We have been enjoying Great British Beef Week here in the SK kitchen.
It’s one of the meats we use most and if you are a customer at one of the UK’s biggest supermarkets, the chances are that you have eaten one of our dishes. Beef burritos and chilli beef muffins are just two examples.
When I was researching for this blog I came across some very interesting facts, the best being that average person in the UK eats 18.2kg of beef (raw weight) a year. That’s quite a lot of beef if you think about it and I bet at least half of that is consumed as part of a Sunday roast.
Ladies in Beef (what a great name by the way!) is the organisation behind Great British Beef Week, which is now in its 7th year, and for 2017 they are encouraging people to cook a beef mini roast alongside seasonal British vegetables and potatoes.
That sounds fantastic, but as you know we like to do things slightly different at SK, so for the recipe this week I used Wagyu.
If you don’t know, Wagyu comes from a group of Japanese breeds revered for a high level of fat marbling. It is revered for its unrivalled taste, tenderness and health benefits, and when it first arrived in the UK it was referred to as the champagne, the caviar, the Château Petrus of meat!
British beef farmers cottoned onto this and there are now Wagyu beef herds across the UK producing this amazing, high quality beef. Wagyu has a unique fat composition as it actually is high in fat, but it’s classed as good fat, like Iberico pork.
It’s great to cook with. You can serve it as a steak, the steak mince makes fantastic burgers (see below), lasagnes and even sausages, whilst other cuts are superb when slow roasted.
The finished product is rich in colour, with a deep red finish, accompanied by a level of fat marbling throughout the meat to give an intense, succulent flavour. The low melting point of the fat means that it’s absorbed back into the meat to give a unique juicy, flavoursome, melt in your mouth experience.
If that hasn’t whetted your appetite I don’t know what will, but if you need more convincing I will finish with a recipe. I’m using British Wagyu, which in my opinion is a very good standard having sampled it in Australia, America and Canada.
Essentially a great burger is all about using great quality meat. Cook your burger to your liking in a medium hot pan, flipping occasionally. I added a crispy macaroni cheese patty – recipe is below. Once cooled the mac and cheese was rolled in to balls and formed into a patty before being dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and deep fried. I’ve added a slice of beef tomato and a healthy dollop of tomato chutney – but the possibilities are endless!
Easy Mac n’ Cheese
8 oz macaroni
30oz butter
3oz plain flour
½ salt
240ml milk
3oz Shredded Cheddar cheese
Black pepper to taste
Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat; stir in flour, salt, and pepper until smooth, about 5 minutes. Slowly pour milk into butter-flour mixture while continuously stirring until mixture is smooth and bubbling, about 5 minutes. Add Cheddar cheese to milk mixture and stir until cheese is melted, 2 to 4 minutes.
About Sean Flint
Development & Innovation Chef of SK Foods.
Your food. Our Passion.
