Making The Ultimate Salisbury Steak At Home

This is the best recipe to use ground beef. From the bistros of Paris to TV dinners all across America, the steak hache or Salisbury steak is an absolute classic. We traveled to Paris to try the original. We even tried the modern version. Oh, it gloops! And we put all that together to make the ultimate recipe. So there's lots of different ways to make steak hache, and the truth is the origin of the dish is basically French butchers getting more out of cheaper cuts. But in order to get the best steak hache, I do think you need to get the best beef. This is the picanha, which comes from the top of the rump. Really beautiful meat, really, really sought after. I went all the way to HG Walt's to get this bad boy, straight from the dry-aged rumps that they have there. And we'll just take this off the bone, and then we'll steam out the picanha. I think rump's, like, really versatile. The fat, like the marble, the marble through here you can already see. And then you can see, yeah, like the intramuscular fat popping through. That is awesome. Yeah, it's beautiful. Thanks so much. Steak hache, or as the Americans call it, Salisbury steak, is basically just chopped steak. So hache meaning chopped in French. So traditionally this would have been hand-chopped. You could easily go to your butcher and get minced, but there is something about the texture of chopping it yourself that I think is a little bit superior. But what I'm gonna do is just basically go along the first cut and make it nice and fine, and then we'll go along and make it even finer after that. So once you've got your thin slices, you just take your meat and turn it the other way, and then go through. I know, you know, I know that most people are just gonna use ground beef, but if you do have the time and you do have the meat, it's worth just trying, because it is really simple and it does level up the final product. Okay, so imagine that you've started here potentially with your ground beef. All we wanna do with this is just bind it with a little bit of Maldon salt and pepper. So you should get this really nice homogenous mix, and then we can just separate that up into patties. Once we've got our rough balls, you can do this by hand or just use a little ring cutter. And then you can let these chill out in the fridge for a little bit, or you can cook them straight away. They will hold together a little bit better if they're cooking from fridge cold. I know what you're thinking, guys. At this point, this is a burger. Well, you're not wrong. Doing the research for this dish is actually pretty difficult, because there's very few places you can get steak cachet in London. So we actually went all the way to Paris to try this. This is Alepi d'Or. It's over 100 years old, but still serves the classic steak cachet, but done traditionally. Steak cachet always confuses me a little bit. Burger, no cheese, basically. And no bun, or lettuce or pickles. So just a burger? Yeah, it's the archenemy to the smash burger. Let's do it, chef. Well, chef, this looks delightful. I'm starting to eat my words about the old burger comment. This looks very nice. Oh yeah, spread that on top. Oh, confit garlic as a condiment. It's definitely, it's more like a steak carton, which is them. It's more like a hand cut, it's like slightly chunkier mince. Yeah. So it's got a bit of texture as you eat it. You've got a nice caramelization from the outside, because they cook it like a steak. You are right. This is like, if you had like a big fat gourmet burger, this is kind of more the style of what it is. But it's definitely finer. Sorry, coarser, the mince is a little bit coarser. I'm going to give this one a bloody good go. Okay, so to start the cooking process, one of the things I loved about the version that we had in Paris was the confit garlic on top. So we're going to start by just rendering out a little bit of beef fat, and we're just going to infuse this cooking fat with some garlic, which will serve, ultimately will be the garnish to the steak hachet at the end. So as this renders out, this beef fat, just place the garlic cloves, just hold. Just keep leaving the skins on, just protects it whilst it cooks. It's going to cook for a long time. We want it to be really melty and soft without the outside going too dehydrated and dry. So the skin just provides a good layer of protection for it. To make the sauce, it's going to be a very simple, classic steak au poivre. So just start by finely dicing some shallot. Okay, so once your beef fat has all rendered out, just remove those little garlic cloves. You should just be able to press them. They should feel completely soft to touch. Just going to take a small amount of this garlic-infused beef fat out to finish my shoestring fries. Now, a really good little hack, when you use pre-ground pepper, a lot of the freshness has gone out of it. So cracking your peppercorns by hand, the really good way to level up your peppercorn sauce, all of those essential oils start to come out. In there, we've got three different types of peppercorns. So white peppercorns, I think, are a little bit milder. So they're used a lot more in French cuisine. Red ones are a little bit fruitier, and they've got this different sort of fragrance completely to a black peppercorn. Way more delicate, also gives it a beautiful sort of look inside the sauce. And then the black ones is there to do a lot of the heavy lifting. All combined together, these three different types of peppercorns, freshly milled like that. And as you can see, I've left it pretty chunky. That's going to make an unreal peppercorn sauce. So last little thing I'm going to do, just for a garnish, is shoestring fries. Not using a mandolin, just going to use a really nice sharp knife. Cut down a lengthy potato and lay it on your board. So when we were in Paris, we had this with French fries, absolutely elite. You do need something, some sort of carb to soak up all of that sauce. And shoestring fries are really, really awesome to do it. And they're super quick and easy to make. If you think about like the steak hache as a finished dish, I mean, if it was in a burger, you'd have something like a gherkin to add that crunch. In this way, we're going to add that texture by using crispy element, which is the shoestring fries. Don't need to peel them if you don't want to. I like to leave the skin on, because it gives them a nice look. So once you've got your potatoes, just fill up a bowl of water, and then you want to go straight into your water with these really nice little thin julienne strands. Just going into the water is going to wash the starch off and let them get really crispy. You can see all of that starch coming out into the water. Just store them in water until you're ready to fry and serve. Our patties have just been chilling out in the fridge, and you can see they've just nicely firmed up. That's probably a little bit because of the salt as well. So that's perfect, because it'll hold together nicely. So cooking it from fridge cold. And then what we want to do is just add on a little bit of fine salt. Not too much, because it's got salt inside. And a good hit of pepper. We just almost want to treat it exactly like we would a steak. Lay it into our nice hot pan. It's quite important that you've got a good heat at this stage. I'm just lightly pressing it, because I want as much contact as possible. The meat with the pan, but we still want that shape. And unlike a steak that I would flip every two minutes, try and keep this one. We're going to cook it basically both sides, and then do a little bit of basting at the end. We want as much color on that crust as possible, but we want a nice, even cuisson as well. Whilst that cooks, just take these shoestrings out of that liquid that they've been sitting in, and just allow them to dry off a little bit. When the oil's at about 170 degrees, you can start to drop in your shoestring fries. When cooking in stainless steel like this, it's really good because it'll basically release itself when it's developed enough of a crust. It's been around about three minutes. Oh yeah. So just flipping that over now. And then the hard thing about a steak hachette, if you think about it, is the sides don't cook. So you want a crust and a caramelization all around it, really. So what I'm now just going to do, it's probably like, like you can see it's still raw in the middle. Now this is where it dippers very much so from its burger cousin. We're going to go in there just like we would a steak, and just hit it with a good amount of foaming butter. Turn the pan down, then add in your butter, and just allow it to baste. And what that basting does, it just sort of finishes and rounds off the caramelization. So our last stage is just adding in a little bit of thyme, and a little bit more garlic. Ground beef is seen as such a convenient food. This rivals most steaks, to be honest. So delicious. The one that we tried in Paris, that steak hachette is still their most ordered item. It's on 55 degrees. I'm just going to take that out now. What we're looking for is a resting, you know, we want to probably around about 60 degrees. Take steak hachette just slightly higher, because it has been minced, and finish that with this awesome brown butter, and just allow it to rest, just like a steak. So it's been roughly been four minutes, and then just season with a little bit of Maldon, and our garlic beef fat that we rendered out at the beginning. Beefy, garlicky, potato goodness. What's really nice to do is just to have a slice of brioche, or you can just use any white bread. And then with all that beautiful excess fat that I've got in the bottom of the pan, just going to toast off this. So almost using the bread to get some of the fond off, off the base, like a scouring pad. So too much of that fond can make the sauce, final sauce a little bit bitter. This wasn't on the version in Paris. This is an interpretation. So once you've got that colored nicely, take it out, and then pro move, allow the Steak Hachet to rest onto the bread. So that is basically a flavor sponge. Now we can start on the pan sauce. So shallots go in, and just add in a knob of butter. So what we want is the shallots to start doing their magic of deglazing the bottom of the pan. So as the liquid comes out of the shallots, that fond on the bottom of the pan starts to disappear. So once the fond's taken off from the bottom of the pan and the onions are coloring, just add in your peppercorns. And this is just going to basically allow them to start toasting off. You get this instant hit of flavor there. Add a splash of brandy in, burn off that booze, and then add in a little bit of beef stock. Okay, so once your pan sauce is reduced by around about a third, add in some cream and continue to reduce. This pan sauce can come together super quick. So you can cook all of this on a really high heat. So whilst I reduce it, I'm just going to chop up some herbs. I've got some tarragon and parsley. Okay, so we've got a really nice glossy texture on our sauce. Coat in the back of the spoon really nicely and just reduce the heat right down. And then we're adding in some brined peppercorns with a little bit of liquid. So peppercorns have been softened, blanched, and then freshly pickled. So they're actually like chewy. So I like to finish mine with a little bit of Dijon mustard and a vinegar. I'm just using sherry vinegar here. And just for freshness at the end, just a little bit of lemon juice. So just to finish the sauce, add in some fresh herbs. And then I'm just going to peel that garlic. Just going to add that into our sauce to reheat. Just before we serve, big hit of fresh black pepper at the end. You should feel a good peppercorn sauce in your nose. Time to plate up. Peppercorn sauce on the base of the plate. Fried bread goes on. Glaze it up with a little bit of the rest of the juices. And then just finish by saucing the top and then adding over those little cloves of garlic. And then you can almost just do like, build like a little nest of shoestring fries. Just place that on top. Oh yeah, look at that. So you still want it to be really nice and pink inside. And you can almost see the difference with that sort of hand chopping that it's still like little bits of steak. Oh yeah. You now don't need to go to Paris. Just use this recipe instead. So I've heard from some of our American colleagues that this brand of Hungryman Salisbury steak is the go-to one to try. This looks like sadness in a box. Oh my God. There is a cake inside. Been heated up in the steam of the ground beef. That might be one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen in my life. Unconventionally, we're going to try the brownie first. Have I had worse? It's actually quite nice. I like the way that the mash is mixed with some of the chocolate juice. Time to sauce up. Oh, it gloops. It tastes like a boiled flip-flop. North America, you should be ashamed of yourselves.