Steak and fries.

He gave me Porterhouse, also known as New York Strip. This is a very nice cut of meat that comes from the back of the beef - usualy the middle of the loing. I received the meat frozen, and let it thaw gently in the refrigerator over a couple days. The steak looked good after thawing, no trace of freezer burn or damage to the meat due to ice crystals. There was no significant trace of blood in the pack either. The meat had obviously been properly frozen to begin with.

The steak had nice marbling - some traces of fat throughout the meat, but no tendons or grizzle. There was a nice layer of fat left on one side of the steak. It was a nice white colour - a light beige, no yellow tint at all. The marbling and fat serve to give both taste and texture here. It's good - not a "fatty" steak at all.

I let the meat come to room temperature, and patted it dry with a clean towel. I seasonned it with salt and fresh ground pepper. I heated up a thick bottomed frying pan and put a drop of vegetable oil in. I let the oil come nearly to smoking point, and put the steaks in. I let that cook for a couple minutes, then flipped the meat over. Again, let it cook a couple minutes, then turned the heat off.

I let the steak sit for a couple minutes to give it a chance to relax a bit. Imagine if you were thrown on a burning element, you'd tense up and get all tough! So resting away from the heat a couple minutes is a good idea.

I served this with homemade fries (I prefer golden potatoes for my fries).

The steak was very tasty, tender, and juicy. I definitely think the experiment of crossing Angus with Jersey cattle a success! Bring it on!

"I've been bitten yet again by something which plagues me when I make many recipes. Typically, some of the things I like to make start by saying: "toss the cubes of beef in flour, then brown them in a small amount of olive oil". This *always* burns unless I use about a gallon of oil. The flour soaks up the oil and catches on the pan. The only way to prevent this is to keep adding oil until I've put a really large quantity in. Sometimes I end up cleaning my pan halfway through just to get rid of the crap, when it should be full of beefy goodness for later. Is there some way round this? Like ignoring the flour?" - Colin

Answer

The problem is with the recipe, not with the cook. Typically, you would flour beef the way you described to thicken the eventual sauce that will be made with the dish. If you only want to colour the beef, without needing a thickening agent, don't bother flouring the meat. Put a bit of the meat in the pan, not too much otherwise the pan will cool down and the juices will be released, boiling the meat instead of frying & colouring it. You may need to do this in several batches. This will give you a nice amount of caramelised beef juice at the bottom of the pan, which you can later deglaze to get the beefy goodness out :)

Should you need the flour to thicken the sauce, sprinkle it on the beef AFTER it's been coloured. The remnant of fat on and around the beef will make the flour stick and it'll all nice. You may even wish to keep the heat under the flour to brown that as well a bit before adding liquid, but I don't usualy bother, as it's so difficult to brown it evenly without actually burning the darn thing.

So, if you wish to thicken a sauce, add the flour after. If there's no need for a thickening agent, just skip the flour entirely.

Another Thing

Also, don't use OLIVE oil to brown meat or do panfrying at high heat. Olive oil has a low smoke point (160C), almost as low as butter (140C). This means that you can't get the heat you need to colour your beef properly without a) changing the oil's flavour and b) increasing the carcinogenic nature of the burned oil. Use canola oil, or peanut oil, or any other oil that has a high smoke point (200C - 220C)

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Brown stock is usually made from veal or beef bones, or from chicken/poultry bones. Some "specialised" brown stocks can also be made using venison, or duck, or even quail bones. Pork is rarely used on its own, particularly in French (or Western) cooking. Historically, veal was used instead of beef. The flavour is more delicate. But it is hard to find veal bones nowadays. In fact, it can be hard to find beef bones, now that so many supermarkets don't have butchers on the premises! But there are alternatives - You can use shank, and/or "gravy beef", although the later makes it more expensive.

Qualities Of A Good Stock

There are several qualities you want to look for in a good stock:

1. Fat free
2. Salt free
3. Rich brown colour
4. Rich taste

Buying vs Making

While you can purchase stock at the grocery store, the quality is usually not great, and the prices are quite high. And it is usually extremely salty, which means you cannot reduce it much at all.

Advantages of Making Your Own Stock:

• Lower cost
• Better taste
• More control of what goes in the stock.

Disadvantage of Making Your Own Stock:

• Time consuming

Should you wish to purchase stock instead of making it, select the liquid form rather than the powdered form. These tend to be better and not based on salt so much. Also, compare the ingredient lists between the different brands. You may find salt-free stock, which is better, both health-wise and for cooking.

What Is It Used For?

Brown Stock is used as a basis for sauces. It can be used "as is", reduced, or thickened. Depending on what you do with it after the stock is ready, it takes other forms, and is called differently:

Glaze

Reduced stock until it is syrupy (typically down to 10% of original volume).

Thickened Stock

Stock thickened, usually with flour. This is an expedient replacement to Espagnole or Demi-Glace.

Espagnole Sauce

Thickened stock with extra aromatic ingredients. Espagnole is usually done only with veal/beef.

Demi-Glace

Espagnole sauce at its supreme degree of perfection. Demi-Glace is usually done only with veal/beef. Note that despite similar names, Glaze and Demi-Glace are not at all resulting from the same process.

Straining Stock

Once the stock is cooked, you have to separate the stock itself from the bones & aromatics. The easiest way is to use a large laddle to scoop out the stock from the pot, and pour it in a strainer over a large container. Once you are unable to use a ladle, you may carefully tip the bones and liquid in the strainer. Some people line the strainer with several layers of cheese cloth, to catch any tiny bits still floating in the stock, such as herbs, etc.

Remember: You want to keep the stock, NOT the bones! Which reminds me of an anecdote with an apprentice

This happened in a holiday camp where we were feeting approximately 400 teenage boys, 3 meals a day, plus 2 snacks. Industrial size cooking. I was teaching one of my apprentices how to make stock. We'd put the bones in to roast at 5:30am, spread in 6 ovens. While that was happening and other staff were dealing with breakfast, we prepared the aromatics, got the pots ready, etc. We put the roast bones with the aromatics in the pots, added water. Now these were BIG pots. 50 liters each (12 gallons). Brought the whole thing to a boil and then controlled the temperature to a simmer. The stock simmered in two large pots for hours. Around 4:30pm, I told my apprentice to clean the sinks very well, and to put our large collander in it. I neglected to tell her to put a plug in the sink. I assumed that it would have clicked that we were making stock to keep the liquid. But... No! I told her to get help from one of the guys, get the pot off the stove and strain the content into the cleaned and prepared sink. I turned my back on them just long enough to miss them pouring the entire content of the two pots into the collander, and see the last drops of stock go down the drain. They thought we were keeping the bones, somehow! Lesson learned!

Cooling Stock Rapidly

It is extremely important to cool your stock as quickly as possible after it is finished. As stock is generally made in large quantities, it can take a while to cool down. You cannot put 4 or 5 liters of very hot liquid in the refrigerator because it would warm up the other food in the refrigerator.

The best way to cool your stock is to put the stock in the kitchen sink, and fill the sink with cold water. The heat from the stockpot is going to get exchanged with the cold water. When the water in the sink isn't cold anymore, empty and refill with cold water. Repeat these steps as often as necessary to cool down the stock sufficiently to put in the refrigerator.

Preserving Stock

You can preserve stock in the refrigerator for 3 or 4 days. If you wish to keep it longer than that, you will need to bring the stock to a boil and simmer it for 15 minutes, otherwise it will sour.

You can freeze the stock as well, and if it is properly packed, it will last up to 3 or 4 months without problem.

I like to prepare a Glaze and freeze it in ice-cube containers. Then, when I'm ready to cook, I can retrieve the number of cubes I need, instead of having to melt a whole block of Glaze.

Some people like to bottle the stock in preserves. This is not something you should attempt unless you are very familiar with preserving meat-based items.

A couple of veal t-bones.

Veal is supposed to be quite pale, like pork. It is considered a white meat, afterall. This wasn’t quite as dark as beef, but still it was more red than white. More red than pink, even.

Still, I purchased a couple different cuts.

It occured to me that what is sold here as veal is in fact much older than what I’m used to having. It is also probably grain fed rather than milk fed. In French, I’d likely call this "Bouvillon", a very young beef. Too young to be called beef, but too old to be labelled as veal.

Still, it was good, even though not what I was expecting...