Ever wanted to throw a succulent piece of steak on the grill but decided to order in instead because you were afraid to ‘mess it up’? Longhorn Grill’s Executive Chef, Malcolm Riddle chopped up some pointers for you to prepare the perfect cut.
“Steak is so forgiving, there are so many different ways of doing it. Even if you do overcook it, you can always serve it with a sauce to make it juicier so it’s not dried out. Any person at home can try it. Steak is a lot more forgiving, it’s a more tender meat so you can get away with it much easier.”
Different cuts of meat need to be prepared differently. They all come from different parts of the animal and they all serve a different purpose. Some sections include more muscle, or in other words, that means that it is more work, so they’ll be tougher.
Choosing your cut depends on what type of dish you want or what you’re looking to do. The tougher the cut of meat, the more flavour it contains. Your cuts of meat with more bone will be more flavourful but those are also the tougher ones that you need to spend more time on. Your softer meat or your more tender meat has less flavour but it’s a much shorter period of cooking and it’s much more tender.
The rule of thumb, normally, for us is your hind quarters will be your softer, more tender meat, and your front quarter will be your stewing meat. The front quarter hind will need more moisture, add more water and sauce and cook for roughly three hours – at times it could be for six hours. Hindquarters, on the other hand, would be rump and sirloin at the back, and fillet which is on the inside, and roast.
For steak, you want a higher temperature and a shorter period of time. That’s the ideal for a more tender cut of meat like a fillet, sirloin, rump, or a T-bone.
Time. Everybody works or is busy and you don’t always have a lot of time to prepare meals and so forth. Of course, if your time is limited, you’re going to go for something a bit more tender – that just cuts down on the cooking time. For wintertime, especially with beef fillet or with the strip loin, the much more tender meats cook much faster. Just add some cream and mushrooms and a little bit of gherkins to make a nice stroganoff on top of pasta and that’s a very nice and hearty, healthy meal. If you’ve got more time, you can always specialise a bit more in stews. Put it in your slow cooker, oxtail overnight, and things like that.
“Experiment, play around and look at recipes.”
