How to Make the Perfect Steak – Part 4 - Slow Life Blog from the Lake District

How to Make the Perfect Steak – Part 4

22/1/2010

Here’s a resume of Parts 1 to 3:

Part 1. Put a Cumberland White (Shorthorn) Bull with an Aberdeen Angus cow to make a Cumberland Angus bull calf. Time required: 9 months

Part 2. Fatten the calf outdoors on the grass of the Lake District fells. Time required: 31 months

Part 3. Take the bull to the abbatoir in the shortest possible time, to minimise stress. Time required (from leaving the farm until the moment of death) 45 minutes.

Part 4. Leave the carcase to hang. Time required: 21 days. This video shows the strength, dexterity and skill of butcher Simon who works at Ayres Butchers in Ayside in transforming the two sides of beef into cuts of meat, which will be shared between the Newby Bridge, the Damson Dene and the Riverside Hotel, Kendal.The meat becomes more tender the longer it hangs- 21 days is perfect for a carcase of this size. The fillet is described here by Simon as “more gravy than butter”. The sirloin has been reserved for the Slow Food Burns Night dinner at the Damson Dene Hotel on January 25th.

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About Slow Life

The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.