Dirty Picanha Steaks:
I have wanted to cook Picanha steaks for a long time after seeing them on Twitter and Instagram but you don’t see them in the butchers very often! I got mine from Farmison: https://www.farmison.com/our-meat/beef/steaks-and-chops/picanha-steak
My method of cooking is a bit marmite, folk either like it or they don’t! The steaks were vac packed with some rosemary and thyme then cooked in the Anova sous vide for an hour to 54c (Medium rare). I then fired up the BBQ using Sawmill Oak charcoal from Oxford Charcoal. It’s a great quality product, lights easily, burns clean and most importantly it’s top grade and clean enough to cook meat on dirty (directly).
Picanha has a good bit of fat on the outside so it will flare up especially if you cook it dirty but as the steak was already cooked I was just looking to sear it so I took the steaks out the vac pack bags and sprinkled some Maldon salt on the placed them directly onto the coals. It did indeed flare up big style with massive flames shooting up, I was a bit worried I had destroyed the steaks but I gave them 90 seconds then turned them over (welding gloves and massive tongs!) – another 90 seconds then pulled them out.
The sear and the colour on the outside of the steaks was fantastic, I was well happy with them!
As you can see below, the steak was very juicy. Great taste from the herbs in the sous vide and the smoke taste from the dirty sear. I was aiming for medium rare and went slightly over where I wanted to be so I would sous vide to a lower temp next time. If you didn’t want to sous vide it’s easy enough to reverse sear. Just cook indirect to 10 degrees (c) below where you want to end up then sear it directly on the coals as above.
