When it comes to culinary expertise and the modern man, it’s perhaps not essential to know which fish species produce the best yellow tail sushi, or the optimum climactic conditions for the most fragrant cilantro. Leave that for foodies, farmers’ market bores and Hell’s Kitchen contestants.
Steak, though, is a different matter: from prime cuts to cooking techniques, you should be able to tell one end of a cow from the other. It’s why we turned to Jamie Robertson, head chef at Gaucho in Dubai, to plug any holes in your knowledge with a marbled slab of blood-red insight. Wielding a large knife and a larder full of experience, he offers nine key tips to ensure your next steak dinner is nearly as good as his.
1. Get a cast-iron griddle pan
“Most people in Dubai will have an electric stove top in their apartment, which isn’t ideal for any type of cooking as, unlike gas, it’s very difficult to regulate the temperature. With that in mind, I’d recommend a cast-iron griddle pan, with clear, defined ridges, to give you as close to a grill effect as possible.”
2. Use as high a temperature as possible
“Without a professional, temperature- regulated grill, I would set your stove ring to the highest temperature possible and wait until you can see the pan just start to change colour a little. It should go lighter, almost have a pink tinge. That’s when you know it’s hot enough.”
3. Use corn oil or canola oil
“We use canola or corn oil for two reasons: one, they have less flavour, so they don’t affect the taste of the meat you’re cooking. Secondly, the smoke point is a lot higher. Put olive oil in a pan that is too hot and it will acquire a really bitter, almost burnt flavour. Importantly, you shouldn’t oil the pan, only the meat.”
4. Size matters
“At Gaucho, most of the steaks we cook are 300g, which is a size that suits one portion. The optimum thickness of a steak is between four and five centimetres. At that thickness, it can be cooked blue right the way through to medium-well but still be moist when served.”
5. Don’t flatten it unless the meat isn’t high quality
“If you’ve bought a piece of steak in the local supermarket, especially if it’s rump or flank, it might be necessary to hammer it a little to tenderise it. But when you do that, you break down all its fibres so it will lose moisture quicker during cooking. It’s not recommended for high-quality cuts of meat.”
6. Turn once only
“We cook our steaks on a 70-30 ratio, meaning that the serving side gets 70 percent of the cooking time before we finish with 30 percent on the plate side. This ensures each piece of meat is cooked all the way through and that the nice grill marks are clear to the diner.”
7. Season on one side with salt only
“It’s important to note that pepper changes the flavour of anything it’s added to, whereas salt enhances it. We add rock salt to just one side of the cut when it’s grilling and this also helps to draw out any impurities as it cooks.”
8. Watch for the blood
“To know when to turn, look for pockets of blood just starting to come to the surface, especially around any seams of fat. This is a sign it’s ready to be flipped to complete the cooking time.”
9. Let it rest
“For cooking at home, you should let your steak rest for roughly the same time as you cooked it. It’s not necessary for the wet-aged meat at Gaucho, so we serve it straight away.”