Tony Jackman’s braaied sirloin, sliced and plated up on a platter made by Mervyn Gers Ceramics. In the background is a gem squash which was stuffed with quartered baby onions and feta, wrapped in foil and cooked in the coals. (Photo: Tony Jackman)
The Korean barbecue is something I’m keen to explore. There used to be a Korean restaurant in Cape Town’s Sea Point, where you’d have a Korean barbecue at the centre of the table and all cook your bits of meat on it. Sceptical as I am of such things (I’d prefer not to cook my own food in a restaurant, I do that at home all the time), I loved the flavours.
But we’ll get to all that when I explore it properly. For now, I used a Korean-inspired marinade for a slab of sirloin I had bought, about 1 kg of it, in one piece. Butchers always give me a funny look when I ask for a sirloin roast. It puzzles me that hardly anyone seems to have thought of it. But consider: that lovely big slab of fat on one side renders down to golden crisp delight, while the meat beneath it turns rare or medium rare depending on your preference; I much prefer it to a sirloin steak. It takes on aromatics wonderfully, and it’s a cut of beef that can take a flavour punch.
Perfect, then, for getting out the soy sauce and sesame oil and mincing some fresh ginger and garlic. But it needed some sweetness too, so I chopped the equivalent of about 2 Tbsps of palm sugar, which you can buy at your Asian speciality store in hard, half-moon-shaped chunks. All you do is chop it up and stir it into your marinade or sauce or add it to the wok. The marinade is vaguely inspired by bulgogi, the Korean marinade that also has Asian pear or apple in it, which I didn’t use, so I’m not saying it’s authentic.
I marinated the sirloin in it for five hours. The coals need to be super hot at first, then dispersed and the grid lifted high to finish the sirloin slowly and get it tender yet rare or medium rare.
When I say “whole sirloin”, don’t take me too literally. The whole cut is huge, which is fine if you’re feeding several people. Just ask the butcher to cut a slab of it of a size to suit your needs. The point is to cook it in one piece, rather than cutting it up into steaks. So it cooks top (fat side) and bottom, whereas steaks would cook side-on.
Ingredients
1 x 1kg slab of beef sirloin with its cap of fat (or the size you require)
½ cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp garlic, minced or grated
2 Tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 Tbsp sesame oil
2 Tbsp palm sugar, chopped as small as you can
Method
Mix together the soy sauce, sesame oil, chopped palm sugar, garlic and ginger.
Douse the whole sirloin in it all over and leave it to marinate in a bowl in the fridge for 4 to 5 hours, or longer.
Prepare plenty of very hot coals.
Put the sirloin on the grid, fat side down, and cook over super-hot coals for about 5 minutes on the fatty side, then 5 more on the other.
Lift the grid up high and disperse the coals so that they lose that full strength of heat that you’ve started with.
Cook the sirloin on both sides, turning now and then, for about 40 minutes more. Test for doneness with a skewer which, when you pull it out, should reveal some pink juices, not red (raw) or opaque (overdone).
I also cooked gem squash in foil in the coals, after stuffing them with quartered baby onions and feta and seasoning the insides, and got my pink salt rock out for courgettes. This is a great piece of gear for grilling on the braai or the stove top. On the braai, you put it on the grid over the coals for about 20 to 30 minutes for the heat to conduct through it. I doused whole, small courgettes in olive oil with chopped garlic, lemon juice and pepper (NOT salt, it’s a salt rock so it will get more than enough saltiness) and grilled them on it until just tender yet retaining a bit of crunch. DM/TGIFood
To enquire about Tony Jackman’s book, foodSTUFF (Human & Rousseau) please email him at tony@dailymaverick.co.za
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Handmade dinnerware for this shoot supplied by Mervyn Gers Ceramics. Visit https://mervyngers.com, 4A Dorsetshire Street, Paarden Eiland or call 021 510 2385. Follow Mervyn Gers Ceramics on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mervyngers or Instagram: Mervyn_Gers_Ceramics.