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Transcript of "Cooking the Perfect Steak"

How to Cook the Perfect Steak

Facts and Figures [until 05:38]

So, we have a sirloin here – you’re all gonna have a sirloin. We’re gonna hit it with salt on top, salt on the plate. We’re gonna hit it with pepper, lots of pepper. Steaks like pepper.

We’re gonna go olive oil on there.

Never put olive oil on a gridder pan and always just oil whatever it is that you’re gonna be doing. 

Get it screaming hot, searing hot. Pre-heat for 5 minutes. Right?

This is the sinew here and the fat, right?

We can encourage that by just pressing it down and we just get some colour on it.

No one, I mean you don’t have to eat the fat anyway, but if you’re gonna eat it, you want it crispy, you don’t want it wobbly.

So, I’m literally… all I’m doing is just pushing it like that, down and we just leave it there for seconds.

OK, once that falls over, push it down, so it really touches all the bars and I do not want you to touch it until it’s had about 2 minutes, OK? If you keep touching it about, you’re gonna ruin all the texture of the meat. Meat, you, this, you’re made mainly of water, OK? I.e. blood. So, as we’re all made of the same, cow or humans… when the heat’s coming from the bottom, what’s it gonna do to the water or the blood? It’s gonna push it up.

To make a steak really juicy, you wanna cook it the same amount of time on every side. If you do 3 minutes on one side and 1 minute on the other, what’s gonna happen inside?

Have you ever eaten a steak where it’s really uneven inside? Yeah! OK, that’s because the person cooking it wasn’t diligent, right?

And you, in your own home should be able to cook a steak better than a chef, because … I mean they’ve got a million steaks to cook and you’re only cooking your one.

We’ve got the rosemary stick here… Rosemary and steak are pretty much a classic combination.

Slice a little garlic here, like that, and you want a little knob of butter, here, like that and then, as you turn it, hopefully what’ll happen there, is that it’ll be dancing with fat. It’ll be crispy, it’ll be bubbling and … do you know what we’ve said about the amplifier and the flavor? Right, we’re gonna pat it with that and that little pat is gonna make all the difference, OK?

So, at this point in time, hopefully [turning the steak in the pan] it’s looking good. See how it’s bubbling? While it’s bubbling, we rub it with garlic, like that Y then you pat it. You stir up some of this fat in the thing and you just pat it on like that and that WILL give it an incredible flavor. Yeah! OK? And then we cook it for another 2 minutes – exactly the same.

What you can do is, just push it down to make sure it’s all touching those bars and actually what some people do is they have like a method where they sit something on it to really press it down.

Now, I’m gonna teach you how to dress the board and what that means is that it’s a really basic way of creating a place, whether it’s chicken, fish or steak, right?

I’m just gonna get some basic herbs of parsley, right? I’m gonna use – just chop it up – I’m gonna use a cross chopping method.

Right, we’ve got a tiny bit of garlic, I want a little pinch of salt on it and I think you mentioned it the other day or you: you just squash it. You don’t put your hand anywhere near the blade, you squash the garlic, like that and the salt and the colour of …. it’s just purely abrasive and it’s seasoning.  

Well, that’s called dressing the board. Not a lot of people do it in England, but it makes all the difference. And you can put… if you wanna go Asian, you can go ginger and chilli, if you wanna go French, you can put French mustard in there and stuff like that – it’s just having a place where the steak is gonna be really, really good.

Now, when I turn the meat, right? I wanna turn it 90 degrees, so you get the cross bars, OK? Oh right, yeah!

So, I’m gonna push it down, I’m gonna rub it just a couple of times with garlic and I’m gonna mop up with the herbs and just [patting the steak] and remember, we don’t really wanna move the steak now. Right?

So, on the board here, we’re gonna go olive oil and a little bit of lemon juice – it always helps – it’s that sweet-sour – you wanna get all those flavours down your mouth, even a little bit, like that.

So, what I probably will do is just move that around like that and that’s what the steak is going to rest on and, whether that was a chicken thigh or a fillet, it’s gonna be great.

Now, just very quickly: horseradish. Who likes horseradish? I absolutely love it! It’s very British. That is a horseradish, right? You don’t have to be a genius to work out why it’s called a horseradish, if you know what I mean. And all you do – all you do is trim it, right? And then grate it. They grow everywhere in England – everywhere! There’s a lot of free food out there. [sniffing] Right. It’s good for you. Smell it. Smell that around.

The reason your eyes are watering is ‘cause it’s strong, it’s mustardy. Right? Have a smell.

I’m gonna turn this steak. Every time I turn it, I’m mopping up the fat in this pan and I’m patting it.

I’m gonna be warning you to dress me a salad with a little lemon juice, oil and salt and pepper. I want to see you dress the board with the garlic and parsley and the olive oil, [yeah] and the lemon juice.

I want you to cook a beautiful steak, MEDIUM, right? When I say medium, that’s a test. So, I’m telling you I want it WELL, but I don’t want it nuked, OK? And you guys here, if you give me medium and it’s medium-rare, we’re learning something from that.

If I ask you for medium and you give me well-done, we’re also learning something from that. I want you to learn how to cook a steak.

OK, ssshhhh! … When the steak comes off, we’re gonna dress the board, so we’re gonna move this around, right? It’s a really brilliant way, honestly. People in England just do not do this, right? And what you’re gonna see is just natural juices come out and we’re just gonna give it a little bit of butter, we just rub that.

You need to let it rest for 2 minutes – why? It’s letting everything go back to the place from which it came, right?

Use the length of your knife, right? So, instead of going like that, use the length of your knife, it’s easy and then just open it up on a plate, like that.

Here’s the juice, OK. So, I want you to present your beautiful steak like this. So, can you guys do this? Yes!! Right, now you can eat it.

Isn’t that the best steak you’ve ever had? And that’s fairly standard beef that you get in any supermarket or market, OK? It’s purely the method of cooking.