Steak has long been a staple of the Aussie summer BBQ. That, alongside a few snags, chicken drummies and lamb chops (and not necessarily “shrimp”!) makes for the fundamental base of a classic, no frills summer cook up.
But just because the staples haven’t changed it doesn’t mean the cooking techniques haven’t. Gone are the days of simply pulling the steak out of the freezer, throwing it onto a dirty barbie and hoping everyone is too inebriated to notice how substandard it really is.
You’ve got the best barbie, you’ve found the best BBQ covers for sale, now it’s time to pay homage to your quality appliances by barbieing your steak the right way.
- Get the steak to room temperature
And we mean room temperature – not Aussie summer outdoor temperature. Take your steaks out of the fridge or freezer nice and early so that they have time to adjust to a closer climate to what they will be grilled on.
Steaks that get thrown straight onto the barbie from the fridge or freezer always fail to cook evenly, and typically end up burned on the outside whilst ice cold on the inside.
All you have to do is simply take the steaks out of their fridge, out of their wrapping and place on a plate just a little while before cooking. They will cook nice and evenly throughout and will have a fine taste.
- Don’t overseason your meat
Steaks don’t require too much seasoning to be delicious. In fact, if it is really good quality meat, you will only need a tiny bit of salt and pepper just to bring out the delicious, natural flavour.
Everyone knows an overseasoned steak just tastes far too salty and a little burned, so be sure to give it a nice seasoning that really allows the flavour of the meat to sing.
- Clean your barbie
There is nothing more disappointing than eating what should be a nice barbecued steak and noticing that it has taken on the flavours (and pieces) of previously cooked chicken drumstick onto the steak.
A delicious steak’s flavour should remain independent, unimposed by the flavours of some long ago cooked meat. Not only does this make it taste worse and look worse, you may also be spreading harmful bacteria from the long ago cooked chicken drummie – so give your barbie a nice clean before using it again.
- Don’t muck around with the steaks
Cooking a nice steak is as much about patience as it is getting those temperatures right. So, the last thing you should do is continually play with and mess around with the steaks.
Don’t stand around flipping them constantly in the hope that this will make them cook faster or more deliciously – it simply doesn’t work that way! Allow your steak to sit in the one spot before flipping/moving onto a cooler flame.
- Switch between heats
Like all good steaks, you want to achieve a nice char on the outside whilst cooking it to the desired level on the inside. But you can’t simply do this using the one grill – you need to switch it up.
So, heat one burner up nice and high to achieve a really beautiful, charred colour on the outside. Once you have given your steak a nice sear on the outside it’s time to take it over to the cooler flame to allow it to cook nicely through the middle.
