Titch wrote:vagreys wrote:I used to cook a 2" thick large sirloin steak in a salt crust, and serve it sliced thin with a bourbon-butter-shallot sauce. We also bake whole sides of salmon in salt dough. Nicely seasons the meat without leaving it overly salty.
Yum please tell me more
Cheers.
Titch
Here's a generic approach, assuming that you're seasoning the meat with whatever herbs and spices, you choose, except salt.
Tear off a strip of paper towel long enough to wrap around the piece of meat, allowing a margin of about 1" all the way around. Dampen the strip of paper towel and squeeze out the excess water. You want it damp, but not wet.
Make a paste of kosher salt and water, adding just enough water to make the salt hang together. You will have to eyeball the amount of salt for the piece of meat. You want somewhere around 1" of salt pasted all the way around the meat. Put a layer of salt paste on the paper towel about 1" deep and 1" larger than the piece of meat. Place the (seasoned, except for salt) meat on the bed of salt and add salt paste to completely coat the meat in about 1" layer of salt all around.
I used a pizza peel to move the salt-encrusted steak to the grill. Slide the package onto the grill and cook, covered, over medium coals, until the desired degree of doneness. If you want to turn the piece of meat (not necessary in my opinion) then pick it up with the peel, slide onto a baking sheet, place another baking sheet on top of the package and turn the whole thing over, then move from the baking sheet back to the grill.
If you've done it right, the salt will form a hard crust around the meat. When you remove the package from the grill, let it sit for about 10 minutes before cracking the crust, which you can do with a hammer or the back of a chef's knife. Remove the crust and move the meat to a cutting board. Slice thinly across the grain and serve with sauce.
I'll have to find the sauce recipe.
For the salmon, I make a bed of dill and lemon slices on the salt dough, lay the salmon skin-side-down on the bed of herbs, place some more thin lemon slices on top, sealing the dough around the salmon. Put it in the ash and low coals of the cooking fire, and let it go until done. I've also tried a variant of sliced onions, sliced strawberries and julienned sweet yellow and red peppers as the bed and topper, served with a sprinkling of balsamic vinegar. Not bad.