Recipes

Two small steaks, three full plates

Here's a quiet bit of kitchen maths. Two 140g medallions doesn't sound like dinner for three — until you roast a tray of pumpkin, sear the fillet medium-rare, rest it properly and slice it thin across the grain. Suddenly every plate gets sweet golden pumpkin, creamy feta, toasted pepitas and a generous fan of the tenderest beef there is. It's the kind of dinner that feels abundant without being heavy, and it makes the smallest pack in the share go further than you'd believe.

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.

The Friday ritual: one great steak, spuds that shatter

Call it sirloin, porterhouse or New York strip — it's the same handsome steak, and it's the one waiting in your Pack C share. This is the Friday-night ritual version: chat potatoes boiled, smashed flat and roasted until they shatter, while the steak gets a hard sear and a minute under foaming garlic-and-rosemary butter. Nothing clever, nothing fussy — just the plate half the pubs in the country built their reputation on, done at home for a fraction of the price.

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 easiest steak you'll ever put on the barbecue

Fillet is so lean there's next to nothing to drip onto the flames — which means no flare-ups, no scorched patches, no juggling steaks around the grill. While the potatoes bake away under the hood in their foil jackets, the medallions want just a few quiet minutes over direct heat and a rest under a melting knob of garlic butter. It's barbecue cooking at its most relaxed, and the reward is the tenderest steak you'll eat all year.

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.

Chops, spuds and beans in one pan — and about four minutes of washing up

The trick to a real one-pan dinner is the order of operations. Brown the chops first, so the lamb fat flavours everything that follows. Potatoes into that same fat, cut-side down. A splash of stock, a lid on, and the pan does the work while you set the table. The chops go back on top at the end with the beans, so nothing overcooks and every drop of flavour ends up in the pan juices. Fifty minutes, one pan, dinner done — that's the whole pitch, really.