Denver Cut of Beef

In a desperate attempt to make up for a previous evening meal of a very unsatisfactory Pumpkin & Mushroom Lasagna, with no cheese! (I won't even bother posting the recipe for that one, I am trying to expunge the memory of it, shudder) I decided that a nice juicy steak was called for, so a little trip to the meat counter brought to my attention a cut of beef I had never heard of before - Denver.

A little googling later and I found it is a cheaper cut from the shoulder, along the lines of braising steak, but in more of a hunk format. It has good marbling and although the muscle is quite course in texture it can be cooked to be very tender.  At £6.00 for a piece of 650g, approx 170mm long, 100mm wide and 60mm deep it did indeed seem pretty good value so in the basket it went.

Once home I decided to hand the cooking of the meat over to hubby-with-low-tolerance-levels as there was no way I was going to cook it and possible cock it up.  So he treated it thus:-

Denver Cut of Beef

Rest the meat at room temperature until ready to cook.

Set oven to 200oc

Get a  ovenproof griddle pan and place over a high heat, till smoking hot.

Season with pepper only and oil the meat well, to add salt at this point will only toughen the meat (or so hubby says)

Place meat onto the griddle pan and fry for 2-3 minutes each side, so the outer is dark and caramelised.

Pop the whole pan into the oven and continue to cook for 10mins, turning once.

Remove from the oven and transfer the meat to tin foil and pack a parcel, cover with tea towels to keep warm and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

Remove from parcel and slice up, serve with vegetables of your choice and loads of creamy horseradish sauce and add your salt flakes at this point, really brings out the flavour.

Based on the weight and dimensions as noted above this was cooked perfectly rare and was so meltingly tender, packed full of taste and being greedy-guts we guzzled the lot!  Truly made up for my dismal effort the previous evening and Hubby has now found a new role in life - steak cooker supreme.