Find out how to cook good quality steak and what to serve with it. And where to eat the best steak with Good Food Ireland

There’s not much to beat a good well aged steak. Here are our top tips for a great steak dinner, coming right up!

1. When you cook your steak, you need a top quality frying pan. It needs to get hot over high heat before you add the meat. The pan needs to be a large professional quality heavy bottomed non-stick pan, which conducts heat evenly throughout the base. If you don’t have a pan big enough, cook your steak in batches or use two pans. You are looking for a well-browned outside to the steak, which seals in all the juices. If the pan is too small or poor quality, heat will soon be reduced when you add the meat and the steak will end up being boiled in its juices rather than browned and succulent. 
2. Season the meat and rub with oil before cooking. This really helps with flavour and sealing. Place in the hot pan to sear both sides and cook to preference.
3. For rare steak, the meat should feel very soft when prodded with a fingertip and the colour inside is blue/pink. Medium rare steak will feel a little firmer and have a pink inside. Medium means it begins to resist the prodding, the inside will be pink/dark pink, plus little specks of juice will appear on the surface of the meat. Well done is, well frankly, just pure sacrilege for this quality of meat. But if you insist, it will feel quite hard when prodded and won’t have any pink juices.
4. Good sauces for a steak include the classic Bearnaise. Place 4 tbsp tarragon vinegar in a pan with 1 chopped shallot and a few black peppercorns. Bring to bubbling and reduce to  2 tbsp. Strain into a heatproof bowl . Whisk in 3 fresh free range egg yolks. Set the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water. Whisk in 225g melted butter, drop by drop at first, then in a thin stream, whisking continuously, until all is incorporated and the sauce is thick. Add seasoning and a tbsp of chopped fresh tarragon to finish. Serve warm with your steak
5. Potato wedges are easy to make and great with a steak and Bearnaise sauce. Cut scrubbed Rooster potatoes into thick wedges, leaving the peel on. Drizzle with Irish rapeseed oil in a bowl, season with paprika, a pinch of chilli powder and sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Toss to coat then spread onto a baking tray. Bake in the oven at Gas 6 400F 200C for 20 minutes or until tender and browned.
6. In a steak sandwich, try chutney from one of our award winning preservers. Crossogue Preserves, Janet’s Country Fare, G’s Jams and Ballymaloe Country Relish are some names we’d choose to adorn our steak sarnie.
7. And finally, if all that seems like too much work, why not visit one of our members who specialise in putting together a good steak dinner, we recommend: The Chop House, Ballsbridge, Marco Pierre White at the Courtyard, Donny Brook and Marco Pierre White Steak House and Grill, Dawson Street, Dublin, for particularly unforgettable steak.