Dry-aged MRIJ T-bone steak
MRIJ stands for Maas-Rijn-IJssel, a breed of cattle named after the region in which it was bred: where the three rivers Maas (Meuse), Rijn (Rhine) and IJssel (Issel) meet. This piece of T-bone steak is very tasty for two reasons: (1) because the MRIJ breed has a lot of intramuscular fat (aka ‘marbling’) and because it has been dry-aged. The intramuscular fat makes the beef more juicy and carries a lot of taste. Dry-aging means that the beef has been hung to dry for several weeks, thus concentrating the flavor and taste and allowing the beef’s natural enzymes to break down the connective tissue, making it more tender. It also means that the meat is less juicy, so sous-vide is an excellent method to cook the meat while losing as little additional moisture as possible. Dry-aged beef is mostly available in specialized steak houses only, but you might be able to find it in upscale butcher shops. In Amsterdam you can find dry-aged rib steak at Landmarkt, but that is not marbled as much as this MRIJ. (Please note that this looks more like L-bone than T-bone because one of three bones is missing. That is because in the Netherlands it is compulsory to remove the bone that is connected to the spine to rule out any risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob.) I picked up this piece from Jan Dirk Zonnenberg. The preparation described in this post can be used for T-bone or rib steaks of other breeds than MRIJ or that have not been dry-aged as well, but it might not be as tasty…
Fat trimmed and diced
To enhance the flavor even more, I decided to sear the T-bone steak in its own fat. I cut off most of the layer of fat and diced it. I rubbed the steak liberally with salt and pepper. (Yes rubbing it with salt causes some loss of moisture, but salting the meat before searing allows the salt to season the beef throughout and helps with the browning of the meat.)
Rendering the fat
Then I rendered the fat from the cracklings on medium-high heat in a frying pan.
T-bone steak browned in its own fat
Then I removed the cracklings from the pan (you could choose to serve them with the beef) and used the rendered fat to sear the T-bone steak quickly on very high heat on both sides.
Sealed and ready to be cooked sous-vide
After browning I let the steak cool off on a plate. Meanwhile I discarded most of the fat from the pan and deglazed it with some red wine. After sealing the steak into a vacuum pouch, I combined the pan juices with the juices from the plate. I then cooked the T-bone steak sous-vide for 12 hours at 54C/129F. This cooking time may seem a bit long, but the result is very tender flavorful meat. To make a sauce, I heated up the preserved juices together with the juices that came out of the pouch after sous-vide cooking.
Perfectly medium-rare throughout
The meat came out tender with a nice ‘bite’ to it and delicious, and thanks to sous-vide evenly pink throughout as you can see in the picture. Next time I can buy dry-aged MRIJ, I definitely will do so again!
