New Year New Cuts: Bavette
We’re not really ones for grand New Year resolutions but in the spirit of the New Year and with ideas of health, sustainability and making good decisions being fresh in our minds we thought tit would be a good time to talk about about some cuts of meat that get talked about less.
As butchers we’re often asked things like “well, what do you eat?” or “what’s the best cut”. Although there aren’t secret cuts we keep back to ourselves when you spend most of the day looking at meat you may end up breaking things down in to more specific jobs or trying different cuts for different dishes.
The advantages of being more adventurous in your choice of cuts are plentiful, apart from keeping things interesting it also means that we can cycle through more of the animal, allowing us to buy more full carcass rather than choice cuts. That means we can go straight to the farmer more often resulting in a better price for everyone involved.
So with that in mind we wanted to take the new year to highlight three things we really like to eat which we think are tasty, good value and might not be in your rotation.
First up is Bavette and Onglet – these are both often referred to as flank or skirt steaks or in the case of Onglet also called Hangar steak. Whilst they’ve become significantly more popular in the last few years they’re still a fantastic value steak cut (or more unusually stewing) that we think worth’s talking about.
A couple of key points about bavette and Onglet – they need to be cooked rare, or at least medium rare, if you overcook them tend to get very tough but brevity is easily rewarded in a steak that’s full of flavour, nice and lean and very reasonably priced. It’s been a favourite of restaurants for years due to its great flavour and ability to generate a fantastic mark up. You’ll see it as a fixture on Noble Rot’s lunch set menu as well as being recently spotted gracing the menus at Sessions Arts Club and The Wolseley.
Predominantly used as a frying steak Bavette and Onglet can also be utilised as stewing cuts with Onglet being the tradition beef for Cornish pasties. Sliced up it also makes a perfect cut for a tasty and cost efficient stir fry.
Top Tip – make sure you get your Bavette or Onglet to room temperature before cooking. Especially in a steak that wants to be fried hot and fast starting it at room temperature means it’ll be cooked through perfectly.