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Size of the bone
Today’s big question asks if the size of the bone make any difference to the flavour of your meat?
Dedicated to the flavours imparted by bones to meat.
Over recent months I’ve been enjoying rib eye bone in from Woolworths. These are thick cut offerings of rib eye fillet on the bone. The rib attached though has been severed short in the Woolworths packaging.
On the Saturday prior to spending a week in Brisbane, I spied in Coles a rib eye bone in offering with a more substantial rib bone attached. So the question I asked myself is does the size of the bone make any difference to the flavour of the steak?
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Recipe
- Butter
- Chives
- Coriander
- Cos lettuce
- Cream
- Fennel
- Green peppercorns
- Iodised salt
- Lime juice
- Lime zest
- Orange juice
- Orange zest
- Parsley
- Queensland nut oil
- Radish
- Red onion
- Rib eye fillet bone in
- Sherry
- Spring onions
- Tomatoes
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Unwrap the meat and dry the surface with absorbent kitchen paper.
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Season the surfaces of the meat with iodised salt.
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Place the meat on a rack and refrigerate overnight to dry brine.
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Remove the zest from an orange and a lime.
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Remove the juice from an orange and a lime.
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Slice radishes and cross slice fennel and red onion.
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Cover the radish, fennel, red onion, lime zest, and orange zest with the juice from the orange and lime.
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Refrigerate the pickling radish, fennel, and red onion for about one hour.
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Shred a cos lettuce.
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Chop parsley.
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Chop coriander.
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Cut cherry tomatoes in half.
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Put the lettuce, parsley, coriander, and tomatoes in a mixing bowl.
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Drain the pickling juices from the radish, fennel, and red onion and mix with the lettuce, parsley, coriander, and tomatoes.
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Preheat an oven to 200 °C (392 °F).
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In a hot frypan add some high vapour point oil, e.g., Queensland nut oil along with a knob of butter.
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Sear the steak in the butter.
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Insert a meat thermometer and put the meat on a rack in the oven.
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Cook until the internal temperature reaches about 57 °C (134 °F).
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Allow the meat to rest for about 10 minutes.
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With a boning knife remove the rib bone.
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With a sharp cook’s knife slice the steak.
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Chop the chives and spring onions.
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Open a tin of green peppercorns and drain the brining fluid.
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Reheat the frypan and then added the chopped chives, spring onions, and green peppercorns and sauté to absorb the burnt butter and beef fat.
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Add a splash of sherry and cook off the alcohol.
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Add some cream and cook until a sauce has been formed.
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Plate up the rib bone and place the salad next to it.
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Lay slices of steak over the salad and add the green peppercorn cream sauce on top of the steak.
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When finished gnaw the meat off the rib bone.
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Shoot a photograph and a short video because Google now wants video on recipe cards.
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Eat the meal.
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Wash the dishes (hint, wash as you cook, it makes life easier).
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Write the recipe.
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Write the blog post.
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Hit publish and hope this blog post gets shared on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Disclaimer
I have no culinary training nor qualifications. This post is not intended to convey any health or medical advice. If you have any health concerns about anything you read, please contact your registered medical practitioner. The quantities are indicative. Feel free to vary the quantities to suit your taste. I deliberately do not calculate energy for dishes. I deliberately default to 500 Calories or 500,000 calories because I do not make these calculations.
Photographs
This is a gallery of photographs. Click on one image and then scroll through the photographs.
Questions and answers
Does the size of the bone make any difference to the flavour of the steak?
In an ideal world, the sample sizes used to answer this question would take into account a variety of variables so I could give an answer with some level of confidence. Given the cost of the beef though, a large sample size of both the Woolworths and Coles offerings is never going to happen. So I’m basically going off the experience of eating a few of the Woolworths steak and one of the Coles steaks.
I cannot say one was better than the other. What I can say though is the larger and longer Coles rib bone offering gave me much more pleasure because one of life’s pleasures is to gnaw cooked muscle and fat from a large bone.
Based on that, I think I will prefer to buy from Coles rather than Woolworths. I just hope Coles continues to offer these thick cut rib eye bone in steaks with a longer rib bone attached.
Is this the same as a tomahawk steak?
I’m guessing no. The tomahawk steaks I’ve seen have more rib bone attached. It’s the same cut of meat so really, a tomahawk steak is just a lot more rib. Being able to gnaw more muscle and fat from a longer length of bone would be great, but I don’t know it’s worth paying for that much extra bone for the novelty factor.
What limitations or challenges are there to cooking this steak?
The big problem for the home cook is having a frypan big enough to sear the steak. The longer bone means you need a frypan with a diameter able to accommodate the length of the bone. A long bone won’t easily fit into a small frypan.
Final thoughts
- Have you ever tried a tomahawk steak?
- Do you like gnawing the muscle and fat from a bone?
- Do you like the flavour the bone imparts to your meat?
Sponsorship
Yummy Lummy has no sponsors but maintaining a blog isn’t free. If anyone or any company would like to contribute please contact me.
We can still get free bones for stock at our local butcher shop in our little German town. Bones definitely add flavor and depth to a sauceor soup pot!
I love bones. I just wish the weight of the bone wasn’t counted equally as the weight of the muscle.
If meat is attached to the bone it will be tastier, the extra fat surrounding the bone will help your steak flavor and retain moisture if you like steak cooked beyond rare. And of course chewing meat off the bone is always tasty.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.
I have tried a tomahawk steak at a restaurant but not at home because we don’t have a bbq and as you mentioned, you need a pan or grill large enough for the bone. It was delicious though as I love meat on the bone (I’d never order an eye fillet).
Thanks, Lorraine. There’s a steak place on South Wharf, Melbourne which does a tomahawk. I’m keen to try it there. I’ve had rb eye there before and it was very nice.
Your steaks look very inviting and I’m not in for much meat at all Gary 😀
It looks so tender.
Thank you, Irene. It was tender. I will try this year to eat less mammalian meat and more vegetables.
I prefer to eat good meat, when I eat meat and then vegetables for the rest.
That’s a good balance.
My issue with a LARGE bone is that it’s harder to judge the cost per pound of the meat after the waste/the bone is removed. That minimal pleasure of gnawing a bone doesn’t necessarily translate when I’m watching my overall budget. I don’t see a mention of how much you’re paying per meal from Cole’s vs Woolworth’s. Sorry for bringing the post down to the mundane matter of dollars and cents.
The cost of each packet of meat is roughly the same. About $AUD20.
I’ve never tried tomahawk steak, but yes there’s definitely something satisfyingly primeval about sucking meat and fat off a bone… Beef shin is my favourite beef dish because what the bone and long, slow cooking does to meat.
Mmm… now I want to slowly cook some beef bones or mutton flaps.
Good experiment… but I was sure there was going to be a dirty joke in there somewhere 🙂
Who me? 😂😂😂