Beef - the way "don't" makes the kid in you want to lick your fingers and put them in the socket.

I have a lot of red meat in my colon. What I mean by that is when mad cow disease struck in 1994, my best friend and I took a cab to Sainsbury's in Norwich and bought as much half price or less beef as we could. We came to the inspired decision that it tasted good, we liked it more than anything else and if it were going to kill us - well we were students at Art College, which could only mean three things.

1. We were poor.
2. We were poor and stupid.
3. We were poor, stupid and around a lot of drink and drugs.

Like a cow was going to kill us. As if.

So we began to eat red meat as if it grew on trees. In fact we were probably stupid enough to believe it did come from a tree or bush. It was a great time to be eating red meat. France had banned it, the government had heavily subsidized the UK farmer in order to keep them afloat. Supermarkets couldn't shift the stuff well and had specials on it every day. Before the days of understanding the effects on the ecology, grain consumption and general methane issues, red meat was to me a material to experiment with like paint.

So I ate a lot.

Anyway, now I have it down to once a week, (maybe twice) and I have fined tuned a few different approaches and recipes to share. But before I do, I have to tip my hat to all the chefs who have really bored the country with the importance of knowing your meat and what it should look like. Supermarket beef is just not as good as a good butcher, farmer's market or the like. No way. You might be able to pick up something ok or even good, but never excellent. Not in my extensive travails. Why not?

Mainly the supermarkets pander to our pockets rather than our palates. It makes sense as we consume salt and artificial flavourings to guide us to comfort and familiarity. Texture and looks tend to deceive and the average punter wants to buy red coloured red meat.

If you are buying mince, fair enough, but for a steak, a roasting joint, even a stew, you want something on the odd side of brown. I have seen roasting joints sit out the back of a butcher with a little mold on it and that shit is the BEST. Scratch the mold off, but you want the dark, rich, old, well hung meat. The maturing is not related to the level of conversation you can have with your cow, nor how it is going to treat you if you sleep with it. It determines the flavour. The more mature the beef, the better the flavour. End of.

On that note, here's some recipes and tips.

First, steak:

If you want flavour, size and lower cost, buy a rump steak. It has the deepest taste and texture, the most melting chews per bite and a good cut will have little or no chewiness, toughness or anything else. It will be tender as anything if cooked right, and the juices that flow from it when cooked right, will make the most fabulous sauces. From that, the order in price is then Rib Eye, Sirloin and then Fillet. All are lovely in their own way, but fillet, though the most tender, has the least flavour. It is the most special looking steak but actually, the hardest to do well because of the shape. I will come back to this.

How to cook a steak depends on the thickness and prep. Check out the difficulty in the preparation. 1. Take it out of the fridge. 2. Pat it down with paper towel. 3 drizzle a little olive oil, black pepper and sea salt over it. Leave for 30 minutes covered on the table, side, wherever. That is it. Not hard but this will make 30% of the difference.

30% of the difference will come from how hot the pan is and how much attention you pay to it. I have read Anthony Bourdain about the pains of managing the grill station of the restaurant and I can only imagine, knowing how many times I have burnt myself trying different approaches. This one works.

Heat the pan up hot and try and have a pan that reflects the size and amount of steak you are doing. EG 2 steaks should almost fill the pan you use but with a bit of air in between them. Don't pour oil in the pan, it is already on the steak. Add a little butter to the pan and instantly drain the oil from the steak plate and meat on to the rapidly sizzling butter. It stops it burning - but the butter will burn if you don't do this within 5 seconds of adding it to the pan. That is all the time you have.

Then when nicely melted, add the steaks and have your silly little iPhone on timer, or sensibly use a clock or proper timer and set to 1 minute. If your rump, rib eye or sirloin is around a centimeter in thickness, this will cook super fast to medium rare - I mean a minute each side!. If they are an inch, they will take a little more.

So as a rule (for steaks over 1cm and around or less than 1"), I would do 2 mins for rare (a minute on each side), 3-4 mins for medium rare (a minute on each side and then 30 seconds on each side), for well done, 6-8 minutes but you will fuck it up and it will be tough and pointless. I lack sympathy for those who like it well done because no cook really knows what a well done steak should taste or feel like. It has lost all of its properties by then and is really quite odd - like a beef toffee waffle.

The turning every minute is fail safe. It will stop burning while cooking on a pretty high heat, it will regulate equal cooking intensity through the dense structure of the meat, and it is a good way of knowing where you stand without having to touch it in the pan to check it is ok. I would advise to have a metal spoon at hand to scoop and pour the oil/butter over the exposed side while the pan side is cooking. It is nice and promotes equality of skin tone.

40% of the difference will be your ability to understand that you have to leave it to stand on a warm plate. Your steak will continue to (kind of) cook for another half minute just on the plate because it is hot. So you don't need well done. Also this is the tenderising stage. By doing nothing and leaving it for 3-5 minutes, you are literally making it good. Literally.

Most people would be eating it now but no! Leave it. Instead, turn the heat off as soon as the steaks are out and chuck half a glass of nice red wine in your pan to a mad sizzle and spit. A little salt and pepper and a half teaspoon of Dijon mustard and turn heat back on high-ish. Whisk or stir with something whisk like to break up the mustard and simmer over a medium to low heat. The alcohol will cook out of the wine in the rest time leaving the deep sweet marrying of the wine and beef flavours. Every minute, add the juices that are flowing from your steaks into the warm plate. This adds so much depth to the sauce that you couldn't buy. (BTW if you leave your gas on when adding the wine, there is fair chance of a big flambe, which in most domestic kitchens will burn your eyebrows, set off your smoke alarm and make you scream).

After a few minutes of saucing, it is time to eat a delicious, tender and flavoursome steak with red wine sauce.

Also, you don't have to do the sauce. Italians squeeze a lemon over the steak and it is ridiculously good with the steak juices. No lemon and just mustard is also great. But that rest time is critical and if you don't do it, you will never know real quality.

So buy the finest, taste the difference and generally the best steak you can. Or go to a better place than a supermarket and splash out. God it's good.

Returning to fillet steak, it is much thicker and much harder to manage the times. I would just say for something that is 1.5" thick to 2", 5-6 mins is rare (1 minute each side turned 6 times. 8 minutes is medium (same thing applies), more is well done. But you will have to turn it on all sides and you won't trust your timings. Doing this well requires practise and also a feel for it. Come back to this once you've tried the others a few times.

If like me, you love steak, then print this out and put it on your fridge or washing machine with a magnet. Get it stained up and battered. Smudge the lettering and brown it with so many sauces that you could actually start sucking it after a year or two, while you wait for the steak to rest. Seriously, get it right and you have it RIGHT.

Moo.