Recipe Mash Steak Guide, Part 1: How to Choose the Right Steak
Choosing your Steak
The two principal factors that should determine your choice of steak are tenderness, and flavour. The different cuts of steak, coming from different parts of the animal, will have different levels of fat content (contributing to flavour) and will have worked more or less (harder working muscle = typically less tender).
Here’s a reasonably thorough run down of the different cuts of steak you can have:
Fillet Steak
Typically petite, very tender, but not awfully flavoursome, the Fillet is best if you don’t want to wrestle your steak and have an easy time of things. Comes from the tenderloin. Best with a sauce, like béarnaise or peppercorn. If there’s a cut to eat blue, then this is it.
Chateaubriand Steak
Chateaubriand is a much thicker Fillet cut from the tenderloin. Usually roasted, Chateaubriand was historically served with a special Chateaubriand Sauce (the dish was named after François-René de Chateaubriand, a French diplomat in the 19th-century), though these days it’ll come more readily with a béarnaise Sauce. Favourite of New York and London upmarket steak joints.
Sirloin Steak
A decent compromise of flavour and tenderness for the money, this cut is found in the middle back of the animal. It has good marbling, and can be hung for up to 55 days. Large cuts.
Rump Steak
Rump steak has lots of flavour, but, coming from the backside of the animal, it needs to be hung for longer to ensure it’s tender enough. It’s also more plentiful than other cuts. Needs a little longer in cooking, and is typically best cooked to medium. Large.
Rib-Eye Steak
The Rib-Eye comes from the fore rib, has good marbling and a thick vein of fat giving good flavour. Also large.
Porterhouse / T-Bone Steak
Porterhouse steaks are often shared (and enormous). Comprising part-sirloin and part-fillet, the cut comes from the lower middle of the animal. Whilst easy to enjoy at a restaurant with a friend, Porterhouse (also known as T-Bone) can be tricky to cook, as the Serloin and Fillet parts will cook at different rates and tolerances, and the bone can make things tricky also. To make the bone look more “cooked”, you can blow-torch it a bit.
Goose Skirt / Bavette Steak
Rare cut, though becoming more fashionable, due to a good compromise between Sirloin tenderness and Rump flavour, due to it’s position in the animal, at the end of the rump where it meets the Sirloin. Triangular shape (like a more angular Fillet). Can be cooked lightly.
Minute Steak
Three main qualities: cheap, thin, fast (to cook). Never going to win any awards for flavour/tenderness. Though a Minute steak can typically come from all over the animal, depending on who/where you get it from, it’s commonly cut from the rump cap. Flash-fry, slice, slather with garlic butter and devour with chips (and preferably some cheap red wine). Most commonly found in France and the UK.
Point Steak
Flat in shape, this cheap cut has good marbling and a subtle flavour, but is poor on tenderness. Good for slicing and dicing, or stewing. Comes from the inner flank, above the liver and kidney.
Onglet Steak
The Onglet Steak is a long, dark strip that looks rather like an elongated Fillet in shape. It comes from the middle of the animal and is not the tenderest of cuts, but that is compensated for by excellent flavour. Good to slice or butterfly. Pretty unknown in America.
Feather Blade Steak
A rare cut, appearing twice behind the shoulder (the larger meat cut from this area is called the blade roast), this is both a tender and very sweet, flavourful cut from the shoulder blade. Not easily found, but not typically expensive either. Can be lightly cooked.
Flat Iron Steak
Is another name for Feather Blade. Flat Iron steak is what it is known as to Americans, and other trendy eaters who are rapidly adopting this fashionable cut.
Enjoy! If this guide has been useful, make sure you:
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