The Perfect Steak...

                   

Served with a red wine sauce and vegetable slice

I love steak...a nice juicy, medium rare fillet steak, caramelised on the outside and flavoured with garlic served with creamy mashed potato and spinach and a rich red wine sauce. Or with crispy chips, fluffy on the inside served with mayonnaise or Dijon mustard. It was the first thing I ate when I started to eat meat again. Anyway, whatever you like with your steak, its hard to make it at home as good as in the restaurants (and even they get it wrong sometimes!). If you've spent out on good quality meat, you want to be pretty sure that you're going to end up with something decent. You can do the below in a frying pan or on a BBQ but if you're doing it on the latter, make sure you rub your steak with the garlic first. Get yourself a pair of cooking tongs, they're the best things for turning and checking pieces of meat. You can of course use other cuts of steak if you wish and apply the same principle.

Ingredients

Fillet steak - 1 per person, around 180g - 225g per steak
Clove of garlic, chopped finely
Salt & pepper
Knob of butter
Olive oil

1. Firstly, heat a large non stick frying pan with a knob of butter. Chop the garlic and fry gently in the butter.

2. In the meantime prepare your steak by freshly grinding salt and pepper on both sides and rubbing thoroughly with olive oil.

 

Oiled


3. Place the steaks in the hot pan - it must be as hot as possible without burning the garlic - and leave them. Do not move them around in the pan, leave them to caramelise.

4. It is difficult to give timings for steaks as they all vary in size so the easiest way to tell how your meat is cooked is to use your hands!

5. Link your thumb and index finger lightly together (it doesn't matter which hand) and prod the fleshy part at the bottom of your thumb. The way this feels is how your steak should feel when it's rare.

6. Next, link your thumb to the third finger. The fleshy part of the hand below the thumb is how a medium steak will feel.


Medium














7. Repeat with thumb and forth finger for medium to well done.

 

Medium to Well Done





8. And with the little finger for well done...


Well Done



9. Once your steak is cooked how you like it, take the meat out of the pan to rest on either a warmed plate or foil for 5-10 minutes to allow the juices to release back into the fibres of the meat.

   10. Serve with whatever takes your fancy!

Enjoy!