Bone-In Sirloin over Coals with Charred Hispi
A kilo of 32-day-aged beef on the bone, cooked hard over lumpwood, with sweetheart cabbage blistered in dripping and a smoked garlic butter melting over both.
September is the best month of the year to cook over fire in this country and almost nobody does it. The crowds have packed the barbecue away, the evenings have gone cool and blue, and a bed of lumpwood throws out heat that feels like a reward rather than an ordeal. It is also the moment the beef starts to taste different — cattle that have spent a full summer on grass carry more fat, and that fat is yellower and sweeter than it will be again until next August. A bone-in sirloin is the cut that shows all of this off: a kilo of steak on the rib bone, thick enough to take a violent sear and still come off the coals blushing, cut for two people who intend to eat properly.
A bone-in sirloin — sold in some shops as a wing rib steak, and on a French menu as an entrecôte à l’os — is a single thick slice taken from the wing rib end of the loin, with the rib bone left attached. Anatomically it sits between two cuts everyone knows: forward of it is the fore rib, which gives you côte de boeuf and rib of beef; behind it is the striploin, which gives you the boneless sirloin steaks. This is the joint between the two, and it inherits the best of each. It has the tight, dense grain and clean beefy flavour of a sirloin, but with the fore rib’s heavier marbling and, crucially, the bone.
The bone earns its place three times over. It insulates one whole face of the steak, so the meat immediately against it cooks more slowly and stays a stage rarer than the rest — which sounds like a fault and is in fact the reason a bone-in steak eats with more range than a boneless one. Marrow and connective tissue in and around it render into the meat under fire heat. And it gives you something to hold. The strip of meat that sits directly on the bone is, by common agreement among everyone who has ever worked behind a counter, the best bit of the steak.
When you are buying, thickness comes first. Anything under 4cm cannot be cooked properly over coals — you will be forced to choose between a crust and a rare centre. Ours are cut at a kilo, which lands at roughly 4.5cm to 5cm, and that depth is what allows a hard sear followed by a gentle finish. Next look at the fat. There should be a firm outer strip along the top edge, the colour of good butter rather than chalk white; grass-fed beef throws a creamier, slightly yellow fat and that yellow is carotene straight out of the pasture. Then look inside the eye for marbling: fine threads distributed evenly through the muscle, not a couple of thick seams sitting to one side.
Finally, judge the ageing. Thirty-two days in a dry-ageing chamber does two things simultaneously — the meat’s own enzymes break down connective tissue and muscle proteins, which is tenderness, while water evaporates from the surface and concentrates everything left behind, which is flavour. A properly dry-aged steak looks matte and slightly tacky rather than wet and shiny, and it smells faintly nutty. If a steak is sitting in a pool of red liquid in the tray, it has been wet-aged in a bag and you are paying for water. Our 45- and 60-day options push the funk further; for live fire, where smoke is already a strong flavour, 32 days is the sweet spot.
- 1 bone-in sirloin steak, 1kg, 32-day dry-aged — at least 4cm thick
- 3 tsp flaky sea salt
- 1 tbsp beef dripping, melted
- 1 tsp black peppercorns, coarsely cracked (added after cooking, not before)
- 1 whole head of garlic
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 120g unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 6 sprigs thyme, leaves picked
- 1 tsp aged red wine vinegar
- Finely grated zest of ½ lemon
- ½ tsp flaky sea salt
- 1 large hispi (sweetheart) cabbage, roughly 700g
- 2 tbsp beef dripping, melted
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp aged red wine vinegar
- 20g salted butter
- 1 tsp flaky sea salt
- Flaky sea salt and cracked black pepper
- About 2kg lumpwood charcoal — no briquettes, no lighter fluid
- Salt the steak, and do it early. Two hours before you plan to eat — four is better, and overnight is best of all — pat the steak dry and rub the flaky salt over every surface, including the bone and the fat strip. Sit it uncovered on a rack over a tray in the fridge. This is a dry brine: the salt pulls moisture out, dissolves in it, and is drawn back into the muscle seasoned all the way through, while the surface is left dry. On a steak this thick, that dry surface is the entire difference between a crust and a grey band.
- Light the fire an hour ahead. Fill a chimney starter with lumpwood and light it with a paper or natural firelighter. Never lighter fluid — the residue tastes of exactly what it is. Once the coals at the top have greyed over, tip them out and rake them into two zones: a deep bed piled two coals thick over one half of the grill, and nothing at all over the other. You want the hot side at around 300°C at grate level, which is roughly when you can hold your palm 12cm above the bars for two seconds and no longer. Let the grill bars heat through for a full ten minutes before anything touches them.
- Smoke the garlic while the fire settles. Slice the top centimetre off the head of garlic to expose the cloves, sit it on a square of foil, trickle over the olive oil and a pinch of salt, and scrunch the foil closed but not tight. Set it on the cool side of the grill with the lid down for 35 to 40 minutes, until the cloves are collapsing and bronzed. The smoke gets in through the loose foil and gives you something you cannot get from an oven — sweet roasted garlic with a bonfire edge to it.
- Build the butter. Squeeze the soft cloves out of their skins into a bowl and mash them to a paste with a fork. Beat in the softened butter, thyme leaves, vinegar, lemon zest and flaky salt until it is smooth and pale bronze. Taste it — it should be assertive enough to make you blink on its own, because it is about to be spread thinly over a kilo of beef. Roll it into a log in greaseproof paper and put it in the fridge to firm up while you cook.
- Temper the steak and dress it. Take the steak out of the fridge 45 minutes before it goes on the fire. A steak this thick straight from the fridge will need so long over the coals to reach temperature at the centre that the outer two centimetres will be ruined by the time it gets there. Just before cooking, pat it dry once more and brush it lightly all over with the melted beef dripping. Dripping, not a seed oil: it has the smoke point you need over live coals and it tastes of beef, which is the point.
- Sear hard, and move it often. Lay the steak directly over the deep bed of coals. Leave it undisturbed for 90 seconds, then lift and turn it — and keep turning it every 60 to 90 seconds for about 6 to 8 minutes in total. Frequent turning is not fussiness: it lets each face shed its heat while the other is being blasted, which builds an even, deep crust without driving a thick grey band into the meat. If flames leap up, move the steak to the cool side for a moment rather than trying to fight them.
- Stand it on the fat edge. Hold the steak upright with tongs, fat strip down, directly over the coals for 60 to 90 seconds until the fat is crisped and blistered and has stopped weeping. Watch it closely and be ready to lift — rendering fat over open flame is the single easiest way to set fire to your dinner.
- Finish on the cool side. Move the steak to the indirect half, bone side down where practical, and put the lid on with the vents half open. Leave it for 8 to 12 minutes, probing at the thickest point away from the bone. Pull it at 48°C for rare, 52°C for medium-rare — which is where this cut belongs — or 56°C for medium. Take it off before it reads what you want; a steak this heavy carries a lot of stored heat.
- Rest it for a full 10 minutes. Sit the steak on a warm board or a plate, lay a couple of slices of the garlic butter on top and tent it loosely with foil. Ten minutes is not negotiable on a kilo of beef. During the rest the temperature climbs another 4°C to 6°C and, more importantly, the muscle fibres relax and reabsorb juice that would otherwise run out onto the board the moment you cut. Do not skip this to keep it hot; a rested steak on a warmed board is hotter in the mouth than an unrested one that has bled itself dry.
- Char the hispi while the steak rests. Quarter the cabbage lengthways through the root so each wedge holds together. Brush all over with the melted dripping and the olive oil and season with the flaky salt. Lay the wedges cut-side down over the direct coals for 3 to 4 minutes a side, until the outer leaves are properly blackened in places and the wedges have collapsed slightly. Move to the cool side, dot with the salted butter, splash over the vinegar and give them another 4 minutes with the lid down until the core is tender to a knife tip.
- Carve off the bone. Run a sharp knife down the length of the bone to release the eye of meat in one piece, then turn it and slice across the grain at about 1cm. Fan the slices back alongside the bone. Cut the bone free and put it on the board too — somebody at the table wants it, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
- Dress and serve immediately. Spoon the resting juices from the board back over the sliced meat, lay the remaining garlic butter over the top so it slumps into the warm slices, and finish with flaky salt and the cracked black pepper. Pepper goes on now rather than before cooking — over coals this hot it would simply burn and turn acrid. Serve the charred hispi alongside, on the same board if you can.
Everything about this method is a negotiation between two temperatures that want different things. The crust is a Maillard reaction, and it needs a dry surface above roughly 140°C; the interior is a protein you want to hold at around 52°C. On a steak 4.5cm thick those two zones are far enough apart that you cannot get both with a single constant heat — hold the whole thing over roaring coals until the centre is right and you will have cooked 2cm of grey meat under the crust. The two-zone fire solves it by separating the jobs: fierce direct heat to build colour fast, then gentle radiant heat with the lid down to bring the centre up slowly.
Turning the steak every 60 to 90 seconds is the part that surprises people, because the received wisdom is to leave a steak alone. That wisdom applies to a thin steak in a pan, where you need uninterrupted contact to build any colour at all. Over coals with this much thickness, frequent turning has been shown to cook a steak more evenly and no more slowly: while one face is off the heat it is losing heat outward to the air and inward to the meat, so no single surface ever climbs far enough above the rest to overcook. You get a deeper crust and a narrower grey band at the same time.
The dry brine works on the same principle a butcher uses in an ageing chamber, just faster. Salt draws water out, then carries itself back in as a concentrated brine, partially denaturing the muscle proteins so they hold their own moisture under heat. The surface, meanwhile, dries. And the smoked garlic butter is not a sauce so much as a delivery system: fat carries aroma compounds that water cannot, so garlic and thyme worked into butter and melted over hot beef reach you far more powerfully than the same ingredients cooked into the meat would. The vinegar in it is doing quiet work too, cutting through the richness of both the beef fat and the butter.
If we are out of bone-in sirloin, the closest swap is a côte de boeuf — same technique, same temperatures, though the fore rib’s heavier fat seams want an extra couple of minutes on the cool side. An ex-dairy sirloin on the bone gives you a deeper, more mineral, almost gamey version of this dish and is worth trying if you like your beef with real character. A thick T-bone works but has two muscles cooking at different rates, so keep the fillet side angled away from the hottest coals. Boneless sirloin is fine and will simply need 3 to 4 minutes less overall.
No fire? A ridged cast-iron pan taken to smoking point with beef dripping, then finished in a 180°C oven for 10 to 12 minutes, gets you most of the way there — you lose the smoke, so lean harder on the charred cabbage under a hot grill to make up for it. For the butter, if you have no barbecue lit long enough to smoke the garlic, roast the head at 180°C for 40 minutes and add a very small pinch of smoked paprika. Anchovy mashed into the butter instead of the lemon zest is a variation we make often. If hispi is unavailable, use quartered small cabbages, wedges of radicchio, or halved little gem — anything with a dense heart that will hold together over the bars.
The garlic butter is the make-ahead here: smoke the head, beat the butter and roll the log up to five days in advance, or freeze it for three months and slice straight from frozen. The dry brine wants at least two hours and is happy for twenty-four. Cabbage can be quartered and dressed in the morning and kept covered in the fridge. Cooked steak keeps two days in the fridge and is genuinely excellent cold, sliced thin into a salad with more of the butter melted over — better, honestly, than any attempt at reheating. If you must reheat, 15 minutes in a 120°C oven is the only way that does not turn it grey.
- Cooking it straight from the fridge. A cold kilo of beef needs so long over the coals to reach 52°C at the centre that the outside is finished long before. Forty-five minutes on the counter costs you nothing and changes everything.
- Guessing the doneness. On a steak this thick and this expensive, the finger-press test is a coin toss. A probe thermometer costs less than a tenth of what is on the grill and removes the only real risk in the recipe. Pull at 52°C for medium-rare and trust the carryover.
- Building one big even fire. A grill covered evenly in coals gives you nowhere to retreat to when the fat starts flaring and no gentle zone to finish in. Bank the coals to one side and leave the other genuinely empty — the empty half is the most useful part of the fire.
Ask us to cut it at a full kilo and to chine the bone for you — that is, to saw through the backbone section so the steak carves cleanly off the rib once cooked. Two minutes with a bandsaw at our end saves you a wrestling match on the board. And ask for the fat strip left on and untrimmed: over coals it renders into the meat and crisps into the best mouthful on the plate. Trimmed steaks look tidier in the case and eat worse.
Wine: a northern Rhône Syrah — Crozes-Hermitage or St-Joseph — whose black pepper and smoke meet the char head-on without burying the beef. Beer: a dry Irish stout or a British porter; the roasted malt echoes the crust and the low carbonation keeps it from feeling heavy. Non-alcoholic: cold-brewed hibiscus with a squeeze of lime, served over ice — tannic and sharp enough to reset the palate between rich mouthfuls, which is the job the wine would otherwise be doing.
This is a board dish, not a plated one. Carve the steak, fan it beside the bone, pile the charred cabbage wedges alongside and let people help themselves. Beyond the hispi, the things that work are starchy and plain: dripping-roasted potatoes, halved and crisped hard, or a simple béarnaise if you want something classical alongside the butter. A bowl of watercress dressed with nothing but olive oil and lemon does more than any elaborate side, its pepperiness cutting the fat the way the vinegar in the butter does. Good bread is not optional — you will want something to push through the juices and butter that pool on the board, and a torn sourdough left cut-side down over the dying coals for a minute takes on exactly the right amount of smoke. Serve everything at once, in the middle of the table, and keep the plates warm.
What is a bone-in sirloin steak?
It is a thick slice cut from the wing rib end of the beef loin with the rib bone left attached — sometimes sold as a wing rib steak, and known on French menus as an entrecôte à l’os. It sits between the fore rib and the striploin on the animal, which means it combines the clean, dense grain of a sirloin with the heavier marbling of a rib. The bone insulates one face so the meat next to it stays a shade rarer, and it renders marrow and connective tissue into the steak as it cooks. At a kilo it is the natural sharing steak for two.
What temperature should I cook a bone-in sirloin to?
Pull it off the heat at 48°C for rare, 52°C for medium-rare and 56°C for medium, probing at the thickest point and keeping well clear of the bone — bone conducts heat differently and will give you a false reading. Then rest it for ten minutes, during which carryover will add another 4°C to 6°C. Medium-rare is where this cut is at its best: the fat has rendered enough to be pleasant, the fibres have not yet begun to contract and squeeze out moisture, and the strip against the bone is still properly rare.
How do I stop flare-ups when cooking steak over coals?
Flare-ups happen when rendered fat drips onto live coals and ignites, and the fix is geography rather than firefighting. Build a two-zone fire with one half completely empty of coals, and move the steak there for a few seconds whenever flames appear. Never squirt water on the fire — it throws up ash that lands on your dinner and cracks ceramic grills. Be especially watchful when you stand the steak on its fat edge, which is when most of the fat is released at once, and keep the lid to hand: dropping it on starves the flames of oxygen almost immediately.
Can I cook this in a pan instead of over fire?
Yes, and it will be very good, just different. Get a heavy cast-iron pan properly smoking with a tablespoon of beef dripping, sear the steak hard for 2 minutes a side turning frequently, stand it on its fat edge for a minute, then transfer the whole pan to a 180°C oven for 10 to 12 minutes until it probes at 52°C. Rest exactly as you would off the coals. What you lose is smoke, so compensate by charring the cabbage aggressively under the hottest grill you have and being generous with the smoked garlic butter.
Why is my dry-aged steak darker than a normal steak?
That is exactly what it should look like. During dry-ageing, water evaporates from the surface and the myoglobin left behind becomes more concentrated, which deepens the colour from bright red towards a dark burgundy or even brownish red. The surface goes matte and slightly tacky rather than wet. It is a sign of concentration, not of age in the bad sense. What you should be wary of is the opposite: a steak that looks vividly red and is sitting in a pool of liquid has almost certainly been wet-aged in a vacuum bag, and that liquid is flavour it will never get back.
Leave a comment