Intensively farmed meat is bad for everybody involved but proper, dry-aged artesian meat that's the
thing of beauty and I'm I'm on a mission to learn all
about it so I'm gonna go and see the beef barrel of London. Richard Turner. He's worked
with some of the most important chefs in the world
Marco Pierre White, Pierre Coffman and the Roux brothers.
Not only is he responsible for some of the most important beef restaurants that have happened in
London over the last eight to nine years including Pitt Que and Hawksmoor.
He's also the guy that brought the groundbreaking Meatopia Festival that
happens every year that attracts chefs from all over the world. If there's one guy
that can tell me about beef and that's happened here in the UK over the last
eight years...
Richard Turner's the guy.
I was reading
that you were you were a para and you came out of the army and you're
doing close (protection) close protection. So, you used to go to all these top restaurants
and that's where, was it, was it Le Gavroche? Le Gavroche, yes. So the Roux brothers
brothers. Yeah, I was eating there sort of quite a lot, every single day they
eventually they they gave me a job. I left there I went to Harvey's. With Marco
Pierre White, then I went to Koffmann's, La Tante Claire and then afterwards I went
back to Marco at the restaurant Marco Pierre White. Le Gavroche was pretty tough.
Not dissimilar to the paras and only longer hours I mean you know
they're all tough kitchens. Yeah I was planning a steak house for some years
and I went to eat at Hawksmoor and found that they had already done what I was
planning and I asked them if I could throw my lot in with them that was ten years ago.
I remember when Hawksmoor opened it's definitely well kind of went
'we're doing... we're stepping up a gear here' you know?
Well stepping back a gear I thought. Okay. I mean we were taking it we were focusing
on flavour focusing on simplicity focusing on ingredients
there's no clever tricks. So at a time when people go from wishing stars and
there were foams around and gels and and all this stuff going on and we just
took it right back to basics. Basically most of work starts right at the
beginning and then it's, you know, from the animal to how it's kept what it's
fed and the breed and then onwards through to the butcher: how its treated, how its
hung. There's a guy in in Northern Ireland Peter Hannen who is a master of
ageing one of the best in in the world I think. And he's he's ageing some immense
beef and then when it gets in your kitchen all the work is done for you. Yes.
All you have to do is add salt and fire and who doesn't want to do that?
So what are we cooking? Okay we're cooking a porterhouse steak
here. It's about 13 months old I think the animal was 30 months old, this has only
been aged for five weeks on the bone. Okay. It's just salt you don't use
anything else we used to a little pepper but we stopped doing that about two
years ago. Why the porterhouse? Well a porterhouse has got two muscles you've got the fillet here
Then you've got the sirloin there. My favorite changes depending on my mood
but you know, if I'm really hungry, something that's this size 900 grams is
is pretty pretty good. It's only been out for like 10 minutes maximum so
it's not ice cold when it goes (or fridge cold) when it goes on the grill
It's because it will get too dark on the outside and inside will be too cold so
you just want to get it gonna get just starts to come up to room temperature but I cook a lot slower my
grill's not quite as hot as some people's grills. We let it burn down to white.
A good handful of salt, all over it. Wow.
Lots of salt on there - most of it's going to fall off on the grill. Okay.
So if you don't do that you're under seasoning okay because people would look
at that and go bloody hell that's a lot of salt! Yeah if you're cooking on the plancha or
in a pan then obviously that is an awful lot of salt. Okay.
But because you've got grills. It falls through. It's all falling through.
I'm gonna bang the salt off first on there
We turn it 20 times 30 times. Really? We keep turning to get maximum
caramelization on the outside of the steak. We don't want bars if you look on those
pictures that you see outside cheap steak houses. Yeah. They've got bars we don't do bars.
It's just silliness. Silliness. Nurturing the steak, looking after it and then it'll
go into like a resting area down there. The leaner the cut the rarer
you'd eat it so the more fat the more closer to medium you have it. I mean
people eat medium, well that's fine by me. Okay. But you want a fatty cut from
eating well. I'm not a fan of rare in any cut, I don't think it presents well so for me
medium rare medium well. Rare is for people that are showing off I think.
Well done is probably the same as rare to me I mean you know it's not, it's
not a great way to show steak. Yes, yes. But you know the customer's always right.
I'll lift on the tray and put it on top to keep warm.
Holy cow! Breakfast.(Laughs) It actually is breakfast. I know. So that is a 900
gram porterhouse steak fillet on the left
sirloin on the right. Most importantly it's been rested for 20 minutes.
Like it's 9 O'clock in the morning
When a piece of beef has been reared properly, slaughter properly and then aged
properly... what you're getting is a really subtle beef flavour.
Because beef's not the most robust of flavours really. I guess the key things to point
out are the way they cook it develops this even crust on the outside it's not
cold and too pink on the on the middle when you ask for medium rare because
they take it out for ten minutes and bring it up to room temperature the
moving around all the time means that you get an even gnarly crust and because
they don't even mess around with it they just put a top quality sea salt on there,
what you're tasting is pedigree beef. Every component, every detail of the
steak from field to plate is analysed, looked at, respected, taken back to the
old school and then just delivered. It was incredible it's and I can see what
was delivered in the way that you cooked it with this sort of
crust that you developed on the outside like it's spectacular. Obviously got to be
Peter Hannan in Belfast who's the steak guru.
Thank you so much. Thank you. Good man.
How totally awesome is that, like,
I just got schooled by the the Jedi Knight of beef Richard Turner.
Going back to the old school bringing all those old techniques but paying
so much attention to every detail. I think next up I need to find out about
this Peter Hannen dude. He's the butcher from Northern Ireland that's started to
aged beef 200, 300, 400 days old... Come on let's go find out about him
Okay so this Peter Hannen dude... he's a legend... he's like a rock star butcher. He
has learnt how to aged beef past 28 days without it having that funky blue cheese
taste and it's because he developed a Himalayan salt chamber specifically for
it. That is cool man. Peter? Yeah I sent you
an email? Yes, John, yeah. Yeah.
So Tuesday?
We're off to Ireland!
We're going on a little adventure to Northern Ireland