(upbeat music) - Hey, I'm Ben, one of
the chefs at Sorted Food and today I'm gonna show you
how to cook steak two ways. First up, a classic rib eye and I'm gonna teach you all the tips and tricks to get the most out of it and then we're gonna do a
more affordable cut that will still be delicious. (upbeat music) First up, the classic steak. Now it's very subjective with food but here at the Sorted studio,
we love rib eye as a steak. It's marbled with gorgeous fat, which is full of flavour
when you render it down. It's not the cheapest but for that reason, I'm gonna show you a whole bunch of tips so that you can cook
it confidently at home and get the most out of it. Number one, I would say always pick a steak that's really relatively thick. That way you've got more
chance of searing the outside and keeping the middle a
nice kind of medium-rare. Secondly, make sure it's
up to room temperature before you start to cook it. Third, we're gonna season
the top of the steak with oil and salt,
whilst we pre-heat a pan and you want a dry pan,
up to a nice high heat. Are you ready for the best sound ever? - [Mike] I am. (steak sizzling) - So I've put it oil
and seasoned side down and then you can oil and
season the other side while it's in the pan and you want to cook it over
a medium to high heat to get a wonderful sear, for
probably three, four, even five minutes before you flip it. You can see how much fat
has already rendered out and because it marbles all
the way through the steak, personally I don't
actually think rib eye is best served rare, so aim
for medium-rare at least, possibly even medium
and that way it will be unctuous all the way through. - [Mike] Unctuous. - Unctuous has made its return. - [Mike] His favourite word. - Give it a flip. Yeeeaaahhhhh! Once it's had about the same length of
time on the other side, I'm gonna start to sear in the edges. It's more of an aesthetic thing
and to be honest with you, we're about to baste it in extra butter and loads of delicious flavour,
so that will help as well but because it's so thick, you want to make sure that
you've seared in the edges. Add the butter to your pan
along with some fresh herbs, whatever you've got. I've gone for thyme and a
crushed clove of garlic. It's gonna infuse the butter. As the butter browns and
foams, you're gonna baste it over the steak. Some would say this is
unnecessary but for me, it's what makes a steak excellent and if you've gone to the effort
of spending, in this case, £11 or £12 on a single
steak, plenty for two people, you want to get absolutely
the best you can out of it. A little bit of butter and a little bit of extra
time basting will do that. I'm gonna baste it for
another two or three minutes and then transfer it to a plate to rest. (upbeat music) Whilst our steak rests, I'm
going to show you how to make an incredible pan sauce,
again, without a recipe, a simple ratio. Today to go with our steak, I'm gonna do peppercorn sauce, classic but this and so many pan
sauces are based on the same ratio. That ratio is one part spirit, two parts double cream, three parts stock. Plus you can add in a flavour. Today we're doing the
peppercorns but you could also add in fresh herbs
or sautéed mushrooms or whatever you'd like. So first in goes your one part spirit. Today I'm using brandy but
you could use whiskey or rum. If you're doing pan-fried fish
and you still want a sauce, something like vodka
or Pernod is delicious and that scoops up all the
flavour off the bottom of the pan and is perfect. Once that's bubbled away
and reduced by about half, you're gonna add in your next ingredient which is not the cream, it's the stock. So three times as much stock. Obviously we're cooking beef,
I've gone for beef stock. You can do chicken stock,
you can do veg stock, you can do fish stock, you
can even do tomato juice if you want like, a pan tomato sauce. That also works. In the case of peppercorn sauce, I'm gonna add the peppercorn in now with the beef stock as it reduces down. If it's fresh herbs, you might want to leave those 'til the end but pretty much any other
flavour you're adding, now's the time. The peppercorn sauce needs
lots of black pepper. And this isn't whole peppercorns,
this is coarsely crushed. You still want this
over a pretty high heat, like when you cooked the steak and you're gonna reduce
it down by at least half. That is now so intense on beef stock, brandy, peppercorn, now you mellow it out with the cream. (upbeat music) (Mike chuckles) - [Mike] Oh yes. - And now you heat up the
cream and reduce it down to a consistency that you
want to spoon or pour. Oh and I nearly forgot, you're gonna have a lot of meat juices
from your resting pan. That can also go in. (upbeat music) I'm gonna slice the steak,
now that it's rested, on the bias because I
think that looks great, you can see into it and
present it on the plate with our mash. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Our second steak is much more affordable, so we're gonna do a bavette or it might be called flank in the UK. It's a much cheaper cut. At the moment, half the
price of rib eye per kilo. It's much leaner, it's had a
lot of work during its life, so it's got loads of flavour
but it is a little bit tough. So what I'm gonna do is show you a couple of ways to make sure that it still eats really beautifully. The first of those is a marinade,
so something that's going to help break the meat down and add flavour before you cook it. So whereas the rib eye,
we cooked it as it was and then made a pan sauce, this is marinade and flavour first. Clove of garlic. And then I'm gonna finely
chop some rosemary. If you haven't got a micro
plane, you can finely chop the garlic as well. The French language is so beautiful. Bavette, it basically
means the bib of the cow. (Mike laughs) Salt and pepper. Any red wine you've already got open. If you're gonna choose one, go with one with quite a high acidity. Nice Pinot Noir. So the marinade is one way,
with the acidity of the wine, to tenderise the beef. The other one is just brute force. So take a steak, place it on a board and whack it out with
either a meat tenderizer, if you have one, I don't so I'm gonna use a rolling pin and a fork. It means you're also flattening it out. It cooks quicker and it looks
like you get more steak. (rolling pin banging) So a meat tenderizer is
a small little hammer with kind of spiky bits
on it and you hit it out. Rolling pin works just
the same to flatten it but then stab it. So that's basically what you want to do. The other way it can be done, I'll flip it over and I'll
show you, is to cross hatch it with a really sharp knife. If you've got a really
sharp knife, just scratch it like you would a squid so it curls up, you can do the same with the beef. - [Mike] You're getting too chef-y. - That's why you're here, Mike. You need to rein me in. So that's the steak tenderised manually, now it goes into the marinade
to tenderise with the acidity. Cover it and that is
gonna store in the fridge for at least a few
hours, if not overnight. And then it looks like that. Not gonna lie, less attractive now but it is full of amazing
flavour and super tender. Pat it dry. So you don't want it to stew in the pan, so we need to get rid of excess liquid. Little bit of oil and you're just gonna sear
it in a stupidly hot pan for about a minute on either side. (steak sizzling) The steak does still need to rest, even though it's only very thin and in that time, dress
a plate with some salad, some french fries or whatever you like. You're welcome. - [Mike] Oh! - And that's what you're aiming for. You don't want to over cook
it but the bashing it out and the marinating should tenderise it. (upbeat music) There we go, two versions and if you could see the smile
on Mike's face right now. This is the prime cut, celebrate it but also remember that pan sauce to catch every last bit of flavour,
one, two, three as a ratio or a more affordable cut. A few extra steps to
marinate and tenderise but the result is outstanding,
you have to give it a go. And talking of giving it a go, if the idea of taking very
accessible ingredients and maximising their value
mid-week to save you money is what you like, then you'll absolutely want to check out our Meal Packs app. A chance to absolutely
boss your mid-week meals and right now, it's free for a month and the steak recipe's on it. What are you waiting for? What are we waiting for? Can we eat? (Mike laughs) - [Mike] That is a very good question. Yes! - [Ben] Right, I know you
wanna try this bavette. Wine, garlic, rosemary and
still that lovely sear of steak. - [Mike] Oh it's so
charred and just amazing! That is so tender. - [Ben] £2.10 a steak, that was. Bash it out, goes a long way. - [Mike] Wow, that absolutely tastes like restaurant quality, whoa.
Where are they getting these cheap ribeyes? Here they'd be like 2-3x more expensive.