Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Tenderloin With Nanyang Soy Salt Recipe

Tenderloin is our favorite cut of steak these days due to its thickness and tender texture. But you need to get a good quality beef to be able to enjoy to it’s fullest.

We are using a superb tenderloin from Five Founders that is grain fed and has a superb flavour and texture. Also we are using a special soy salt from Nanyang Soy Salt to season the beef.

Make sure your tenderloin steak is at room temperature before you cook it, and pat dry on both sides so that there is no excess moisture. Then, season liberally with sea salt or course salt, or in our case, the excellent soy salt. Do likewise with black pepper.

The issue with most home cooked steaks is usually the pan is not hot enough, and you don’t get that golden crust. So make sure you heat up your pan with a shallow film of oil for a few minutes before you put the meat in. We are using a cast iron pan as we can later roast the steak in the oven using the cast iron pan. 

You must get a beautiful sizzling sound when the beef hits the pan, and just leave it. You only need to turn once. After about 2 minutes, turn and you should get a nice golden brown crust. Add 1 tbsp of butter and baste, which means using a spoon and quickly take some butter juice and pour over the top of the steak repeatedly as seen in the video. Cook for another 2 minutes.

For most ribeye and striploin cuts, the entire steak can usually cook in just the pan, but tenderloin and thicker cuts may need an extra time in the oven. If so, send the steak to the oven at 180 Celsius fan mode for another 2 to 3 minutes.

Once the steak is cooked to medium rare, you need to rest it for another 4 or 5 minutes. Make sure you don’t forget this as if not, your steak will not be as juicy. Once it’s properly rested, take a sharp knife and you should easily cut through the steak like butter.

You should get a ideal pink medium rare, and a juicy and tender texture. The basting will give it a lovely buttery beef flavour, and every bite should be nirvana for steak lovers.

For our presentation here, we simply washed the cast iron pan. Be sure to retain some of the pan juices for later. Garnish with broccolini and fan out the steak slices. Add some cherry tomatoes both for colour and acidity. 

Drizzle some of the pan juices over the beef for that extra flavour and sauce. And that’s it, a tenderloin steak so good to look at and will likely even taste better than most commercially sold steaks out there.

Here’s more on the nanyang soy salt.

Centuries ago when salt was a rare commodity, soy sauce was created to stretch the taste of salt.

In Singapore, Ken Koh and his family use traditional methods to make natural “umami” soya sauce, with a flavour that’s both rich and savoury. First, soybeans, imported from Canada, are steamed for a few hours and coated with wheat flour to start the fermentation process. 

The fermenting flour and beans are placed in handmade clay vats with water and salt. And then comes the final ingredient — time. For nine months, the vat contents are left to brew, stirred every day under the hot sun. The final result is a traditional sauce with distinct umami flavours. A byproduct of the whole process is a naturally crystalized soy salt, which can take 10 years to accumulate in the vats — the very essence of umami flavour, according to Koh.

For more, see the full YouTube video in 4K HDR here. Be sure to subscribe and leave a like and comment.

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