was taught, and I believe it to be true, that to best prepare our food, we need to understand where it came from and after reading this you may not want to have your steak any more, but if you do, hopefully you will have a better appreciation of that beautiful steak.
Going back to a time when I first became an executive chef in charge of a 400-seat restaurant, I was presented with the opportunity to go on what they called a ‘pasture to plate’ tour, along with 29 other chefs.
Seeing as I had grown up as a city boy, I really had not experienced the farming lifestyle. Yes, my grandfather lived on a farm which we visited a few times when I was very little, but not much had sunk in from those visits, other than how delicious fresh milk was and my grandad’s personal war with gophers – but that’s an entire story of its own.
When I was a teenager, my mom noted how interested I was in food, which led her to believe a life in farming would be the perfect fit for me. After going on this tour, I’m glad I didn’t follow that path and chose to become a chef instead. The farming life, while fun for a week, is a hard life and honestly not one for me.
Our tour happened in what many nicknamed Texas of the North: Alberta. Specifically, just outside Calgary. Many people there wear cowboy hats, cowboy boots and drive beat up old pickup trucks. It certainly felt more like Texas than Canada.
We started with visiting newborn calves and, if you were lucky, a birthing. As a part of the process for raising cattle for food, the calves get castrated and we were given the opportunity to castrate one if we wished. I confess, I hadn’t the courage to do so.
The bottom line is the final ‘product’ comes out better from castrated calves. The testicles are often fried up and served as what they call prairie oysters. We were supposed to dine on these later that same day, but thankfully someone in our group arranged for them to be ‘misplaced’.
From there, we headed off on horseback to herd some cattle. It’s amazing seeing the herds of cows across hills and plains – there definitely is a beauty and a glory to herding cattle and it was an exhilarating adventure.
Our journey continued to the fattening pens. This is the beginning of the sadder, and harder, part of our journey to witness. In their last days they are kept in a smaller space, reducing their ability to move around and exercise and provided constant feed. This allows for increased marbling of fat throughout the meat. Again, to get the nicer finished product.
The fattening pens are located close to the abattoir, not for efficiency’s sake but for the fact the longer the journey the more stressed out the animal may become, thus negatively impacting the quality of the finished product. A stressed-out animal at the time of death causes for tougher meat.
Different methods are used for the slaughter process and I won’t go into detail here, suffice to say they used an extremely rapid process that stunned and killed the animal in a fraction of a second.
An interesting thing about this slaughter house, designed to kill 2,000 head of cattle a day, was they conducted the tour backwards. We started with a showroom of by-products made from cattle, such as sweets, toothpaste, makeup, medicine and leather, to name a few.
We then saw packing where individual steaks, large cuts of beef, sides of beef were packed and shipped off to butchers, markets and restaurants. Then we followed a vast conveyor system that went backwards to the beginning where the cattle walk themselves in.
The explanation for why they performed the tour in reverse was entirely psychological. By doing it backwards, it’s easier for us to disassociate our meat from the animal. Apparently, when they first started offering these tours, they did the tour in order and many people became extremely distressed and ill.
At this point we have fresh beef, which in actuality is not very nice. It will be tough and not developed its full flavour. We need aged meat. Sadly, many shops and butchers are not clear on the aging of the meat that we purchase. It is worth investigating, as it changes both texture and flavour.
There are two types of ageing: Wet and dry.
Dry aging is seen as the superior of the two – the meat is kept open to the air in a meat fridge for the duration of the aging process. The outer layer of the meat becomes very dry and even develops some mould growth. This is normal and, to a certain degree, desired. Dry aging has a more dramatic impact on the flavour of the meat, giving it a stronger game flavour. The outer layer of meat needs to be cut away before use. Thus, with dry ageing there is a fair bit of wastage as well as weight loss, so, a lower yield.
Wet ageing is a much easier and more economical. The meat gets packed in vacuum packs and aged in its own juices. This provides less weight loss and there is no surface meat needing to be cut off and discarded. Often steaks will already be cut into their portion pieces before being packed.
So, that’s the two styles, but now is the length of time. Often, what is available at the shop is only seven days aged and usually wet aged. Whether you look for wet or dry aged, I recommend finding a minimum of 28 days aged. It is possible to age your steaks for longer yourself, but you would need to make sure you have a fridge where you can set the temperature to one degree celsius and not open and close regularly, for food safety reasons. So, it’s best to find a butcher who will provide properly aged meat for you.
Also, I would recommend getting them butchered to the size you want. For the barbecue, the cut I most recommend is what I grew up knowing as a New York strip loin. In England it’s generally referred to as a sirloin. It is important to find cuts that have a nice line of fat across one side and light marbling of fat in the meat. There should be no other large pieces of fat, but that line of fat on one side is crucial to the finished product, so keep it.
We now have our properly aged sirloin steak, we need to marinate it. This is a point that is important to me. Many chefs will maintain that good quality, properly aged cuts of meat don’t need marinating. While I agree they do not need it, a good marinade elevates this steak to a whole new level.
My go-to marinade is quite simple. I make a blend of 1/3 extra virgin rapeseed oil and 2/3 cooking rapeseed oil. The reason for blending the two is due to the fact the extra virgin oil will be too thick when chilled to absorb into the meat if not diluted with the cooking oil. You can, of course, use different oils to suit your personal taste, extra virgin olive oil being probably the most popular choice. I personally do not like it, as I find its flavour overpowers rather than enhances your main ingredient.
To this, I add some freshly ground black pepper. It’s important to grind the pepper rather than purchasing pre-ground, as a lot of the floral aspects quickly evaporate from the pepper once ground and it adds so much to the final product. We then add finely chopped fresh rosemary. Again, fresh is important. I will never use dried rosemary.
I’ve included a simple guide for how much marinade to prepare depending on how much meat you have. Once made up, best way to marinate the steaks is to put the marinade in a large bowl.
Make sure to wear gloves while handling the meat, to protect it and you as well, I guess. We have germs on our hands that can transfer to the meat and grow. We don’t want that.
Before marinating the steaks, remove them from whatever packaging they are in and dry them with paper towel. I would lay towel on a board. Place the steaks on top and then more towel on top.
Next, I will drown and toss and massage the steaks in the marinade. Have another narrow rectangular container ready to put the steaks in, pull the steaks out of the bowl, making sure pepper and rosemary is sticking to them, and pack them tightly in the container, pushing out any air pockets. Pour the remaining marinade over the steaks, ensuring they are completely covered, without any pockets of air.
Now wrap the container in cling film and store in the coldest part of your fridge. Ideally one degree celsius. Leave for 48 hours – yes, two days – we really want that marinade to soak in.
A charcoal barbecue is the best way to cook our steaks, it adds yet another layer of flavour to the most amazing steak you will ever enjoy. Preheat to about 250 degree celsius, but before cooking, there are three important steps:
1. The steaks need to be removed from the fridge several hours in advance. We want the meat as warm as possible before cooking. Going from very cold to very hot can cause the meat to seize up and even the most tender cut of meat can become tough.
2. We need to allow all the excess of that beautiful marinade to drip off. Don’t scrape it off, as we want to keep the rosemary and pepper. You can remove the steaks and place on a rack to allow the oil to drip of for a few minutes. Flipping over half way through. Again, it’s important to not have too much excess oil left on the steaks, as it will cause flare ups on the barbecue and give the steaks a gaseous burned flavour.
3. Seasoning. It is very important to leave this to the last minute before cooking, as the salt in the seasoning will pull moisture from the meat. I’m sorry that I will not share my personal recipe on the seasoning I use for steaks, as I use that special blend on several dishes at the café and it is one of my secrets that makes our food, especially our fries, taste the way it does. I can recommend a good quality Montreal Steak spice. Be generous with the seasoning. I would typically put a teaspoon on each side of a 250 gram steak. Press the seasoning well into the meat to make sure it holds. Note, this is assuming a seasoning that contains no more than a third salt. If you have a saltier blend, I would recommend adding more spices, or using less, as we don’t want the salt to overpower.
Now, slap that meat on the preheated barbecue. How long you cook it is up to the individual. For a 250g sirloin steak, I would happily cook it for two to three minutes on each side. Then rest on the side for another two minutes.
And there you have my recommendations for steak. A little more work than typical, but I swear absolutely that the resulting steak will be so unbelievably amazing, you will find it worth the effort.
For accompaniments, there’s an infinite world of possibilities. My favourites are simple boiled basmati rice, corn on the cob – cooked on the same barbecue as the steaks – and some barbecue or brown sauce.
As I started with a restaurant recommendation last month, I thought I might continue. They may not prepare steaks as I have just described, or the way I would if I could at the café, these places still do a stellar job.
I know I mentioned this first one last month and I assure you I have no affiliation, doubt they even know I exist, but Meat & Greet does an impressive job with steak. Another great choice in Bury St Edmunds would be Queen’s Bar & Grill. I will also mention, while not steak, The Sheesh Turkish barbecue does some great barbecued meats.
I’m sure there are others, but these are places I have enjoyed on multiple visits and feel happy to recommend. I believe they are all local independent businesses as well, which I recommend supporting local as much as possible.
This month’s song recommendation
This is actually a sad song chronicling the true events of the sinking of a ship in a bad storm in Canada back in November in 1975. ‘The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald’ by Gordon Lightfoot. While it’s a sad song and set at the totally wrong time of year, it is one I find has the perfect feel when standing over the barbecue, beer in hand.
Alex Rotherham is co-owner and head chef of the Bay Tree Café, in St John’s Street, Bury St Edmunds
Call 01284 700607
Facebook: baytreecafebury
