Old school camping recipes, To Rest or Not To Rest, and a reminder about this weeks free Steak Masterclass for paid subscribers…

Good morning Team Fire!

I  hope you all managed to get some cooking time in over the long Easter weekend. I did. Plenty. Most of it fish related as I plough forth to the finish line with recipes for my next book. And some of it un-fish, and indeed, un-fire related - I made the BEST apple pie I think I ever made last night. In my convection oven in the comfort of my own kitchen ;-))

In between cooking I found myself pulling one of my old books off the shelf to reference a thing. How to Eat Outside, out in 2015, was my first published foray into fire cooking and now sadly out of print. In sales terms, it kind of flopped which was and is disappointing. I think it just came a little before its time, before fire cooking caught on in a more mainstream way. No matter that it sold so badly it never earned out the (meagre) advance I was paid to write it - one of the great privileges of being an author is holding this solid thing, a body of work, in your hands that no one can ever ever take away.

A quick scan through actually reminded me what a good book it is and how proud I am of it, how it kick started this obsession with fire cooking. It’s also a little family history, pictures of my kids when they were small, and recipes created around social events long gone. Flicking through the memories made me itchy for more adventures, for more chances to break free from my back garden barbecue and head for the hills for some wilder cooking. 

Luckily I’m just about to enter a partnership with a brand that’s going to encourage me to spread my wings beyond the comfort of Bristol, for which I am hugely excited. Can’t say more for now but thought I could share a couple of these old camping recipes (which, obviously, would work equally well in your back gardens!)… 

Here, snapped from the book I give you Eggy bread with spicy fried mushrooms and Flask Drop Scones with syrup and crushed summer berries

Ask Me a Question

This one is from Peter who emailed me a few weeks ago to seek clarity on my position on resting meat. Peter has SEARED in which I lay my cards on the table and clearly state my anti resting position with steaks, but had also watched some old YouTube vids where I was categorically advocating resting meat. 

So which is right? Do I rest? Or do I not rest?

The thing is, I’m still learning. Every time I light a fire, every time I cook something, I will broaden my knowledge. Which means I reserve the right to change my mind from time to time. And this has happened with cooking steak. A definite U turn. 

Remember that all meat, regardless of species, is 70-75% water. The goal of good meat cooking is keeping that water inside, not lose it. Resting steak is supposed to give the meat time to reabsorb the juices that have risen to the surface on cooking. And to a minimal extent I think this is true.

But nope, I no longer rest steak. And there’s one good reason for that. Meat carries on cooking for a while after its been removed from the heat - we call that carry over cooking (obvs) - and the meat can rise 5 degrees, it can rise 8 degrees, or 10 degrees, or even 12 degrees. The rate of carryover cooking depends much on the ambient air temperature and the atmospheric conditions. If its a belter of a summers day or if its a cold damp squibb of a British summer. So if you want to eat your steak medium rare - that’s 56C btw - how the hell do you know when to pull it off? You don’t is the simple answer. It becomes guess work, and guess work doesn’t make for great steak eating when you consider the difference between rare and medium is a mere 8 Celsius…  So if I want a rare steak, I use a temperature probe to cook myself a rare steak and eat it rare. Not risk it sitting to medium.

Quick reminder on steak temps - 52C is rare, 56C is medium rare, 60C is medium, 71C is well done (aka probably a little bit fucked).

With low and slow cooking you can consider the whole cook to be a kind of rest in itself, and you can rest it a bit more or not. The choice is yours. Its often useful to rest a little to free up space on the grill or in the oven to finish your side dishes. Once you’ve cooked something fully to ‘doneness’ the variability in carryover cooking becomes less important. The only times when resting is critical are for brisket and pulled pork when a long rest actually creates the texture you are after. Which is another story for another day…

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All of which leads me nicely to remind you that this Thursday (6pm, 13th April), paid subscribers can get the chance to log in to a free zoom steak masterclass I’m holding with beefy maestro Olly form MeatMatters. The class is only for paid subscribers because it’s one of the ways I can thank you for you support. You can still sign up and get the link if you like, it’s not to late! There will be other live sessions dotted through the year too. I’m thinking about a cookalong next. All in all, at £4 a month, its a pretty cheap way to get access to me :-)

And I would love love love it if you shared this post to you fire-cooking friends to help me build Stuff That Fires Me Up into a useful community…. Buttons below.

Big love,

GT x