A Distinctive, Deeply Flavoured Steak Best Cooked with Care

Chef Valentine Warner loves hanger steak:
"Hanger steak, until fairly recently was known more by its French name onglet steak. This cut circumnavigates the diaphragm and so is a long and relatively thin, fibrous muscular steak. Having done a lot of work over the life of the beast it is particularly delicious in it beefiness but with a faint ’pale’ offal quality that I love. This is not a cut for cooking rare or one for those who like their meat cooked through. Hanger steak wants to be medium-rare to medium and is therefore best rested at an internal temperature of about 54°C. The density and structure of the meat needs patience and cooks a little longer than one would expect for a cut so narrow.

Hanger steak responds well to charcoal and the frying pan. Start it over a high heat, as you really want to achieve some browning for maximum taste delivery.

In France, and classically, it is served in bistros with béarnaise sauce, pommes frites and a watercress salad, or instead with a strong jus containing shallots and a little red wine, all enriched with cold butter. Both of these are most delicious.

I tend to try and not reinvent the wheel with hanger steak and therefore try not to deviate from classic sauces that compliment this cut of steak such as fresh or dried porcini mushrooms plus a little vermouth and cream.

Occasionally in marinating hanger steak I will use a mixture of collapsed anchovies with fresh chilli, fresh garlic, Dijon mustard, fresh rosemary needles, tomato purée and a little red wine.

Ground the steak well as a part player in steak burgers to add a more robust texture.

Good value and very tasty its imperative that once given a long rest it's then sliced fairly thinly across the direction of the muscle grain. 

Despite my advice that if searing hanger steak then it's best not overcooked, braising it is a different matter altogether. This internal steak (sometimes actually classified as offal) is delicious when slow cooked whole with maybe porcini mushrooms and white wine or in say a mild sauce made from dried chillies or simply with cider, a little dry-cured smoked back bacon, apples and carrots. Tender and giving this was actually more common in the UK than I’d understood."