I have spent all of my adult life cooking in commercial kitchens, in the 27 years of standing in front of stoves I have cooked literally thousands of steaks so I guess that qualifies me to speak with authority? In fact, in one restaurant I worked at we had our own dry ageing room and a full time onsite butcher, here it wouldn’t be unusual to cook 600-800 steaks in a week!
For those who like your steaks well done this is not really the blog for you and there are only really two options for you here: either learn to be more adventurous and eat steak as it should be eaten, or start thinking about a plant based diet for your future. It would serve you better and be more respectful to those animals and the people who rear them, you’d also be doing every chef that ever lived a favour; as a small part of us most surely dies when we have to scorch and press every last bit of juice out of steak and our hearts sink as we look at the sad flattened grey meat on the plate in front of us.
Now I know this won’t be for everyone and some will disagree, but bare with me here I have done my time on the line and have cooked every steak there is to cook, every way a person has wanted it done, whether or not I agreed with it personally-it was my job and my bosses didn’t worry too much as long as the customer paid.
But nowadays more often than not people have come around to my way of thinking; chefs, bosses and thankfully customers too. In my opinion the Tuscan way of preparing and cooking steak is the best and should be tried at least once in any carnivores lifetime.
Bistecca Fiorentina
The Tuscans believe as I do, that there is a real art to cooking great steak. First thing is they believe that it has to be rare, not just blushing but very, very rare. It must require chewing slowly and pensively savouring each and every mouthful, it’s rather primal and should be instinctively enjoyed just as our ancestors would of experienced it. In Tuscany most Trattoria worth their salt would refuse to serve it any other way and would have signs warning tourists not to even bother asking for well done. It really is a dishonour for this beautifully flavoursome meat to be cooked any other way than rare.
Secondly the Bistecca must be a T-bone, with the tender fillet that makes up a third of the steak attached by bone to the Sirloin, the steak must be at least two fingers thick, Italians like to measure thinks with hands and fingers, I like that.
The final rule with Bistecca is that it’s all about the meat, no sauce required here! The only thing it requires is good quality olive oil, sea salt flakes and may be a twist of black pepper at the end of cooking, don’t be tempted to add pepper in the beginning as the searing heat required to cook the steak properly will burn the pepper making it bitter.
Rules for cooking the best steak ever:
- Start with the best meat you can afford, always from an independent butcher or better still from a farm shop butchery, don’t bother with supermarkets at all.
- Always begin with the steak at room temperature, this small step will make a huge difference and go along way to improving your steak cookery and overall eating pleasure.
- Heat your griddle or pan until it is smoking hot, open all doors and windows if need be, if you worried about smoke alarms going off.
- Always oil the meat not the pan, season with large crystal sea salt and refrain from using black pepper until the meat is out of the pan.
- Never overcrowd the pan, invest in a good quality heavy based pan that’s big enough to fit two large steaks side by side.
- Don’t turn the steak too early, Ever! Have a little peak of one corner but don’t you dare turn it until it’s ready, this is dictated by the colour which should be crisp and dark brown caramel but not black.
- Blue 1 1/2 minutes each side then rest
- Rare 2 minutes each side then rest
- Medium rare 2 1/2 minutes each side then rest
- Medium 3 minutes each side then rest
fullerflavour 
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