Which cheap steak cuts are actually worth buying?

These cuts were traditionally kept by butchers for themselves, which tells you what they think of them. They come from parts of the animal that worked moderately — enough for deep flavour, not enough to need braising — and they all share one requirement: they must be sliced across the grain.

Step by step

1. Bavette or flank: the easiest to start with.From the belly, flat and wide with a very obvious coarse grain running along it. Loose-textured, absorbent to marinades, deeply beefy. Cook fast and hot, rest, then slice thinly at right angles to those visible lines.
2. Onglet or hanger: the strongest flavour on the animal.The muscle that hangs from the diaphragm, one per carcass, with a tough sinew down the centre that must be cut out first. Iron-rich, almost offal-like flavour. Never take it past medium rare — it turns grey and livery.
3. Feather blade and flat iron: the tender surprise.From the shoulder, with a line of gristle running through the middle. Split down that line and you have two flat iron steaks, which are close to fillet in tenderness with far more flavour. Left whole, feather blade braises brilliantly instead.
4. Skirt: fast, thin and for slicing.From the diaphragm area, thin and very coarse-grained. It cooks in a couple of minutes a side and it is the classic fajita and stir-fry steak. Thin means you cannot control doneness precisely, so use maximum heat and minimum time.
5. Cook hot, and stop at medium rare.These are working muscles with connective tissue distributed through them. Below medium rare that tissue is soft; past medium it tightens and squeezes out moisture and there is no fat to compensate. This is the point where people decide cheap cuts are not worth it.
6. Rest, then find the grain before you cut.Look at the surface for the direction the fibres run. Put your knife at ninety degrees to them and slice thinly on a slight angle. On a bavette the grain sometimes changes direction along the cut — cut the piece in two and treat each half separately.
7. Serve sliced, not whole.These cuts are portioned on the board rather than plated as a single lump. That is not presentation, it is the mechanism: slicing across the grain is what shortens the fibres a diner has to chew through.

Tips

• Marinades work better on these than on a fillet because the loose, open texture gives more surface area. An acidic marinade for an hour or two is plenty.
• Ask for them by name and ask a day ahead. Most supermarkets carry bavette; onglet and feather blade usually mean a butcher.
• Salt them well in advance — an hour or more — because they benefit from the seasoning reaching further in than a quick sprinkle allows.

Common mistakes

• Slicing along the grain because it looks neater — It leaves the long muscle fibres full length, so every mouthful is a bundle of them. This single error accounts for most complaints that these cuts are tough.
• Cooking onglet or bavette to medium well — There is not enough intramuscular fat to survive it. They go from excellent to leathery in a couple of minutes.
• Leaving the central sinew in an onglet or a feather blade — It does not soften in a fast cook and it is inedible. Cut it out and treat what remains as two steaks.

Questions people ask