John Torode
At the launch of his latest book John Torode’s Beef, flavour chewed the fat with past MasterChef presenter and owner of Smith’s of Smithfield.
Was your decision to write about beef in any way prompted by the return to more traditional British cooking?
The whole point of Beef is really trying to celebrate the greatness of Britain. The idea of the book is for people to understand a single great subject – beef seems to be one of those extraordinary ingredients that everybody is scared of. People are now happy to go and ask for a different type of apple but we are much less adventurous when it comes to the different cuts of beef. I wanted to demystify the subject a little bit and make it more exciting.
You have emphasised in the book that good food should be accessible to all – how did you try to achieve this when putting the book together?
Everybody should have the right to eat good food. What I’ve done with the book is to take it from the really basic to the quite complicated, and from ingredients which are expensive such as fillet for beef Wellington down to cuts like shin which are really cheap and make the best curry.
You mentioned supermarkets sometimes use misleading labels when it comes to meat – would you always advocate using your local butcher instead?
Most of the beef that the UK consumes comes from a supermarket and I don’t have an issue with that. What I would say is that if you have the ability to find yourself a good butcher then do it because they’ll be great to talk about food with and will be able to give you a decent piece of beef. What I want is for the big boys to be transparent about what they’re doing and to say if a piece of meat has actually been matured for 14 days, or whether it’s been dry hung for 14 days because the two processes are completely different.
It took 10 years for the EU ban on British beef to be completely lifted – do you think that confidence in British beef has been completely restored?
It certainly hasn’t been restored abroad and won’t be for some time. It needs people like us to champion it, to talk about the traditional breeds, to celebrate what’s great about British beef and not to think about the past. The fact is that British beef now is such a well regulated industry that we should all be promoting it with confidence.
Beef has always been a staple of British cooking – will that continue to be the case as meat becomes an increasingly expensive commodity?
I’ve always considered beef to be expensive because I’ve only ever bought really high quality. People will continue to eat beef, but if I’ve got anything to do with it they will eat it in a more varied way. Right now we’re very much in a mince and roast society and I want people to move away from that and to start making dishes like Thai beef salad where you take a really small amount of beef, thinly slice it and mix it with lovely fresh ingredients – it doesn’t need to be expensive that way.
What is the most underrated cut of beef?
The shin. It’s a piece of muscle that’s delicious because it’s worked around the fields. It cooks down nice and slowly and tastes great regardless of the animal’s age.
If you could only eat one beef dish for the rest of your life, what would it be?
That’s not fair! It would have to be piece of sirloin steak because hot, cold, thick or thin you just can’t beat it.
John’s new book Beef is out now from all good bookshops. Quadrille Publishing Ltd. RRP £20.00
Was your decision to write about beef in any way prompted by the return to more traditional British cooking?
The whole point of Beef is really trying to celebrate the greatness of Britain. The idea of the book is for people to understand a single great subject – beef seems to be one of those extraordinary ingredients that everybody is scared of. People are now happy to go and ask for a different type of apple but we are much less adventurous when it comes to the different cuts of beef. I wanted to demystify the subject a little bit and make it more exciting.
You have emphasised in the book that good food should be accessible to all – how did you try to achieve this when putting the book together?
Everybody should have the right to eat good food. What I’ve done with the book is to take it from the really basic to the quite complicated, and from ingredients which are expensive such as fillet for beef Wellington down to cuts like shin which are really cheap and make the best curry.
You mentioned supermarkets sometimes use misleading labels when it comes to meat – would you always advocate using your local butcher instead?
Most of the beef that the UK consumes comes from a supermarket and I don’t have an issue with that. What I would say is that if you have the ability to find yourself a good butcher then do it because they’ll be great to talk about food with and will be able to give you a decent piece of beef. What I want is for the big boys to be transparent about what they’re doing and to say if a piece of meat has actually been matured for 14 days, or whether it’s been dry hung for 14 days because the two processes are completely different.
It took 10 years for the EU ban on British beef to be completely lifted – do you think that confidence in British beef has been completely restored?
It certainly hasn’t been restored abroad and won’t be for some time. It needs people like us to champion it, to talk about the traditional breeds, to celebrate what’s great about British beef and not to think about the past. The fact is that British beef now is such a well regulated industry that we should all be promoting it with confidence.
Beef has always been a staple of British cooking – will that continue to be the case as meat becomes an increasingly expensive commodity?
I’ve always considered beef to be expensive because I’ve only ever bought really high quality. People will continue to eat beef, but if I’ve got anything to do with it they will eat it in a more varied way. Right now we’re very much in a mince and roast society and I want people to move away from that and to start making dishes like Thai beef salad where you take a really small amount of beef, thinly slice it and mix it with lovely fresh ingredients – it doesn’t need to be expensive that way.
What is the most underrated cut of beef?
The shin. It’s a piece of muscle that’s delicious because it’s worked around the fields. It cooks down nice and slowly and tastes great regardless of the animal’s age.
If you could only eat one beef dish for the rest of your life, what would it be?
That’s not fair! It would have to be piece of sirloin steak because hot, cold, thick or thin you just can’t beat it.
John’s new book Beef is out now from all good bookshops. Quadrille Publishing Ltd. RRP £20.00