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Iberia · Volume 04, The Cider and Cod Coast

Txuletón

Basque Country

Txuleton, a thick grilled rib chop of old, well fattened cow: a thick bone in beef rib chop, deeply charred and blistered on the outside with coarse sea salt crystals still clinging to the crust.

Illustration

Time
3 hours 15

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 a thick layer of coarse sea salt laid on the top of the chop as it goes on.

As tradition built it

Temper 2 to 3 hours; 12 to 15 minutes on the grill.

Ingredients

  • 1 to 1.2 kg, two fingers (about 4cm) thick bone-in rib chop, from a cow of 6 to 7 years
  • to cover coarse sea salt
  • as needed charcoal

To serve

  • to serve flaky salt

Method

  1. Take the chop out of the fridge 2 to 3 hours ahead, so it reaches 20 to 25°C.
  2. Light the charcoal under an inclined grill, so the fat runs down the rods and away from the fire.
  3. Cover the top of the chop with coarse salt as it goes on the grill.
  4. Grill it, turning as little as possible, about 12 to 15 minutes, until the outside is charred and the centre red and hot, about 48°C.
  5. Brush off the salt.
  6. Carve at once along the bone, trim the fat, and share the pieces round so everyone tastes a different part.

Notes

The method is Casa Julián's, of Tolosa: Matías Gorrotxategi in Guía Repsol and his son Iñaki in Hule y Mantel. Pepe Chuletón, in A Fuego Lento, grills a hand's width above the embers, salts the top as the underside sears, then turns and salts the other side, a minute a side for each centimetre. Cárnicas Goia, a Gipuzkoan butcher, rests the meat about 5 minutes and salts after. No source sears unsalted first or rests 10 minutes.

What a modern chef changes

Rung 2's coal-banking logic taken to its full expression.

Rung 2

Method

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
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