Recipes

The great Aussie celebration plate, done at home

There was a time when steak crowned with garlic prawns was the fanciest thing an Australian bistro could put in front of you. It still earns its keep — and it turns out the whole plate is a 25-minute, one-pan job. Sear the medallions, rest them under foil, and the prawns cook in garlic butter in the same pan while you set the table. The resting juices go back into the butter at the end, which is the part the bistros never told you about. Anniversary, birthday, or just a Tuesday that deserves better — this is the one.

The premium shortcut to a better stir-fry

Most stir-fry troubles start with the beef spending too long in the wok, toughening up while you wait for it to colour. Sirloin fixes that before you start. It's tender from the first slice, so the strips need only a minute over ferocious heat — which means the sugar snaps stay bright and snappy and the sauce goes glossy instead of stewed. Twenty-five minutes including the marinade, and one steak quietly stretches to feed four.

One steak, four plates, no oven

Here's a trick worth knowing: one good steak, rested properly and sliced thin, feeds the whole table when there's a proper salad underneath it. The sirloin in your share is made for the job — tender enough to slice like silk, with enough flavour that every forkful counts. The honey-mustard dressing is four pantry things shaken in a jar, and the salad is whatever's crisp in the crisper. Fifteen minutes of actual cooking, one pan, and dinner looks like you tried a lot harder than you did.

The fanciest steak in the share, on a Tuesday

Eye fillet has a reputation as restaurant food — the cut you order out because you're worried about wrecking it at home. Here's the truth: two medallions, a hot pan and eight minutes is all it takes, and the garlic cream sauce builds itself in the same pan while the steaks rest. No tricks, no cheffy equipment, no stress. If it's your first go at the tenderest cut in the pack, this is exactly where to start.

Ten minutes on the grill, and the fat cap does the talking

Every sirloin comes with a strip of creamy fat along one edge, and the barbecue is where it earns its keep. Stand the steak on that edge for a couple of minutes and it renders into a crisp, golden rind while the grill handles the rest. The garlic mushrooms cook alongside on the hotplate in the same ten minutes, drinking up butter as they go. Dinner for two off one steak, and the only washing up worth mentioning is the tongs.

The counter lunch that never left the menu

There's a reason every pub in the country keeps a T-bone on the board — it's the steak that looks after itself. One 500g T-bone out of your share, a hot barbecue, chips in the oven and a sharp little salad, and you've built the classic without a single tricky step. The only technique worth knowing is this: the smaller fillet side cooks faster than the big sirloin side, so point it toward the cooler edge of the grill. That's it. That's the whole secret, and dinner's on the table in half an hour.

The pub bistro's best seller, cooked in your own kitchen for a fraction of the price

There's a reason scotch fillet with creamy mushroom sauce never comes off the pub menu — it's the steak-and-sauce combination that pleases absolutely everyone. And here's the good news: it's genuinely a 25-minute dinner. The marbling through a scotch keeps it juicy while it sears, and the same pan gives you a glossy mushroom sauce in the time the steak takes to rest. One steak, one pan, and a dinner that tastes like someone else did the cooking.

Steak night on a school night — 25 minutes, and none of the shortcuts show

There's a version of steak night that waits for the weekend, and then there's this one. The BBQ steak is the everyday griller in your pack — the one you don't save for an occasion. While it sizzles in a smoking-hot pan, a bakery baguette turns into proper garlic bread in the oven, and a bag of slaw gets a two-minute dressing that beats anything from a bottle. Twenty-five minutes from fridge to table, and every plate looks like Friday.

One steak, two people, zero arguments

A 500g T-bone is really two steaks sharing a bone — a strip of sirloin on one side, a piece of fillet on the other. That makes it the fairest steak dinner going, if you carve it right. Cook it hot, rest it well, then take both muscles off the bone, slice them across the grain and deal them out so each plate gets some of each: the sirloin's flavour and chew, the fillet's butter-soft give. With a sharp rocket salad and good bread, that's dinner for two settled — and nobody drew the short straw.