PUCCI GALORE

Well now you have the nub of it. Those steaks have to be served with a minimum temperature that usually cooks it to be inedible - still, you are starting with a handicap given the caterers that BA uses. Still, one underdone steak and the whole of FT will rise up in indignation, and rise up again when they are cooked too long. You cannot win.

LTNPhobia - it is possible as long as there is plenty of steam in the oven - but then you need decent meat in the first place.

DrGee

Maybe I'm unusual in that I rather like non red beef with nice burnt bits on the outside. That's not to say I don't mind a bit of pinkness on occasion. It's just that I don't like to be spurted with blood when putting the fork in.

choosethedrew

So how is this possible in First, but seems to be impossible in CW?

Can I help you

Picture an oven rammed full with 25 steak meals and 25 chicken all have to be cooked together.

HIDDY

I'm the same as you and I'm not unusual. Well charred on the outside with the juices running clear every time. ^

LTN Phobia

I've done a fair share of cookery courses but I don't think I can heat up semi-pre-cooked steaks x 25+ at once in a couple of very small ovens to everyone's liking, ranging from blue to a lump of charcoal

Banana4321

Surely a wiki is required for this thread

choosethedrew

Agree, so medium with a hint of pink would be the obvious middle ground - but the steaks in CW are unilaterally (bar this one case) well done.

kaka

i prefer well charred outside and bloody inside

PUCCI GALORE

Simple. Think how many people are in F, even when full, compared with the numbers in CW. However, I have no idea where you were flying to or from. Outstations sometimes produce far better steaks than are loaded at London.

However, clearly it is possible as that is the point of the whole thread.

TMOliver

Of course, there are answers to all this chatter and the what seems overall dissatisfaction with steaks on BA (and most/all other airlines). My larder, fridge and freezer usually have steaks (and if not, there's a decent butcher 5 minutes down the hill), but they also always contain other representatives of the culinary excess available to most of us and the airlines. Long ago, during a 5 year stint as a part time restaurant critic for a local newspaper, I learned that the quality of the meat, the prices on the menu, or the owner/managers' views may (and often) have little to do with the appeal of the steak served. A properly cooked steak requires high heat and a few moments (very few!) to "rest" before serving. Giant aluminum tubes jammed with flyers being served from slow moving carts loaded with trays form absolute barriers to a "good steak", much less an even edible one.

Therefore, both in the case of FTers and airlines, neither should insist on being served or serving steaks, almost impossible to present appealingly and palatably in the air. There are hundreds of other "main courses" (including beef) which are far, far better adapted to time, place, conditions and service in the air.

But then, when it comes to "chicken", most airlines do an equally inadequate job cooking and serving that avian critter, often arriving as tough as one imagines a seagull might be after a non-stop exercise flight from Newfoundland to Ireland.

rossmacd

Having just sampled AA's steak (the not very tender tenderloin) offering in J this afternoon, I can confirm that they are little better than BA at providing an adequately cooked piece of beef.

zkzkz

I don't see any point in debating our personal tastes for how well done we prefer steak. The question on the table is why this steak was so undercooked when in general BA seems to consistently cook steaks well done.

I suspect the answer has a lot to do with the temperature the steaks were kept at prior to cooking. If her steak was at the bottom of the pack surrounded by dry ice and frozen solid then it would take a lot longer to defrost and reheat before it would start cooking at all than yours might have.

The alternative is even worse to ponder... I had vaguely understood that the steaks had already been precooked and they were really just being reheated in onboard (and this is why even cutting the cooking time BA is incapable of cooking one medium-rare). Perhaps the caterers "forgot" to precook this one at all and the meat really was completely rare when the preparation instructions were based on the assumption that it was already cooked through.

PUCCI GALORE

Oh Darling - how can you be so cruel? That would stop us all discussing our favourite subject. Ourselves. I've done this. I've seen that. The Champagne bottle was left out to go to room temperature, the steak was inedible (for whatever reason), the fat insolent lippy stroppy crew member humiliated me and did not recognise who I (think I ) am (well that should stop as I've retired) - the list is endless.

Ultimately it is all a lament about to which depths BA (or whichever Forum you happen to be on)and we love it. It's why we are here. Indeed we get some most useful information, but honestly it's 85% opinion. In the past some of this was witty, pithy, and sparkled.

Still this is why I rarely (excuse pun Angel) order steak - because it is so hit and miss. I do not know how many of you cook but if you do you do not need me to tell you why steak is hopeless.

Which of you cooks steak in an oven? Even Delia hasn't got that one. No one I expect. You do not cook strips of meat like that unless they are as thick as BA Management. You put joints of meat in an oven after you have seared them (in my kitchen anyway). This is why in F we used to serve Chateaubriand, joints of Lamb or whatever. They work. Steaks don't. On BA or anywhere else. Add to the mix the minimum temperature that has be be reached in the centre of the meat that is H&S ordered and you can't win.

ENTP

As thick as BA management - brilliant