At Hand To Mouth Towers, we don’t have any outside space that allows us to grill meat over an open fire, which can be a bit frustrating during ‘barbecue season’. So when I get the chance to get busy with some hot coals, I try and make it count.

For me the undisputed kings of the grill are Côte de Bœuf or the porterhouse. Both are pretty primal cuts, with plenty of marbling, and if well hung, bags of flavour. Whilst at Forcalquier Market we picked up some amazing rib steaks to barbecue, and they made an awesome dinner.

Ingredients (serves 6)

3 x Côte de Bœuf steaks (around 700g each)

Herbs de Provence

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

You want your ribs to be at room temperature before you grill them, so get them out of the fridge before you start your barbecue. Now get your barbecue super hot. You want to sear and caremelise the outside of the meat when you put it on, so it needs to be as hot as Hades.

Before you put your steaks on the grill, season with pepper, and a generous scattering of herbs de Provence. Pat the herbs and pepper onto the meat so it sticks. There are differing schools of thought as to whether or not you should season steaks with salt before you cook them, but I like to sprinkle some on just before they hit the grill.

Stick the steaks on the barbecue, and at the same time shove a few rosemary branches directly on the coals beneath the meat. It will add additional flavour, and smells amazing. As the fat renders, the barbecue will periodically burst into flames, don’t worry too much about this, as long as the flames are under control again this will just add more flavour.

After two minutes or so, flip the meat over to sear the other side. After another two minutes, the steaks should be caremelised and glistening on both sides. At this point, douse the flames slightly with water or some beer. Keep turning the steaks every minute or so, until they are medium rare. You can tell this by pressing the meat and applying the ‘finger test’.

It’s going to be tempting to get stuck in straight away, but try and resist as it’s important to rest the meat. Pop the steaks on a plate, cover with foil, and set aside for 10-15 minutes. Don’t worry about the steaks not being piping hot when you serve, they are better eaten warm.

After resting, take each steak and slice it into strips about a centimeter thick. Serve with some Rosemary and garlic roasted potatoes, a good Dijon mustard and plenty of vin rouge.

Délicieux!

Tags: Barbecue, Côte de Bœuf, Grill, Herbs de Provence, Mustard, Pepper, Potatoes, Rest, Rosemary, Salt, Steak

This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Dinner, Opinion, Recipes, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.