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To flip or not? Heston Blumenthal's tips on cooking the perfect steak

Fleur BaingerPerthNow

IT'S the perennial BBQ conversation starter - how often should you flip your steak on the barbie?

Most swear by the hands-free option, arguing you should only ever flip it once.

Some say it needs five minutes on one side, two on the other.

Others are more cavalier, turning their steak every couple of minutes.

How do you cook your steak? Leave your tips below

But when one of the best chefs in the world tells you his theory - based on the science of heat and chemical interactions - you listen.

British celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal shared his pearls of wisdom with an eager audience at the Margaret River Gourmet Escape last month.

"This is the key thing: flip your steak every 10-15 seconds," he advised, to audible gasps in the room.

"Bring the raw meat to room temperature, put a pan on full heat, put oil in it and let it get smoking hot - and don't worry, the pan's not going to melt, it's metal, they're designed to take it.

"Then put the piece of meat in so it falls away from you, so the fat splashes at the back and doesn't come towards you.

"Traditionally, you do two minutes on one side, two minutes on the other and you get a nice brown bit of steak, a grey bit underneath and then a pink band.

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"If you want your steak well done, then just fry it for half an hour and sit on it.

"But if you like a nice crust on the outside and for it to be pink in the middle, just keep flipping it. You're giving it pulses of heat.

"Then take it out of the pan, rest it on a cake rack for five minutes - all that heat will be trapped if you put it on a plate. So rest it, season it and serve it."

Blumenthal also put paid to the French obsession with sealing meat.

"Browning your steak first does not seal in the juices," he said.

"A steak is 70 per cent water, so it's like a wet sponge, and it sizzles. The higher [heat] and longer you cook the steak for, the more the proteins contract - like scrambling eggs - and that contraction squeezes the moisture out of the sponge, and you end up with a dry piece of meat."

Blumenthal revealed more of his top meat cooking tips:

- Enhance the flavour of any meat dishes you cook by adding in half a Star anise and a sliced onion. Brown them together before you add the meat. You'll create sulphur compounds that will boost the meaty characteristics.

- You don't need to add anything other than salt to make mincemeat bind together in a burger patty. Salt brings the myosin out of the meat and it acts as a glue. Combine salt with the mince and leave it for a few hours. Roll the mince into a big sausage, then slice it. When cooking, flip it every 15 seconds and it will fall apart in your mouth.

- Learn to carve meat. All fibres run parallel to the bone. If you cut down towards the bone, and then slice it off, you'll bite onto the fibres and it will seem tenderer.

And just for good measure, here's his pasta cooking advice:

- Use plenty of salt when boiling pasta. It changes the texture of the pasta. Use the 1:10:100 rule: one litre of water to 10 grams of salt, for 100g of pasta. And don't buy the fresh pasta from the supermarket, it's rubbish.