Steaks and Hamburgers | The French Chef Season 1 | Julia Child

Julia Child shows you how to fit your beef to your budget, including ways to dress up hamburgers the French way and what to do with filet mignon.

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Cooking legend and cultural icon Julia Child, along with her pioneering public television series from the 1960s, The French Chef, introduced French cuisine to American kitchens. In her signature passionate way, Julia forever changed the way we cook, eat and think about food.

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ANNOUNCER: The French Chef is made possible by a grant from Safeway Stores. JULIA: I’m making one of America’s and the world’s most favorite dishes, hamburger. This is hamburger done in the French way, with seasonings and onions. And we’re gonna make a lovely sauce for it. And besides hamburgers,

We’re gonna do all kinds of steaks, because this is the steak and hamburger show, today on The French Chef. ♪ ♪ Welcome to The French Chef. I’m Julia Child. Today, we’re doing steaks and hamburgers, and we’re starting out with hamburger. We’re gonna go, rather, from the humble to the king’s palace,

Which I think will be great fun. I’ve got here about two pounds of hamburger. Many people have an idea that the French are just so fancy that they don’t eat hamburgers at all. But they do. They call them bifteck haché, or bitok, and they’re perfectly delicious the way they do it,

Because you can make a lovely sauce with them and you can use it as a company dish. Now, I’ve got two pounds of hamburger in here, and I’m gonna mix in about a cup of onions, which have been cooked in butter. And then I’m gonna put in a whole egg.

That keeps the hamburger together as you cook it. And then I’m gonna put in a little bit of herbs. You can use, oh, thyme or sage. I’m using Italian seasoning, which I like very much. It’s a combination of everything. That’s about a quarter of a teaspoonful.

And then it should have about a teaspoon of salt. And a good grinding of pepper. And then beat it up. You have to beat it so that it will stay nicely together and becomes rather light-looking. Now, this hamburger that I’m using is from the neck. It’s a combination of neck and plate,

And it costs about 55 cents a pound. And neck, plate, and chuck have a perfectly fine, lovely, sort of meaty taste, and they’re the least expensive. And when you’re buying it– Sometimes they call hamburgers by– hamburgers by a awfully fancy name, such as “chopped sirloin.” And chopped sirloin, all that is is…

Just the tail of a sirloin steak. And it’s only really stew or hamburger meat anyway, but it sounds as though it were so good and it has a fancy name. And it’s the same thing with ground round. That’s just the tough muscles of the round that you couldn’t possibly–

That you couldn’t possibly use as a steak. And I think that there’s no sense in paying 99 cents for hamburger, the way a lot of people do, just because it has a fancy name. And if you go to your market, just say that you’d like a combination of neck and plate.

And you want the meat to have only seven to ten percent of fat. That’s about three tablespoons of fat per pound of meat. And then you form it into cakes, like that. I’ve already formed some already. And then when you get them all formed into cakes,

You can just put them in the icebox, covered with wax paper, and then cook them when you’re ready to. I’m heating up oil and butter in my no-stick pan. And then just before you’re gonna cook the hamburgers, you dredge them in a little bit of flour.

That also helps to brown them and helps them keep together. But you don’t want to dredge them in flour until just before you cook them. You don’t need very much flour at all. There. Now those are all ready to go as soon as our butter and oil are hot.

As you’ll notice, as usual, we always sauté in– though we say we sauté in butter, it’s always oil and butter, so the butter won’t burn. Now, that’s good and hot. So in go the hamburgers. This mixture of onions just makes an awfully good hamburger. Much more interesting than just, sort of, plain meat.

And now, while those are cooking, I’m gonna show you a very nice sauce. We’re gonna do what’s called a sauce bordelaise, which is a red wine sauce with beef marrow. Now, this is beef, raw beef marrow, that’s been diced up. And I’ll show you how you go about it. A marrow bone–

As you see, this little part in here is the marrow. And that’s a fatty substance. And you usually can’t get your butcher to do this, but it’s very easy to do yourself. Get a big cleaver and then something to hit it with and just cut it right down the middle. Whack. And then…

See, there’s your marrow. And you just take your little knife and take it out, like that. And then particularly if the bone is cold and the marrow is cold, when you cut it, you want it to keep in a dice. So you dip your knife in some hot liquid.

I’ve got some hot stock here. You can just use hot water. And cut it. And then it doesn’t break apart. If it’s cold and you try to cut it with a cold knife, it’ll just crumble. And you want it to stay whole. Then you have hot liquid, either hot salted water–

I’ve got some hot beef stock here– and you just put that in, and that poaches the marrow. You don’t want it to boil at all, and you don’t want the water, the liquid, to be too hot. You just want the marrow to soften. And now we’ll take a look at our hamburgers again.

I must say, I like these no-stick pans. And this is a new type of rubber spatula that’s, I guess, non-inflammable or non-burnable. Anyway, it’s perfect for the no-stick pan. And then, when our hamburgers are done on each side, we will make our sauce. And when you’re–

The marrow can take about five minutes or so in hot liquid. And then just drain it out. And there it is in the sieve, ready to use. And now I’m gonna get our hot platter. Be sure you always have your platter hot. I’ve got this in the oven.

This is just in the warming oven. Then your hamburgers are done. On they go onto your hot platter. I think it’s hard to say how long to cook hamburgers, ’cause some people like them very rare and some people like them well-done. I think that’s something that you can’t give any rules for,

Because it’s so personal. And now here’s our hamburger pan, and it still has some– a little bit of butter in it and it also has these nice little coagulated juices. And we’re gonna deglaze the pan. This is a little bit of our beef stock. I’ll put in about a quarter of a cup.

And then we have our red wine. This is a California mountain wine. You just let that boil down. And then we’re going to give it a little bit of thickening with cornstarch. I’m gonna put in about half a tablespoon and then add a little bit more red wine to that.

And then pour it in. You want to let it cook for about a moment. Then you take it off the heat and fold in the marrow. And you can put in a little bit of chopped parsley, too. And that just goes over your hamburgers. That really makes hamburgers gone to heaven.

And then you can put a little parsley in there to decorate it. And there you are. And now I’m gonna show you about steaks. That’s going from the 55-cent hamburger to a porterhouse steak. That’s a four-pound porterhouse steak, and it cost $6.17. It comes from a prime carcass.

It’s about the best porterhouse I’ve ever seen in my life. It comes from right here, the loin. And this, we’ve made a beef chart for you so that you could see– get some idea of where the meat cuts come from. See this is the head of the beef right here,

And there’s his neck, and there’s his shoulder blade, and his front leg, and there are all of his ribs, there’s his backbone and his pelvic bone, and there’s his back leg. And you’d be very wise to… get yourself just as familiar with beef cuts as possible,

’cause you can save yourself a lot of money and a lot of disappointment. Now I’ll show you some more from that fancy area. That’s the loin strip steak. That is the loin part of the porterhouse steak, and that costs about two dollars a pound if it’s a prime carcass.

And that comes from up here in the loin also. Now, another– if you’re “in the money”– another expensive steak is from the sirloin. And the sirloin is right here. That has this great big pelvic bone in there, and that’s sometimes called sirloin rump. Some butchers don’t make any distinction between it.

And this is a hip steak that I had here, and that costs about $1.89 a pound. And now to get these two sections here, the loin and the sirloin are the most expensive. That’s the most expensive, but you don’t have to go into all that money to get yourself a good steak.

We have here, this is a blade steak. That comes from the shoulder. It comes from right up here at the end of the shoulder blade, and you can always see a little bit of cartilage from the blade in the steak. And that costs about $1.19 a pound, and it’s a very good steak.

And now, here is something that you want to watch out for. You’d say, “Oh, goody,” if you saw this enormous piece of meat for about $2.19 for four pounds. And what this is is a chuck steak, and they often have it in a market on display for the unwary. You have here–

It’s sort of hard to hold– But you have this part and this part here, which are just stewing meat, and that’s no good for a steak. The only good part of this steak is from here up into there; that’s really like part of your rib like the roast beef.

That would be a very good steak boned out, and that would cost you 89 cents a pound. And we have… That chuck steak comes from up in here. And we have now a flank steak, and that costs about 99 cents a pound,

And when you buy one, be sure you get a good thick one. And it’s always good to marinate it in a little red wine and herbs, and then you just broil it like an ordinary steak. And you cut it on the slant that way, and it makes a very nice, tasty steak.

And that one comes from right here. That’s 99 cents a pound. And, let’s see, I think I have another one here. Yep. Now, that again, is a shoulder steak. And this is a delicious steak. We had one last night. You can always tell it’s a shoulder

If you’re good at meat cuts, ’cause there’s this little piece of gristle right in there. And that comes from in this area, too. And that is $1.19 a pound. So as you see, you can get very good steaks without spending a fortune for them. The important thing is to know your butcher

And begin learning your meat cuts. And now I’m gonna show you one of our– the most expensive. I think it’s nice to go from the least expensive to the most. Now, this here is a whole– is a filet of beef. And that comes– that’s the tenderloin section of your porterhouse.

And that’s up in the loin, right, this part here. It’s after the hip and before the rib, and that’s the filet or tenderloin. And then there’s this, if you have absolutely the whole thing, you’d have this other part down here, which is called the sirloin butt,

And that’s not as tender as the rest of the steak, and not considered quite as good. And if you buy a hip or sirloin steak, you get a bit in there of that. And this tenderloin… this piece cost $13, that was from a prime carcass.

Prime means that’s the first grade and best of beef. And this little part– See that? It gets thick there and then it thins out to down here. And this little part down in here is called the filet mignon. Mignon means “little.” And so when you get a filet mignon,

It’s cut from a small part down there, and sometimes they’re only that big around. And this is the heart, or central part, and if you get a great big steak cut from there that’s about like that, that’s called a chateaubriand. And it’s usually about two inches thick, and it’s always broiled.

And then smaller steaks from this region that would be about an inch thick are called filet steaks, or tournedos. And you can roast this whole thing. It’s delicious. It doesn’t have as much flavor as the loin strip or the chuck, but it is an elegant piece of meat.

And now here, there is a steak just cut from the filet like that. And usually… usually this little piece, this little piece here is cut off, and also that fat there. And if you have it trimmed so that’s cut off, I don’t know how much a pound that would be.

It would be very expensive. But you cut off this fat part here. And also, it’s supposed to have all the filament cut off as well. I think I’d better see a little more closely. Now, you’ll notice that there’s sort of a fatty and a filamenty part there, and that should also be removed.

I didn’t have this removed because I thought it was a good idea for you to see what it was all like. But it would be easier to take off if you took it off from the whole strip, ’cause your butcher would just take these pieces with his knife

And just go up them, like that. And that ends you up with just a little, tiny, lovely nugget of meat. Now, here’s another one that hasn’t had that little strip taken off. If you don’t have these strips taken off, then the meat curls up. And if you want, you can have a piece

Of fat pork tied right around that, so it makes it look very nice and neat. I don’t actually think it’s necessary to do, but it sort of makes… it particularly makes it look more elegant in the… in the store. Now, with this, we sauté them in butter–

It’s butter, as usual, with a little bit of oil… added to it. You want to be sure, as always, when you’re sautéing anything, that you have your… have your butter and oil hot. I’m gonna put these over here. And also, you want to be sure that your meat is dry.

This is perfectly dry, but if it weren’t, you take paper towels and just… and wipe it off, because you want it to be sure… you want it to brown nicely. And it won’t brown at all if it’s damp. Now, we look at our butter. See, that foam is still rising.

And as soon as it begins going down again, we’ll add the steaks. I always go through this rigamarole, but I think it’s so important that you don’t forget to dry the meat and heat the… heat the fat very hot. Now, that butter foam has subsided, but the butter hasn’t started to brown,

So in go the steaks. And we regulate the heat. We do not want the butter to brown, because we want to be able to use that, also, for the sauce that we’re going to make. And now, whenever you are doing something fancy that costs $2.50 a pound,

You want to have… you want to surround it with fine wines and truffles and anything else that’s absolutely delicious. So I’m gonna get out what we have, and I’m gonna first turn the steaks. And see, those are browning nicely on that side. And I’m gonna get out my hot steak platter.

This, again, is in the warming oven. And for it, we’re gonna put these steaks on little toast– this is white bread with the crusts off, which has been sautéed in butter until it gets to be a nice golden brown. You want to watch it carefully, not get your butter too hot.

And… and then just sauté it until it gets this brown, and then keep it warm on the oven. The steaks will go on that. We also have here some béarnaise sauce. You’ll remember, we’ve done hollandaise sauce. This is exactly like hollandaise, except instead of having lemon juice in it,

It has wine, vinegar, and shallots, and pepper and tarragon, and it’s been– you put in about a quarter of a cup and boil it down until it’s about two tablespoons and then you proceed to make your hollandaise with that; and it’s a lovely sauce and very good for steak.

And now, let’s look at our steaks again. Now this, again, depends on whether you like them terribly rare or whether you like them what they call medium rare, or pink in the middle. And when you press them with your finger, you can tell very much how they are.

This finger test is very useful to know. If you press it down and it’s soft and squashy, but browned on the outside, it’s good and rare. But as soon as you see a little bit of pearling of pink juice come up, then it’s medium rare. And I’m gonna serve these fairly rare,

So I’m gonna consider them done. So we put them on our toast. And then we have some… artichoke hearts. Well, first I’m gonna have to deglaze that pan before I do with the artichoke hearts. This is the same type of deglaze that we did before.

I’m gonna put in a little bit of minced shallot, and then stir that around for a moment. ‘Cause there are always a little coagulated meat juice and that’s one of the reasons that pan-sautéed steaks are so good. Because you can make a lovely sauce with them.

That should cook for just about a minute. And then, I’m gonna put in some port wine. Use either port or Madeira, and remember, as with this, if you pay this much for your steaks, there’s no– you don’t want to… you don’t want to skimp on the wine.

You don’t have to use wine for it; you could use a little bit of beef stock if you wanted. And then let that reduce a little while. And I’m gonna have also, some asparagus tips. These were cooked and then you warm them in butter. And be sure that they’re seasoned just right.

Now our sauce is reduced down nicely. And you should salt and pepper the steaks first. You don’t salt and pepper until they’re done, and then pour the sauce over. This kind of a deglazing sauce is really just an extension of the steak flavor and very typical of France.

And then, we have cooked artichoke hearts, which we put on top. And if you wanted to, you could even top it with a piece of foie gras– that would be going pretty far, I think. And then, fill the artichoke hearts with your béarnaise sauce. This béarnaise always goes very nicely

With a filet steak. ‘Cause they don’t have tremendous amount of flavor of their own, even though they are so expensive. So, you can use a sauce like this and then that would be topped with just a little bit of… parsley, like that. And then, we’ll arrange the asparagus around.

This– well, this dish is called filet tournedos artichaut, or Henry IV. Well, I wasn’t very neat with that. If you didn’t want to have artichoke hearts, you could have large mushroom hearts, which were– which you broiled in the oven until they were just tender, and then,

Put the… and then put the sauce in that. And, then we have some sautéed potatoes, and those can go in the middle. And then, if you feel that people want a little bit more béarnaise sauce, you could pass the rest of it in a separate bowl.

And that should have a little bit of parsley. Then, if you were feeling very frisky, you could always have a little bit of diced, chopped truffle, which you could pour over, that would be nice. There. Now that’s all ready to serve. I didn’t– I might tell you something

About how to do an artichoke heart. They’re also an expensive luxury. You don’t cook the artichoke heart… you don’t cook the whole artichoke heart first. What you do is you peel it off, like that. And you take your fingers and bend it down that way,

And bend off all the leaves until you’ve come up– you see, by this bending and pulling movement, you’re still keeping on the eatable part of the leaves. And when you’ve come up to about there, you cut it off. And then, you trim off the bottom with your knife.

You want to trim off all the little green parts; you just want to leave just purely white flesh and that’s what’s tender. Anything that’s green isn’t tender. And then when you’ve finished with that, you keep rubbing it with lemon. And then you cook it in a mixture of flour–

Little bit of flour and water and lemon juice and salt, until it’s tender. Now, we have… our most elegant filet steaks. Tournedos artichaut. And with this, we have spared nothing, but truffles, which we could have used. And with it, we’re going to serve a perfectly delicious red bordeaux wine at room temperature.

And again, you don’t skimp on the wine if you’re gonna spend a lot of money on good meat. And we have then, turning from the sublime to the more humble, we have our hamburgers. And the hamburgers have been– are served with this very nice sauce of red wine and marrow.

And this, you could perfectly well use as a company dish. You could serve it with sautéed potatoes, potato crepes, buttered peas. And then with it, you wouldn’t have to serve a very fancy wine. You would use something like a Beaujolais or a California mountain red, which would be very good indeed.

And possibly a green salad and French bread. Now, the most important things about this steak and hamburger show is that you learn as much as you can about the quality of meat. And that means making a friend of your butcher. He’s absolutely your best friend in the world as far as meat goes.

And then also make every effort you can to learn about meat cuts and you won’t be disappointed. Well, that’s all for today on The French Chef. This is Julia Child. Bon appétit. ANNOUNCER: Julia Child is coauthor of the book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Furniture and accessories

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