Cuts of Beef in French Measurements in French

July 12, 2000

Solving the Mystery of French Steak

By ANTHONY BOURDAIN

	Rebecca Cooney for The New York Times
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	Rebecca Cooney for The New York Times
	FRENCH WAY Arnaud Carre, of the French Butcher on Second Avenue, with beef.

dug into my first existent French steak, pan-seared, at a noisy, smoke-filled brasserie near Pigalle virtually 20 years ago. Information technology was onglet, and I was immediately struck by its ropy, not-too-tender but not-too-tough texture and its strong, almost kidneyish flavor. This was not your generic slab of sirloin or rib-centre or pallid filet mignon. This was a cut of meat I'd never seen before. Strange, heady, even a little scary. This, I idea, was eating.

Today onglet is better known as hanger steak in New York, and it is so common it turns upwards in restaurants across French brasseries, and fifty-fifty in some meat markets. Only the French steaks served alongside the frites can still be a mystery to most Americans, and it'due south non the meat but the cut that mystifies. These aren't simple sirloins or porterhouses or T-bones, and the differences are not just a thing of translation. For all their flavor, these steaks demand more than of butcher and heir-apparent alike.

What's good -- what's great -- near French cuisine stems from its guiding principles, and no principle is more firmly ingrained in the minds and souls of French-trained chefs than the idea that 1 must "use everything." Use what's available. Utilize it to its best effect. And brand the most money you can from information technology -- every scrap of shank, shoulder and jowl.

Dorsum in the early days, when the meat supply was often erratic and refrigeration was at a minimum, frugal butchers had to brand some shrewd moves to make a profit off a side of beef. They worked hard, oft with the precision of desperate and money-hungry neurologists, rooting around with their knives, searching for gilded deep inside the less-prized and less-expensive sections of carcass.

At Les Halles in New York, where I'g the chef, I have the luxury of working with Hubert Marie, a traditionally trained French butcher. He knows where and how to dig for this stuff, and he'due south initiated me into the arcane pleasures of French-cutting beef.

The French, though they age every other thing they eat -- game, cheese, wine, their whole country a wonderland of noble rot -- do not, inexplicably, age their beefiness much: only three to five days, as opposed to the three to 5 weeks favored by Americans.

French cattle are fed mostly on grass and, different their grain-fed counterparts in the Usa, are often bred to produce both milk and meat. And not to exist unkind merely, with the notable exception of Charolais beefiness, the French meat is generally tougher, less marbled with fatty, and less tasty when finally cut up, cooked and dropped in portions onto dinner plates. I go the best of both worlds: plump, well-marbled Black Angus beef from the American heartland, and the knife skills and enterprising mind of a French butcher.

After the about expensive cuts -- tenderloin (filet de boeuf), rib steaks (entrecôtes) and sirloin (fake filet) -- were gone, sold to their wealthier customers, French butchers found other more-difficult-to-remove pieces: small, frequently unmarried-portion cuts with mysterious names like la poire (the pear) and la fausse-araignée (the spider).

Of these odd cuts, there are a few actually available to Americans: paleron, a piece of shoulder clod, near often used for braising, though information technology yields first-class steaks for searing and grilling; pavé, or filet de romsteck, a sort of poor man's filet mignon; the awesome onglet; and the bavette d'aloyau, the more tender little brother of flank steak.

A regular client unhappy about non being able to afford the aristocratic (but relatively flavorless) delights of filet mignon could comfort herself with the knowledge that the hand-size flap of leg or shoulder, which the butcher ceremoniously wrapped in brownish paper, was often the just such cut on the unabridged side of beef: a rare, much-sought-after care for that would, one time spirited back home, be unavailable to that nasty Madame Dupont next door.

Onglet was for years known in America as the butcher'due south tenderloin, a single-strip slice of gamy, unattractive beef situated betwixt the kidneys. Unprotected by bone or fat it quickly became dark and unsalable to American customers for whom all steak was rosy sirloin or T-bone, then the butcher would go along that piece for himself. For the French, though, this cut was a rare pleasure -- because of its exposed location, information technology comes in contact with the air and begins aging virtually immediately after the animal is slaughtered, and and so information technology is more flavorful.

The industrious Hubert is a master at work on a romsteck -- called a top butt in America. For steak frites, he cuts and slices the thin, chewy, powerful-tasting leg meat that stands upwards so well to the freshly cracked blackness pepper I admire. For London broil, he doesn't just whack the large hump of beef directly across -- fatty, connective tissue, nerve and all -- as his American comrades do; he seams and cuts, removing the outer flap, a piece that yields a few steaks and some grinding meat. Then he cuts away all the fat and connective tissue from the large coeur de romsteck, which is as well used for steak frites, and and then skillfully cuts to the heart of the matter: the elusive filet de romsteck, a cylindrical column of beef nigh a foot long, a tasty, fairly tender and completely trimmed hunk that resembles filet mignon. It's typically cut like a filet and called pavé, and used for steak au poivre.

Those old-schoolhouse French guys worked difficult at the butcher block and came up with unproblematic, delicious means to cook some of these hard-won cuts -- over again, using what was cheap, what was leftover, what was around.

My boss, who hails from the Bordeaux region, gets misty-eyed when he talks nigh grilling onglet "en sarment" -- over dried grapevine twigs. Next fourth dimension you take one of those vineyard tours on Long Island, maybe you can enquire for some of their trash. (Just make sure to scoop up a lot of the dried vines, or you'll end up buying them in sexy lilliputian ribbon-tied bundles at some gourmet store for xx bucks a clip.)

Onglet à l'échalote inspires like wistful reverie among my French cronies and co-workers: simply grill a piece of seasoned hanger steak (this training is expert for flank steak, too, though really adept if yous can get a French butcher to cut y'all a bavette d'aloyau), remove it from the flame merely short of desired doneness, and while it'south nevertheless sizzling hot, embrace ane side with chopped or finely diced shallots and let it sit for five minutes. The meat will rest -- which is always a good thought -- and the raw shallots will sweat slightly -- seeming to melt on the hot beef, just non really.

Eat with enough of vin ordinaire -- and of grade, frites. (If you tin get some kidney fat off your butcher to fry those spuds, you are really living the good life.)

Pavé, the filet de romsteck, is a cut that one of the few French butchers in town might really be able to sell yous now and again -- especially if you telephone call alee. And once more, the more than humble pieces of leg and shoulder piece of work particularly well with pepper: but dredge in cracked peppercorns, sear in a hot, oiled sauté pan to desired doneness (the thick pavé can be finished in the oven if necessary), pour off excess grease and oil from the pan and deglaze with a tablespoon or two of brandy.

Do non flame -- no matter how much fun it is.

As the brandy reduces, and all that good stuff releases from the pan, add together a few ounces of demiglace (you can buy it frozen if you must), a pinch more of crushed blackness pepper, some body of water table salt, and reduce a footling more. At the very end, gently swirl in a heart-clogging hunk of butter until the sauce becomes a creamy emulsion. Pour over the steak, and serve with frites (of class), perchance a little salad of local greens, and a thick chunk of country bread.

At Les Halles, we serve a blood-red wine shallot sauce with our onglet. Slowly sauté two chopped shallots in a piffling oil until they await clear. Add about half a cup of red wine and reduce by about ii-thirds, then add about a loving cup of demiglace, a sprig of fresh thyme and a bay foliage, and cook until reduced by half.

When the sauce is fairly thick, opaque and no longer tastes winy, add a chopped shallot. Simmer a few moments more than, then jack the sauce with a tiny amount of balsamic or good-quality aged red vino vinegar.

Season with black pepper and sea table salt, and serve, either poured over the steak or on the side.

The combination of strong-tasting beef and sweet-and-e'er-so-slightly-sour sauce should have you lot whistling horrible French pop tunes and reconsidering Jerry Lewis in no fourth dimension at all.

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/library/dining/071200french-steak.html?scp=3&sq=Bavette&st=cse

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