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English steak: a recipe for making a steak. Video
English steak is a world culinary classic. All the famous American steaks, the Florentine steak and even the famous hamburger, which is actually nothing more than a chopped steak, originated from this dish.
How to choose meat for a steak
The main thing in a steak is the right choice of meat. You will need juicy red beef. Good meat is firm, does not stick to your hands and smells good. Cuts suitable for real steak are shoulder, thin rim, tenderloin, rump and the most suitable, but also the rarest “butcher’s steak” – the tenderloin of the flesh of the diaphragm.
Sizes of steak steaks range from 300 to 100 g per serving. The minced steak recipe appeared much later, it is prepared from any soft part of the carcass. Beefsteaks are prepared only from chilled beef and never from frozen. The meat should be at room temperature.
How to make an English steak
For a classic steak you will need: – 1 beef steak; – 1 teaspoon of olive oil; – 1 clove of garlic; – 1 sprig of thyme; – butter; – pepper and salt.
The steak should be seasoned seconds before cooking, as the salt draws moisture out of the meat and will not immediately seal the surface of the steak.
Use a heavy skillet with a thick bottom and ideally a non-stick coating. Pour olive oil into it and heat over high heat, put 1 peeled garlic clove and a sprig of thyme. Season the steak with pepper and salt. Put it in hot oil and fry for 1,5-2,5 minutes on each side.
If you are frying a round tenderloin steak, fry it around the edges as well. If you are frying lean meats, place a lump of butter in the skillet and pour melted butter over the steak when it is frothed. Marble-veined steaks provide ample fat of their own. Pour the juice over the skillet.
You can check the degree of roasting of meat with a kitchen thermometer. Up to 38 ° С you get a steak with blood, up to 52 ° С – lightly fried, from 58 ° С normal frying begins, and after 63 ° С – strong. If you do not have a meat thermometer, use your fingers to determine doneness.
The steak “bloody as hell” (as they say in England), when pressed, behaves just like fresh meat. The feeling, experts say, is like pressing your index finger on a relaxed muscle at the base of your thumb. Medium-rare beefsteak – firm. Squeeze the pads of your thumb and middle finger, which is almost what you should feel when checking a medium-rare steak, except that the meat is hot. Deep roasting is considered unacceptable for a classic steak.
It is best to use special cooking tongs with silicone tips to turn the steak.
Ready-made steak should not be served immediately. The meat should lie on a warm dish under a lid or under a layer of food foil for several minutes. Then the steak needs to be cut along the fibers and put on a serving plate, sprinkled with sauce.
Classic English steak is served with Yorkshire pudding, and steak with egg is also considered traditional. It is customary to serve fried potatoes, boiled vegetables, fried mushrooms as a side dish for an English steak.