Six-Minute Minute Steaks with Wild Garlic Salsa Verde & Jersey Royals
A weeknight supper that punches well above its weight — deep-flavoured dry-aged beef, a bright herby salsa, and the year’s first proper potatoes.
The whole point of a minute steak is in the name — and that makes it the most useful cut a midweek cook can keep in the fridge. Our grass-fed dry-aged minute steaks have all the depth of a proper sirloin in a fraction of the time. A bright wild garlic salsa verde and a bowl of buttered jersey royals turn a five-minute supper into something you’d happily plate up for a guest.
- 4 dry-aged minute steaks (≈500g total)
- 500g jersey royal potatoes, scrubbed
- 40g unsalted butter
- 1 tbsp light olive oil (for the pan)
- Flaky sea salt & black pepper
- 30g wild garlic leaves (or parsley + 1 garlic clove)
- 20g flat-leaf parsley
- 1 tbsp baby capers, drained
- 4 anchovy fillets in oil
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- Bring a pan of well-salted water to the boil. Add the jersey royals and simmer for 12–15 minutes until tender to the point of a knife. Drain, tip back into the warm pan with the butter, cover and let them steam-finish.
- While the potatoes cook, make the salsa verde. Chop the wild garlic, parsley, capers and anchovies very finely on a board — a food processor turns it to baby food. Scrape into a bowl, stir in the mustard, vinegar and olive oil. It should be punchy, herbaceous, a little sharp. Season with pepper; the anchovies bring the salt.
- Pat the minute steaks dry with kitchen paper — a dry surface is the single most important step for a proper sear. Season both sides generously with flaky salt and pepper.
- Heat a heavy-based frying pan over the highest heat your hob will give you for 2 full minutes. Add the light olive oil, swirl, then lay in the steaks (work in two batches if your pan is small — crowding is the enemy of colour). Cook 60 seconds, flip, then another 45 seconds. Deep burnish outside, blushing within.
- Rest on a warm plate for 2 minutes — any longer and a thin steak overcooks itself.
- Crush the warm potatoes lightly with a fork to break the skins. Plate the steaks, spoon the salsa verde over generously and pile the potatoes alongside.
Minute steaks are cut thin (about 1cm) so dry-ageing concentrates flavour without toughening — but they’re unforgiving. Get the pan properly hot before the meat goes near it, and don’t move them once they’re down. 60 seconds, flip, 45 seconds, out.
A lightly chilled Beaujolais — Morgon or Fleurie — has just enough fruit to stand up to the salsa verde, and just enough bite to cut the butter on the potatoes.
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