Saturday, August 20, 2011

Hang'er High

[A warning to vegetarians and those with sensitivities, this post includes pictures of raw meat.]

Am I the only person who thinks that messing up a perfectly good ingredient is a heart-sickening crime? Not a premeditated one, mind you, but a crime nonetheless... You know what I'm talking about : when you spend a small fortune on two roasts of local lamb for your father's 60th birthday and you cook the living daylights out of it because you haven't programmed your thermometer properly? Ugh. I still feel sick about that one. Or when you simmer some beautiful organic chicken bones for the perfect stock and at the end of the evening, when the simmering's done, you put the colander in the sink, dump out the stock and bones and realize you forgot to put a bowl under the colander? Yaaaaaaaaargh!

So it's with a bit of dread in my heart that I embarked on a simple yet intimidating venture the other night: the hanger steak. I'd been curious about it for months. It's such a hot cut of meat right now. HOT I tell you! It's all over the foodie magazines. And all over restaurant menus. Coincidentally, it was all over my sister's wedding last week (kudos to Epicuria - great job, and gutsy, considering you had 120 people to feed!) But I digress.

The hanger steak is a tougher cut of meat, coming from the area beneath the ribs on a steer. It hasn't had the pretty, sheltered life of a filet mignon - it's actually been busy working and moving. It's tough. Marlon Brando tough. I was scared. Scared to screw it up. But I carried on. I had to experience the amazing flavour it promised. Like Brando, it was just a question of approaching it the right way - when you do it right, it can be reeeeeeeeal nice.

My daring attempt began with a whole hanger steak purchased through the MSRO at Lochaber's Ferme Brylee, a local producer of grass-fed, antibiotic and hormone-free beef. At approx. $15, I had enough to generously feed four people - cheap! After reading up a bit on the hanger steak online (thank you, New York Times!), I got to work.

The Beast

1. I removed as much of the silver skin and large chunks of fat as I could. The meat is so beautifully marbled that I figured all of the extra fat really wasn't necessary (that was a gamble - it paid off, thank goodness). 
2. As instructed by Suzanne Hamelin's article in the NYT, I carefully butterflied the meat (in the same direction as the meat fibers), to make sure that it was no more than 1/2 inch thick. I'd decided to trim out the big white cartilage thingie from the centre, but chickened out halfway. I ended up with a big piece with the thingie still attached, and a few smaller pieces that I'd cut off from the butterflied ends (cut crosswise from the meat fibres).


4. Before putting these lovely steaks on the heat, I made sure I followed these bits of information provided by Hamelin: 
  • because it's a tougher cut, the hanger steak can't be served rare, nor can it be served well-done. It's medium-rare or nothing for maximum chewability and flavour.
  • to insure that the heat is distributed quickly and evenly through the meat, the steak has to have been resting at room temperature for at least an hour.
  • a cast-iron skillet set on high for searingly hot heat is the best option. Cast-iron insures even heat distribution and can take the higher temperature.
5. So with my hood fan on maximum, my cast-iron hot and my steaks salted and peppered, I threw a splash of canola oil and a knob of butter in the pan (the oil helps to keep the butter from burning), and put on the steaks. Lowering the heat to medium high, I cooked each steak for no more than two minutes per side and promptly removed them from the heat to let them rest in a plate for five minutes, covered with foil (this allows the juices to redistribute through the meat and prevents their loss when you cut into the steak).

Bonus: as a quickie sauce, once the steaks were resting under the foil, I turned the heat down to low and threw a good splash (about 1/4 cup) of white vermouth in the pan (white wine would have been fine too) to help scrape off the tasty bits left behind by the meat. Once all the tasty goodness had been scraped off and the vermouth had had a minute or so to burn off its alcohol, I took the pan off the heat, threw in a generous teaspoon of Dijon mustard, stirred it around, and added about 1/4 cup of 35% cream, plus five or six generous grinds from the pepper mill. I poured the sauce into two little dipping bowls to accompany the steak.

I served the steak with some steamed organic green and yellow beans (splashed with a bit of olive oil instead of butter) and some be-oootiful tiny oyster mushrooms from Le Coprin. There was no way around it for those - they were sautéed in butter.



Et voilà:




I'm very proud to say that the hanger steak turned out beautifully. It was crisp and caramelized on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside. And the flavour? Simply delicious; rich and beefy, like a steak should taste. The following picture was taken at great risk - I actually had Marc postpone a bite for the sake of documenting doneness. I nearly lost a finger. I swear.



One last little tip: in order to get maximum tenderness out of every bite, you must - MUST! - slice the steak crosswise from the grain, and in thin slices, to reduce the amount of resistance in the muscle fibres. Think of it as cutting through a bunch of elastic bands; if you slice through them crosswise, they ain't so stretchy now, are they? Hah!

So the great hanger steak gamble was a success. I'm so very glad I stopped being a wuss and gave it a go. It wasn't hard at all, and the beautiful, highly flavourful end product was the perfect reward. We both look forward to having it again soon.

À la prochaine!

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