The perfect steak part 2 - In Search of Perfection - BBC

now here's a great tip when it comes to salad this iceberg lettuce from the moment that it was picked started to deteriorate its water supply was cut off so we're gonna do is bring it back to life again make sure whenever preparing lettuce your knife is very sharp cause you don't want to bruise the leaves now but just pop this into the ice and that needs to stay in there for 10 to 20 minutes here's the forward of a beef steak 24 hours in the oven and I just left it for a couple of hours to cool down now what I need to do with this is take the meat off the bone make sure you got a very sharp knife there with this I need to run this knife along the edge of the two rib bones all the way down to the base okay then when you get to the bottom of the meat turn the knife so it's running parallel to the board and then just slice towards you so now just need to cut this into two thick steaks this is going to be enough for four very hungry people I'm just trimming off the outside but that blowtorching that we did before we put the meat in the oven has now given it a wonderfully subtle color and look at that you can see is completely even color now we need to Brown these steaks gave a wonderful concentration of flavor on the surface but we need to do that without cooking any of the flesh underneath the secret is this a heavy cast-iron pan and get it as hot as possible that's been on the heat now for 20 minutes what I need to do is just season the steaks with salt and pepper I'm just gonna pause film of oil into the pan we need this really smoking just be very careful whenever placing anything in a pan with hot oil always lay it down away from you that way you're not going to get any hot fat splashing on yourself now the key here is the quicker we can brown the outside of this steak the less damage we're going to do to the inside and keep all of those juices still in the meat okay that's about there turning a wonderful deep golden-brown so another two minutes on outside and we should be there so this had a couple of minutes each side that's right now we need to do is leave that there just to rest for five to ten minutes I don't allow the meat to relax now for the lettuce it's ready to drain iceberg lettuce I just think it's fantastic it's so overlooked now for the more fashionable lettuces just need to leave that to drain for a few minutes I got some Tomatoes there cherry tomatoes I've just cut them into eighths then I'm gonna pour on top of that a really simple vinaigrette now for that final touch just gonna turn this into my perfect steak I really wanted to try and get that nutty cheesy note that I found in the steak in New York I was telling about how to do it well it was blue cheese was as smell I was getting so I thought right get some blue cheese and then layer the slices of blue cheese with slices of butter the butter actually absorbs all those aromatic components from the cheese but it doesn't take any of the cheese taste so we've got a butter with all the aroma of blue cheese but not tasting of cheese what I need to do now is just put them in a pan and melt it now we're ready you wanna cut through this you should see just how even the color is inside we've kept all of those juices it looks fantastic this is a mushroom ketchup it's going to really boost all of the meeting notes from the beef it's really important we salad to make sure that you put the lettuce in the vinaigrette together at the last possible minute and be very careful when you combine them we don't know bruise the leaves this lettuce is going to be fantastic with a beef that crisp texture and just the acidity from the vinaigrette and all the compounds in the tomatoes that are going to really accentuate the meaty notes of the steak and now for the final touches this is smoked salt and that smoky note is going to accentuate the child character that we've got on the outside of the state for the blowtorching just sprinkle a bit of that on finally the blue cheese infused butter this is gonna give this steak all the characteristics I saw that wonderful beef in New York it's just gonna bring this whole dish to life and there you go my perfect steak and salad

Channel: BBC Studios

Views: 1,185,362

Keywords: BBC, In Search of Perfection, TV Chefs, Food and Drink, Heston Blumenthal, Michelin, Cookery, Science, Video, Steak

Id: xH9YN2ixTzA

Length: 5min 11sec (311 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2011