I’m getting behind, I need to cook more Prawn Cocktail Years meals. But which one will get me started again? Well, who doesn’t like a good steak? I know I certainly do, and there’s a delicious sounding steak recipe sat there, just waiting to be made.
I have to come clean here. I’ve now made this dish twice since Christmas. The first one was delicious, I just forgot to write up the blog post. Time passed, tumbleweed blew across my blog pages. Eventually, I got to the point where I realised I couldn’t remember anything about making it, and so I really had to just bite the bullet and make it again. So I did.
The red wine sauce is easy enough to make, but all that reducing takes a little while – certainly not something for a quick supper. So, we start with wine, shallots, thyme, bay leaves and redcurrant jelly.
Bring them to boil in a pan, and then set fire to it. Fire? It’s not often recipes kick off with something to pander to my inner pyromaniac. I eagerly set fire to the pan. The contents burned beautifully.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwJdMAazB3Q]Once the flames subsided, I reduced the liquid, removed the herbs and added some meat glaze.
Next, the steaks. The first time I made this, I cooked the steaks in my cast iron skillet. They cooked beautifully and were delicious. This time, I thought I’d be a little more adventurous. I vacuum sealed them and cooked them sous vide. Medium rare is 56.5˚C for about an hour.
Once the hour was up, I removed them from their bags, and added the juices to the sauce. Now to finish off the sauce – reheat, whisking in some butter, then simmer for a few minutes. Finally, stir in some lemon juice and parsley.
Now back to the steaks. If you’re familar with sous vide cooking, you’ll know that straight out of the bag, the steaks are pallid limp things. They may be cooked to a perfect medium rare, but they haven’t undergone any of that browning on the surface that we all know is essential for a tasty steak. Normally, I’d sear them in a very hot pan at this point, but I have a new piece of kit in my kitchen armoury, and I’m eager to try it out.
Enter, the Searzall.
This thing is amazing. It’s basically a metal head that sits atop a standard propane torch. The gauze diffuses the heat, which allows the food to sear evenly and avoids the “off” flavours that a standard torch can easily impart. I sear both the steaks to brown the surfaces and render the fat. They look good.
Finally, I serve them, coated with the red wine sauce.
They are delicious. Perfectly medium-rare throughout.
Sue says:
I forgot to write up my tasting notes. But Dave has agreed to add them late.
I love steak. It’s fair to say I’d enjoy it almost anyway it was cooked. But this one was lovely. The red wine sauce is juicy and a little tart. The onions cooked to retain a little bite rather than overdone to mush. The tartness of the sauce (only a little tart) offsets the creamy taste of the steak.
The steak itself was, as you can see, perfectly cooked. That flame throwing gadget is rather alarming when in use, but it does a good job (here’s a little secret, it cooks a perfect slice of toast). It is different in texture to pan seared steak, so it feels different at first, but it’s still good. It’s a good different. And let’s face it, if I need to strip some paint……
Overall I think my favourite steak sauce is a cream or butter based sauce. But this is coming up a fast second.
8/10
This, sir, is porn.
Juicy, salivation inducing porn.
A work of art! Very happy to see another post from the Prawn Cocktail Years 🙂
One of the finest recipes you have cooked. I award this 10/10.