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Modern cooking — a rant.

I'm very partial to Czech style steak tartare - they have it with fried bread, which you rub with raw garlic, before applying the tartare. The bread acts like a grater so you can get through a clove of garlic every couple of slices. I think they also go for a slightly coarser grind on the beef, so there's a little more texture to the resulting mix.

You would really struggle to identify the presence of the egg yolk if you hadn't seen it.
 
Lons said:
It would need to not only cook but prepare and serve the food at that price and even then I wouldn't buy one. ;)
Are the cap and T shirt obligatory accessories ? :ROFLMAO:
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We bought the knock-off Lidl version. Seems to work well.
 
Bought the egg a decade ago near enough. XXL as I need to be able to do volume. They were much cheaper then. It is used in the restaurant now and has paid for itself many times over as I use it as a BBQ, a smoker for meat and fish, and a rotisserie. It's used a lot for charring peppers, onions and chillies as well to make sauces and hot oils. For those who like BBQ food they are great. Ours is used year round. If you just see food as fuel, then I agree, waste of money domestically.

Re sous vide questions - look at Guga's channel on you tube. He has several, including "sous vide everything" and has done more tests on steaks than anyone. However, as for temps, I never sous vide anything at a higher temperature than I want to serve it when seared and rested. For me finished on the probe, 44C is blue, 48 rare, 52 medium rare, 56 medium, 62 medium well and well done ....just don't. So in the sous vide I would hold a fillet, rib eye or sirloin steak at 44, 2 hours. 4 hours won't hurt it. More than that is a waste of energy unless you've bought a ropey piece of beef and it needs tenderising.

Chris Young, the ex Fat Duck development chef also has a few good vids on cooking steak. Looks scientifically at sear and temps. He knows what he is talking about.

If properly vac packed and frozen, it can go straight from the freezer into the water bath.

People often ruin steaks by searing too hot (and too wet). Had a guest last week who struggles with exactly this issue.
 
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AJB Temple said:
So in the sous vide I would hold a fillet, rib eye or sirloin steak at 44, 2 hours.
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Ah, I don’t think the ‘Lidl special’ sous vide instructions ever suggest below 56*. They must be being risk-averse.

Will try the Guga vids - Fallow is my current favourite cooking channel. You probably know this, but guga refers to young gannets harvested on Lewis. I met a chap who’d done it, and tried the meat. “Alright if you’re starved of protein” was the less-than-enthusiastic review.
 
Fallow was very good - but now they stick the best stuff on expensive membership. Adam Byatt at Trinity is better in my view for serious cooks. Very good channel.

If beef is cooked sous vide to 56 degrees C then that will be past medium by the time it is seared. Beef as steak is pretty much zero risk - bacteria can't get to the inside, and the outside is seared: which kills any bacteria.
 
On the subject of steak tartare, on my first visit to my then fiancée’s relations in Ostend, they laid on a special buffet. The main dishes served were filet americaine, similar to steak tartare, air dried ham and roll-mops. After the event, I asked her did they ever cook anything or was their food always served raw? Another memorable meal consisted of a casserole of lambs’ tongues and potatoes. Even writing about it, I can still remember the texture of those warm, glutinous tongues.
 
MartinF said:
On the subject of steak tartare, on my first visit to my then fiancée’s relations in Ostend, they laid on a special buffet. The main dishes served were filet americaine, similar to steak tartare, air dried ham and roll-mops. After the event, I asked her did they ever cook anything or was their food always served raw? Another memorable meal consisted of a casserole of lambs’ tongues and potatoes. Even writing about it, I can still remember the texture of those warm, glutinous tongues.
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YUK :oops:
 
Lamb tongue is regarded as a delicacy in some cuisines. I've never had it but I'm told by a chef who has that it is tender and very tasty. Needs a quick braise in stock to remove the membrane before cooking. Can be fried or braised and served with crispy roast or new potatoes. I would definitely try it if I had the chance.

I remember as a kid having pressed and sliced beef tongue. Along with things like brawn and chitterlings. There was a butchers shop in Regent Street, Leamington Spa, that specialised in using the whole animal. People regularly ate tripe back then, but you never see it now.
 
AJB Temple said:
I remember as a kid having pressed and sliced beef tongue. Along with things like brawn and chitterlings. There was a butchers shop in Regent Street, Leamington Spa, that specialised in using the whole animal. People regularly ate tripe back then, but you never see it now.
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Over here you do. Even ordinary supermarkets have tripe, tongue (not pressed or sliced ,just half an actual tongue - they are enormous aren't they?) and lights. Also stuff like gizzards.

I never did like brawn, but my dad had it. Here you get Head Cheese, which isn't made from milk...

What you don't get is lamb's liver. Even if you take your own sheep to the abattoir you don't get the liver back. Something to do with a parasite.
S
 
AndyP said:
Wasn’t that long ago that we could get horse meat too.
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Never seen that since we've been here. We asked our French teacher friend about it. She is in her late 70s and remembers it well. But it's fallen out of fashion, especially with younger folk. Specialist horse butchers do still exist, but you have to search them out.

I don't know if it just this area, but there really are no horses around at all. Our neighbour used to keep two in our field, but they were her daughter's and she has left home. There is a donkey in a garden just as you get into town, but I can't think of anywhere else that has horses. So no horse muck for your roses. But here they recommend cow muck for everything, and there is no shortage of that.

S
 
Around 40 years ago I'd have a couple of raw eggs... broken into a glass of milk and whipped round with a fork before downing in one. I was trying to build up my body/muscles and going some weight lifting... drank this after a workout. Don't think I'd do the raw egg thing now at 75 though... having seen some of the eggs after cracking the shell to fry them or cook another way...
 
Steve Maskery said:
Never seen that since we've been here. We asked our French teacher friend about it. She is in her late 70s and remembers it well. But it's fallen out of fashion, especially with younger folk. Specialist horse butchers do still exist, but you have to search them out.

I don't know if it just this area, but there really are no horses around at all. Our neighbour used to keep two in our field, but they were her daughter's and she has left home. There is a donkey in a garden just as you get into town, but I can't think of anywhere else that has horses. So no horse muck for your roses. But here they recommend cow muck for everything, and there is no shortage of that.

S
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No, they’ve eaten them all haha.
 
AJB Temple said:
Agree re burgers - but you can only safely have them rare if you hand chop or mince the meat yourself - not using shop bought mince. We are not a burger place at all though for guests. I used to eat steak blue as well - but these days for fillet I always go for rare. Partial to a bearnaise.
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I read this the other day and thought it made perfect sense, I hadn't really thought about it before. However, surely the meat you buy and chop could also have bacteria on the outside which you mince into the middle?
 
MattS said:
I read this the other day and thought it made perfect sense, I hadn't really thought about it before. However, surely the meat you buy and chop could also have bacteria on the outside which you mince into the middle?
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The technique used in industry for safely serving raw meat is 'sear and shave'. You take a large whole cut of meat, so that bacteria can only exist on the outside. You sear it all over with a blowtorch, raising the exposed surfaces to a temperature that will kill those bacteria. Then you cut off the seared outside and chop or mince the raw meat from the inside. It's not really practical to do at home because the wastage on a small cut would be enormous, but if you can do it to a big solid lump then it reduces the waste to a pretty small proportion that can be absorbed into the ingredient cost.

For burgers specifically there's also the option of cooking them sous vide so that you can hold the meat at exactly medium or medium rare temperatures for several minutes on end, which also kills the required proportion of bacteria. Obviously you can't exactly do that for a steak tartare though.

At home, you know exactly who's going to eat it and roughly what state their immune system is in. If nobody in your family is very young, very old, pregnant or immunocompromised then you can afford a higher risk tolerance than a restaurant can. Sourcing from a trusted butcher before mincing at home is a perfectly reasonable decision if you're comfortable with it, but it's not one that a chain restaurant can reasonably make when their customers might include any of the above.
 
Steve Maskery said:
Never seen that since we've been here. We asked our French teacher friend about it. She is in her late 70s and remembers it well. But it's fallen out of fashion, especially with younger folk. Specialist horse butchers do still exist, but you have to search them out.

I don't know if it just this area, but there really are no horses around at all. Our neighbour used to keep two in our field, but they were her daughter's and she has left home. There is a donkey in a garden just as you get into town, but I can't think of anywhere else that has horses. So no horse muck for your roses. But here they recommend cow muck for everything, and there is no shortage of that.

S
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Normandy is horse country, there are everywhere. Around here more specifically trotters where the jockey sits behind the horse in a two wheel sulky.
 
I love steak tartare. Unfortunately I had an unfortunate nocturnal experience when I ate it in Carcassonne. Zut alors. :eek:
 
MattS said:
I read this the other day and thought it made perfect sense, I hadn't really thought about it before. However, surely the meat you buy and chop could also have bacteria on the outside which you mince into the middle?
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Stephen covered it. Spot on. I never do burgers for guests and at home I always know exactly where my meat has come from and how I have kept it. I tend to use dry aged beef anyway and will trim the crust if making tartare or if I am doing a steak.

Any mince of any kind that I use is minced by me, including for sausages.
 
Stephen and Adrian thanks for taking the time to answer. I’ve no experience in commercial cooking so find it really interesting how it would be managed in a professional kitchen. In terms of at home we are all fit and healthy but I’ve probably been lax cooking bought burgers not knowing there even a risk. We also mince and make our own so I can see that being the preferred way from now on!
 
Replying to Ian (Cabinetman), the lambs tongue casserole wasn't in the least appealing; it was worse than school dinners in the 1950s if such a thing was possible.

Adrian said "People regularly ate tripe back then (when he was a kid), but you never see it now". I know why; as soon as people could afford to eat something better, they did. I made the mistake once in France of trying tripes a la mode de Caen; nearly on a par with the casserole. Once tried, never again.

As for horsemeat. on one occasion a few years ago, my wife and I ventured over the Jura mountains from France to Neuchatel in Switzerland. Top of the menu under the grills section of the menu were horse steaks which were more expensive than the beef. Even more unusual, as far as we were concerned, was that the some of horsemeat was sourced from, as far as I can remember, the USA.

​

 
duke said:
I like my steak medium to well done, got to kill the parasites.
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If you are concerned about parasites in beef - change your butcher pronto! Tapeworm etc should never be present in steaks from beef cattle properly raised on clean pasture. Veterinary inspections at abattoirs in the UK are stringent. We do not buy any imported beef, pork or lamb: only produce where we know the farmer.
 
I also like my steak well done not because of parasites or bacterior just because I do. The fact that it's fashionable or gourmet to have it raw or oozing blood matters not one jot to me, if I'm paying for it I want what I want and if the chef turns up his nose I'd take my business elsewhere.

If everyone liked the same food cooked in exactly the same way you wouldn't have a business and many thousands of chefs and TV personalities would be claiming benefits. ;)
 
Steak doesn't ooze blood. It is a mixture of myoglobin (which is a protein) and water - which is how oxygen is stored in muscle. Personally I don't care how people like their meat and I'm sure most cooks don't care either as long as customers pay. Cooking well done just removes the myoglobin and water and dries out the meat. Well done is 71C or above and at that internal temperature the fat melts into the pan. Fat carries a lot of the flavour. That's all that's happening.
 
OK not blood just looks like it. Doesn't change my preference or opinion though.
 
Well thank you yous two I thought it was just me!
And I like to cook my steak in a metal dish under the grill ( broiler for our cousins) that way all the juices are collected and a little flour and red wine along with the black pepper and butter from the steak makes a better sauce than any I’ve ever had elsewhere.
 
Ian - can you get bone marrow in the US? Enriches sauces a lot.
 
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