Iberia · Volume 04, The Cider and Cod Coast
Txuletón
Basque Country
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 20 minutes
- Researched
- 16 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Grilled meat from old, fattened cows, vaca vieja, prized for the fat that melts through the meat. Traced to the eighteenth century, served in rural sagardotegiak alongside the tasting of new cider each January. Matías Gorrotxategi of Casa Julián in Tolosa is credited as a pioneer of the modern technique, inclined grills and roasting under a thick layer of coarse sea salt after searing without salt.
As tradition built it
Serves 2 to 3. About 20 minutes.
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg bone-in rib chop, from an old, well-fattened cow, at least 4cm thick
- to taste coarse sea salt
Method
- Bring the bone-in rib chop fully to room temperature before cooking.
- Sear hard over intense live-ember heat, unsalted, until deeply coloured on both sides.
- Move to a cooler part of the fire, cover generously with coarse sea salt, and continue cooking to the desired internal temperature.
- Brush off excess salt, rest at least 10 minutes, carve across the grain.
What a modern chef changes
Rung 2's coal-banking logic taken to its full expression.
Rung 2
Method
- Bank oak lump charcoal into a genuinely two-zone fire on the Big Green Egg, an intensely hot centre for the sear and a distinct cooler edge for the finish, rather than one even bed of coals.
- Rest the meat under foil for longer than tradition specifies, a full 15 minutes rather than 10, since the thicker cut this chapter specifies carries more residual heat to redistribute.
- Finish with a single flake of genuine Cabrales melted briefly over the resting meat, a considered, named departure from strict tradition that plays the cheese's cave-mineral finish against the fat rather than diluting either.