Heston Blumenthal's Steak with blue cheese infused butter recipe
Steak with blue-cheese-infused butter and mushroom ketchup
Okay, so this is no flash-in-the-pan recipe. But do try my way. Source the best bit of flesh you can lay your hands on. Give yourself plenty of time - a couple of days, in fact - to slowly braise
Before you start
Blue-cheese butter captures something of the spectacularly nutty, cheesy character of aged beef. A marvellous mushroom ketchup, adapted from an 18th-century recipe, boosts all the meaty notes, and smoked sea salt accentuates the char-grilled flavours.
But, if you’ve sourced a good breed that has been handled properly, the star of the show will be the meat — blowtorched until browned on the outside, then cooked long and slow for a truly tender inside. By the way, browning doesn’t seal in the juices of the steak, it kick-starts a complicated process known as the Maillard reaction, which adds depth and complexity to the flavours of meat. To get those flavours without drying out the steak, you need to brown the surface quickly and then take the heat right down. At the lower temperature, muscle proteins contract and squeeze out water more slowly, which is crucial to keeping the meat moist. But the steak also needs to be tenderised, which, at this temperature, is done by enzymes that weaken or break down collagen and other proteins. Heating the meat slowly means these enzymes can perform their magic for several hours, effectively ageing the meat during cooking. The result is the tenderest, tastiest steak imaginable.
Special equipment
Food processor (optional), oven thermometer, blowtorch (the heavy-duty kind from a DIY store: a crème brûlée special won’t do the job quickly enough), digital probe.
Timing
On the day, a meal for four will take less than half an hour. The background prep needs to be staggered over a couple of days: at least 48 hours ahead of time, the cheese and butter should be sliced and left in the fridge to infuse. About 30 hours in advance, the meat has to go in the oven for a long, slow cook on its own. The mushrooms for the ketchup have to sit in the fridge for 24 hours and then cook for about half an hour. Since the mushroom ketchup will keep for a month in the fridge, you can easily prepare this ahead of time — it’s a versatile condiment that goes with lots of other dishes.
THE RECIPES
BLUE-CHEESE-INFUSED BUTTER
250g unsalted butter
250g stilton
1 Slice the butter and the cheese lengthways into slabs about cm thick.
2 Tear off a large sheet of parchment paper. Place a slice of the butter in the centre and top with a slice of the cheese. Continue stacking alternate slices of butter and blue cheese until all have been used. Wrap tightly, and place in the fridge for at least two days. The flavour improves the longer you leave it.
THE STEAK
Serves 2-4, depending on how hungry you are
1 well-aged, two-bone fore rib of beef (on the bone — ask your butcher) Black peppercorns
Sea salt
Smoked sea salt
Groundnut (peanut) oil
1 Using an oven thermometer, preheat the oven to 50C/120F/Gas Mark .
2 Place the fore rib in a roasting tin. Brown the outside as quickly as possible using a blowtorch. (If it’s not hot enough, the flame will start to cook the flesh. If yours isn’t up to the job, use a very hot pan instead.) Once the meat is browned, place it in the oven. Use a digital probe to establish when the internal temperature of the meat has reached 50C/ 120F (this takes 4–8 hours, depending on the animal; don’t let it go any higher — it will ruin the recipe), then let it cook at this temperature for a minimum of 18 hours. Remove from the oven, cover and leave to rest at room temperature for 2 hours — 4 would be better — it’s important that the meat cools down before it is subjected to the fierce heat of the pan.
3 To prepare the steaks, hold the fore rib upright with the rib bones side on. Run a sharp knife between the meat and the bones, and free what should be an L-shaped piece of meat. Trim off any overly charcoaled exterior. Slice the meat in half vertically to give two steaks, each about 5cm thick.
W of the steak, it kick-starts a complicated process known as the Maillard reaction, which adds depth and complexity to the flavours of meat. To get those flavours without drying out the steak, you need to brown the surface quickly and then take the heat right down. At the lower temperature, muscle proteins contract and squeeze out water more slowly, which is crucial to
keeping the meat moist. But the steak also needs to be tenderised, which, at this temperature, is done by enzymes that weaken or break down collagen and other proteins. Heating the meat slowly means these enzymes can perform their magic for several hours, effectively ageing the meat during cooking. The result is the tenderest, tastiest steak imaginable.
4 Place a large cast-iron pan over a high heat for at least 10 minutes. Meanwhile, take the blue-cheese-infused butter out of the fridge and remove the cheese. Crush the peppercorns using a pestle and mortar, add a little of the plain sea salt and smoked sea salt, and put this mixture on a plate. Dip both sides of each steak in the seasoning.
5 Add a film of the groundnut oil to the pan and, when it’s smoking, add the steaks. (The surface of each steak needs to be in contact with the pan, otherwise they won’t cook properly. If they overlap, fry one at a time.) Fry for 4 minutes, flipping every 30 seconds. They should develop a nice 1mm brown crust, while the interior should be uniformly pink.
6 Let the steaks rest. Allow the frying pan to cool slightly, then add the flavoured butter and stir to melt it and collect any bits of meat that remain. Pour into a jug.
7 Cut the steaks into diagonal slices. Add a few grindings of black pepper, and a sprinkling of sea salt and smoked sea salt, then drizzle the butter on top. Serve with a dollop of mushroom ketchup and tomato ketchup.
MUSHROOM KETCHUP
For the mushroom juice
1.5kg button mushrooms
75g table salt
1 Wipe the mushrooms clean with damp kitchen paper, then chop finely or blitz briefly in a food processor.
2 Tip the mushrooms into a fine sieve placed over a bowl, and stir in the salt. Store in the fridge for 24 hours, or until the salt has drawn the juice from the mushrooms.
1 Wipe the mushrooms clean using damp kitchen paper. Remove the stalks, cut them into quarters and place in a bowl.
2 Tip the sugar and vinegar into a small pan and boil until the sugar has dissolved.
3 Pour the hot pickling liquor over the mushrooms, let it cool, then place in the fridge for 24 hours.
To finish
For each 600ml of mushroom juice, you will need:
120ml red wine
60ml red-wine vinegar
¼ tsp ground mace
½ tsp whole black peppercorns
2 cloves
1 shallot, roughly chopped
Cornflour (to thicken)
1 Measure the mushroom juice that has collected, and calculate the quantities of wine, vinegar, spices and shallot you will need.
2 Tip the mushroom juice, wine, vinegar, spices and shallot into a pan and bring to the boil. When the liquid has reduced by half, remove it from the heat and strain through a sieve, discarding the spices and shallot.
3 Pour the strained liquid back into the pan. Thicken by adding some cornflour. (To thicken 300ml liquid, mix 4 tsp cornflour with 3 tbsp cold water. Whisk this into the hot liquid. Return the pan to the heat and continue whisking until the ketchup thickens.) Remove the thickened ketchup base from the heat and set aside.
4 Strain the pickled mushrooms through a sieve, discarding the liquor. To add piquancy to the ketchup, stir pickled mushrooms into the base, to taste (leftover mushrooms are a great accompaniment to cheese and cold meats). Spoon the ketchup into a clean jar or container, cover and store in the fridge.
TOMATO KETCHUP
This makes rather a lot, but it will keep for at least a month in a covered container in the fridge.
5kg ripe, on-the-vine plum tomatoes
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
4 tsp dijon mustard
½ tsp four-spice mix
1½ tsp ground ginger
1½ tsp salt
4 tbsp icing sugar
1 tbsp chardonnay vinegar (if you can’t find any, use another wine vinegar)
1 Core the tomatoes and reserve the stems. Place the tomatoes in a pressure cooker and add water to a depth of 1cm. Bring the cooker to full pressure for 20 minutes and then allow to cool. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, slowly cook the tomatoes over a medium-low heat for about 45 minutes. Pass the tomatoes and liquid through a sieve, discarding the leftovers.
2 Add all the other ingredients, except the icing sugar, the vinegar and the stems, to the tomatoes. Place in a pan and simmer slowly over a low heat until it is reduced by half — this will take about 4 hours. Pass the mixture through a sieve again. Add the icing sugar, return to the pan and continue to reduce over a low heat until it reaches a ketchup-like consistency — this will take just over an hour.
3 Allow to cool, then add the vinegar. Finally, place the reserved tomato stems into the ketchup mixture for a few hours to infuse it with the fresh vine odour — it’s important to do this after the mixture has cooled, as the vine aroma is destroyed by heat. Discard the stems before serving.
THE SALAD
Iceberg lettuce — all too often overlooked in favour of more fashionable leaves — provides a crispness that goes perfectly with steak.
1 iceberg lettuce
16 vine-ripened cherry tomatoes
2 tbsp white-wine vinegar
6 tbsp groundnut or light olive oil
Table salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 Fill a large bowl with cold water. Remove the outer leaves from the lettuce and discard. Pull off the remaining leaves, cut into bite-sized squares (make sure the knife is sharp, otherwise you will bruise the leaves) and place in the bowl of water for 10–15 minutes to refresh.
2 Drain the lettuce and leave to dry for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, quarter the tomatoes and place in a serving bowl. Add the lettuce and dress the salad at the last minute — first with the vinegar, then the oil. Season, toss gently and serve.
Extracted and adapted from In Search of Perfection by Heston Blumenthal (Bloomsbury £20). To order for £17.99 (inc p&p), call The Sunday Times Books First on 0870 165 8585
Hunt down the best beef from:
Pampas Plains, East Sussex (0845 130 6123, www.pampasplains.com). Aberdeen Angus and Hereford cattle, bred and reared on the grasslands of Argentina.
A short history of steak
All domestic cattle breeds are descended from aurochs, the large, long-horned beasts depicted in cave paintings.
Remains of domesticated cattle have been found in Turkey that date back to 6500BC. By 55BC, Romans had recorded the existence of red cattle in southwest England — almost certainly the red Devon cattle that are still found in the region.
Wholesalers
Steak with blue-cheese-infused butter and mushroom ketchup
Okay, so this is no flash-in-the-pan recipe. But do try my way. Source the best bit of flesh you can lay your hands on. Give yourself plenty of time - a couple of days, in fact - to slowly braise
