Tomahawk steak with Café de Paris-style butter

Name: Tomahawk steak with Café de Paris-style butter
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 4
Ingredients: 1 British Beef Tomahawk Bone-in Rib Steak; ½ tsp salt

Angela Hartnett serves a mighty tomahawk steak recipe for Nick Grimshaw and guest Harry Hill on episode 14, season 5 of Dish, the Waitrose podcast. The dish is paired with De Grendel Op die Berg Syrah.

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Gluten free

Serves4
CourseMain meal
Prepare20 mins
Cook30 mins
Total time50 mins
Plussalting and resting

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1 British Beef Tomahawk Bone-in Rib Steak
½ tsp salt

For the Café de Paris-style butter

250g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
1 tsp mild curry powder
½ tsp Cooks’ Ingredients Smoked Paprika
½ tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
6 anchovies in olive oil, drained and finely chopped
4 clove/s garlic, crushed
2 small shallots, finely chopped
½ x 20g pack tarragon, leaves finely chopped
½ x 25g pack flat leaf parsley, leaves and stalks finely chopped
¼ x 20g pack thyme, leaves finely chopped
1 unwaxed lemon, zest of all, juice of ½

Season the steak with the salt and place in a large non-reactive dish. Loosely cover and chill for at least 30 minutes, ideally 3-4 hours ahead (or up to 24 hours in advance), turning the steak occasionally.
For the butter, beat all the ingredients together in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. Season to taste. Spoon onto a large sheet of baking parchment in a rough sausage shape, about 25cm long and 5cm thick. Roll the parchment around the butter and twist the ends to tighten like a Christmas cracker, before rolling and pressing the parcel on the work surface to smooth it out. Chill until needed.
Prepare your barbecue for direct grilling (see below). Grill over a medium-hot part of the barbecue, turning every 1-2 minutes and moving around as needed. If the barbecue is too hot, flames flare up from dripping fat or the meat browns too quickly, move briefly to a cooler spot. For more colour or to render the fat, shift it over to a hotter part of the grill.
Cook for 25-30 minutes for medium-rare in the centre and well browned on the outside. For accuracy, test at the thickest part using a meat thermometer – it will read 55ºC (see tip).
Transfer the cooked steak to a platter or plate and leave to rest for at least 15 minutes, loosely covered with foil. While it rests, slice ½ the butter into rounds (keep the rest chilled for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 6 months).
Cut the rested steak against the grain into 0.5cm thick slices and return to the dish. Top with the rounds of Café de Paris-style butter and serve immediately.

Cook’s tip

The original Café de Paris sauce comes from its famous namesake restaurant in Geneva, Switzerland. The recipe is a closely guarded secret and more of a creamy butter-based sauce, thought to be fortified with chicken livers and served hot. To mimic this style, you could melt the butter from this recipe to pour over the sliced tomahawk instead.

Set up zones on the barbecue for cooking to allow flexibility, with a hot side for searing and charring, a medium area in the centre to gradually build flavour and browning, and a cooler side for resting, then finishing off larger cuts.

For charcoal, light the barbecue (ideally using a charcoal chimney rather than lighter fluid) 15-20 minutes ahead, waiting until the coals glow white and any flames have subsided. Add the coals to the barbecue, banking them to one side (almost piled up like a hillside), leaving the opposite side almost free of hot coals. Open any vents at the base of the barbecue.

For gas, preheat a covered barbecue with the burners set over the highest heat for 10 minutes, then turn one burner to medium and leave one on high. If your gas barbecue doesn’t have a cooling shelf, turn one burner off once preheated, so you’ve got a cooler spot.

In general, for this type of cut with good marbling and visible fat, cooking it any rarer or more well done is not recommended. If this is your preference, reduce or increase the cooking time by about 5 minutes either side to achieve rare (50ºC) or medium (60ºC). However you do it, ensure all cut surfaces of the meat are thoroughly cooked.

The steak will need to rest after cooking. Loosely covering it with foil helps it to stay warm as the meat relaxes. Keep any resting juices to serve. Slicing the meat on the diagonal means you’ll cut across the muscle fibres instead of along them – this is a clever way to maximise tenderness in every bite.