Bavette: What is it? And how to cook it?

Pan-frying

1. Let the meat come to room temperature before you start frying it in a pan.
2. Melt a knob of butter in a cast iron skillet or in a heavy-bottomed pan on high heat. Let the meat brown on both sides for a few minutes.
3. Lower the heat and let the bavette roast for about 3 minutes.
4. Remove the steak from the pan and let it rest wrapped in aluminum for 8 minutes.
5. This will let the meat juice. The steak will be a lot tastier.

Roasting

The same first two steps apply to cooking the bavette in the oven as for frying it in a pan.

1. Let the meat come to room temperature before you start frying it in a pan. Preheat the oven to 75-80℃.
2. Melt a knob of butter in a pan on high heat. Brown the meat on both sides for a few minutes.
3. Remove the bavette from the pan and put it in the oven until a core temperature of 50 ℃ is reached.

Grilling

You can cook bavette on the BBQ by grilling it directly or indirectly. Below is a recipe where we grill it directly and then indirectly. So we first heat the barbecue for a few minutes and then let the meat cook slowly to the right core temperature.

In this recipe we also make a chimichurri sauce. That’s a spicy garlic-parsley sauce that goes perfectly with any kind of steak.

Below is a video of a bavette roulade with chimichurri.

Stewing

1. Cut hard aromatic vegetables into roughly dice-sized pieces and fry them together with dried spices and herbs, on low heat for about 15 minutes, in butter or olive oil.
2. Cut the bavette into pieces of 2 to 3 cm and sprinkle with pepper, salt and a little bit of flour for the binding. Pieces that are cut too small, will dry the meat out faster.
3. Fry the pieces briefly on high heat. Remove the meat from the pan as soon as it turns brown.
4. Deglaze the crusts in the pan with water in combination with beer, wine, brandy or vodka at room temperature. Scrape everything off the bottom with a wooden spoon, and then add the meat back in. Top up the liquid until the meat is just covered. Beef broth, coconut milk or canned tomatoes are also very suitable options for the stew. Acidic liquids make the meat more tender. Therefore add a dash of vinegar, mustard or apple syrup to coconut milk and beef stock.
5. Let it simmer for 2 to 4 hours on the smallest burner on a simmering plate or in a preheated oven at 140°C. Be careful, the meat should not boil, otherwise it will dry out fast. Add more boiling water if necessary.
6. If you want a full meal, add the hard vegetables half an hour before the meat is fully cooked. Or add soft vegetables 15 minutes before it’s fully cooked.
7. If the stew is too watery, thicken it with a cold cornmeal paste. You can also let the whole thing thicken over high heat, but first remove all the meat.
8. The stew is ready when you can pull it apart. Taste it in between and add more pepper, salt, sour or sweet if necessary.

Sous vide cooking

1. Put the bavette with marinade in a plastic bag, vacuum and seal it.
2. Heat the water to 54°C and place the bag in it for 2 hours.
3. Grill the bavette for a few minutes (the time depends on the desired redness of the meat) and let the meat rest in foil before slicing it.