Offal & the Whole Animal · Main
Steak and Kidney Pudding
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners.
Ingredients
- 700 g beef chuck, cut in 3 cm dice
- 250 g ox kidney, cored and cut in 2 cm pieces
- 30 g plain flour, seasoned
- 200 g onion, diced
- 250 ml stout
- 150 ml beef stock
- 30 g beef dripping
- 300 g self-raising flour
- 150 g shredded beef suet
- 6 g fine salt
- about 180 ml cold water
- Butter, for the basin
The skills inside
Searing: the hard crustSteaming: basket, leaf and lidKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the kidney in cold salted water for 30 minutes, then cut out every trace of the white core and its tubes and pat the pieces dry. 30 min
- Toss beef and kidney in the seasoned flour, brown hard in the dripping in batches, then stir in the onion, stout and stock and cool the filling completely.
- Rub the suet into the self-raising flour and salt, add the water and bring it together into a soft dough with as little working as you can manage.
- Line a buttered 1.2 litre basin with two-thirds of the dough, pack in the cold filling, cap with the rest and seal the edges with wet fingers.
- Cover with pleated paper and foil, tie down, and steam over gently boiling water for 4 hours, topping up with boiling water so the pan never stops steaming. 240 min
- Rest 10 minutes and turn out: the crust should be pale gold and the gravy should run dark and clinging when you cut in. 10 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
Searing: the hard crust 141 recipes
- The pan keeps a hard, steady sizzle from the moment the food lands and does not fall quiet; silence within the first half minute means the pan lost its heat and the surface is now steaming rather than browning.
- It releases itself when tested: slide a thin edge under and it lifts without tearing. Anything that grips the pan has not formed a crust yet and is not ready to be moved.
- Deep even brown across the whole face, edge to edge, when it is turned under the light: no pale ring left around a browned centre, and no black patches that taste bitter on their own.
- The pan floor carries a dry browned layer that dissolves and lifts the moment liquid hits it: not a wet grey film, and not black flecks that stay put and stay bitter.
- Cut into it: the browned band is thin, a few millimetres at most, sitting straight on top of correctly cooked interior; a thick grey collar under the crust means the heat was too low for too long.
Where it goes wrong The pan was not hot enough, or too much went in at once, so the food released its water and sat in it: the surface goes grey and steams, it sticks when moved, and the crust that eventually forms arrives over an interior already cooked through.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
- Also Right
- Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
- From the Taps
- Amber ale
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water, make room
Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.
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