[chiming music]
Steak tartare.
The one thing I need to know is the…
Hi!
[pencil scratching]
[air whooshing]
Today we are going to make steak tartare, raw meat.
Welcome to our kitchen.
Let me start that again. Yeah.
[camera whirring]
Welcome to our kitchen.
And another episode of Buford and Sons.
Our cinematographer, George Buford.
And our director, Frederick Buford.
And today’s episode is inspired by a meal
that we had when we were living in Lyon,
at Brasserie Georges, one of these just arcane,
ridiculous, 19th century brasseries by the train station.
And one of their specialties is steak tartare.
Some guy’s wearing a tuxedo
that hasn’t been washed since last Christmas.
He’s got a whole little tray of all these goodies.
And he adds this, he adds that, he mixes it up.
He tosses in an egg yolk.
He does this with his fork, he does that with his fork.
And he plops it on your plate.
And you think, wonderful!
And you think, I will never do that at home.
And today we’re doing it at home.
You can make steak tartare.
[Son] Nice.
From many cuts of beef.
And some people recommend some tough cuts of meat
that are high in flavor,
like the eye that comes out of the leg.
But I have to admit, there’s something very appealing
about the tenderloin, and that’s what we have today.
One of the premium cuts of meat, already pretty tender,
and maybe not needing the steak tartare treatment, but.
A couple of words about raw meat.
First of all, you want it as fresh as possible.
You want to keep it cold.
I actually put this in the freezer for 45 minutes
before bringing it out here now.
You want to cool all your bowls, and plates, and utensils.
And at the moment, this meat is gonna go into
a bowl that is in our freezer.
Raw meat is not without its dangers.
With precautions it is tremendous,
delicious, rewarding experience.
[meat slapping] Stop!
No! Disgusting!
[Son] Never!
[camera whirring]
Get your hand off it, just put it down.
[beep]
First, we take a portion out of our tenderloin,
which is gonna be our lunch actually.
First, we’re gonna cut away a portion
from the tenderloin that we’re going to use.
Next, I’m gonna cut off my string.
What we’re looking for in our meat,
is first of all, the direction of the grain.
They’re the thing which give a meat its toughness,
its fiber, its texture.
I examine the meat.
There’s a little bit of tough tendon here.
I’d like to remove that before I start.
They will be in three directions.
The first one is against the grain.
We’ll just go like this.
And cutting against the grain,
we’re splitting the tendons, so they relax.
There is a kind of tenderness that you get from the meat.
And a result, you get kind of
some mouthfeel and great flavor.
That, and we got one more time.
And I’m gonna move the cutting board
’cause at this point we’re just going straight across.
Doesn’t this make you hungry?
[Son] Yeah, it’s beautiful.
I’m covering this and putting it
on my previously frozen plate.
The moment this is done, into the fridge it goes.
You got this, woo!
[Bill laughing]
Okay, we’re gonna make sauce, it’ll be great!
You ready? Yes!
Woo! Yes!
[Son] Okay.
[both throat clearing]
And action.
Next, we make the sauce.
[Son] Boo-yah!
While we’re making our steak tartare,
while we’ve been practicing,
and while I’ve been thinking about it,
I’ve been wondering the whole time, why tartare?
And there is a theory that actually
derives from the Tatars in Caucasus, I think,
who had a practice of riding on their horses
with a slab of meat between their leg and the animal’s back.
With the result that when they finally
arrived at their destination,
it was tender and highly flavored.
When instead of beef, people used to use horse meat.
[horse neighs]
The preparation harks back to the 19th century
and what was called a sauce tartare,
or what we now know as tartar sauce.
That thing you get a jar with your fish.
But a proper sauce tartare isn’t made
like the thing you get from a jar, as you’ll see,
because that’s what I’m about to make.
I’m about to make the classic 19th century steak tartare.
It starts first with an egg yolk, a little bit of mustard,
a touch of vinegar, salt and pepper, and a good neutral oil.
I like grape seed oil.
[fork clinking]
You might recognize it, what we’re creating here
is the beginning of a mayonnaise.
As it happens, I made some already,
with this amazing instrument that my children
introduced me to, a handheld blender,
which I strongly recommend.
Next, we’ll take a little bit of our mayonnaise.
We take some chopped shallots, some chopped capers,
some chopped cornichon, a little bit of parsley.
And we mix it all together.
And finally, we mix our sauce tartare
with our hand-cut meat, for a steak tartare.
First we add our sauce tartare to an ice cold plate.
[dynamic music]
We add the meat.
And then we mix.
Did you say it looks like cat food?
And now we’ll start to shape it.
Next, we’ll complete our plating with a light salad.
Parsley.
A little bit of vinaigrette.
Et voila.
Steak tartare, made at home.
Nice!
Don’t, stop!
What are you doing? No, that’s, uh!
That’s nasty. You ruined it.
[jazzy music]
So Jess, what do we drink with a steak tartare?
I think steak tartare is a pretty easy pairing.
You could drink a lot of things with it.
If you had a rose in the fridge, that would be delicious.
A white would be fine.
But we happen to have this in the fridge.
This is a nice Bordeaux, another classic for a classic dish.
It’s from 2015, so nice and fruity.
This is just a Cru Bourgeois, nothing fancy.
I think it’ll be really delicious with the tartare.
[Son] Thanks guys, it’s been fun.
So… Can you look at the camera?
