Hairy Bikers pork chop rosti is a Romanian idea, with grated potato packed onto a loin steak and fried crisp. The recipe is in Meat Feasts, and it serves four at about 930 calories in 55 minutes.
Meat Feasts is blunt about the calories, calling it “not one for diet nights”, which 150g of melted butter accounts for on its own. Every gram of it goes into the grated potato, because butter is what binds the crust and keeps it stuck to the meat.
That bond only forms if the potato is bone dry, so the squeezing is not a step to hurry. Damp potato slides off in the pan while dry potato packs down tight, then crisps into something you can turn with a spatula.
Hairy Bikers Pork Chop Rosti Recipe
Description
Each steak is bashed thin, spread with wholegrain mustard on both sides and topped with a quarter of the potato mix. They fry on both sides before finishing in the oven, while the pan juices turn into a cider sauce sharpened with two mustards and softened with cream.
Ingredients
For the Pork:
For the Cider Sauce:
Instructions
- Flatten and mustard the steaks: Trim any excess fat from the pork, then put each steak between two sheets of clingfilm and bash it with a rolling pin to flatten it slightly. Season well, then spread a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard over both sides of each steak.
- Squeeze the potato: Coarsely grate the peeled potatoes onto a clean tea towel, gather it into a bundle and squeeze hard to get rid of as much liquid as you can. The drier the potato, the better it sticks.
- Pack the crust: Mix the squeezed potato with the melted butter, a pinch of salt and some pepper. Take a quarter of the mix and pack it down on top of a steak, then repeat with the rest. Heat the oven to 200°C/Fan 180°C/Gas 6.
- Fry both sides: Heat a good tablespoon of butter and the oil in a large frying pan, add two steaks potato side up and fry for 2 minutes. Use a couple of spatulas to hold the topping in place while you turn them, then fry for another 2 minutes.
- Into the oven: Move the steaks to a baking tray potato side up and fry the remaining two the same way. Put the tray in the oven and cook for 15 minutes.
- Start the sauce: Put the frying pan with all its juices back on a low heat, add the shallot and fry for 2 minutes until soft. Sprinkle over the flour and stir it in well with a wooden spoon.
- Reduce the cider: Gradually add the cider, stirring all the time to work out any lumps. Stir in the last teaspoon of wholegrain mustard, the Dijon, sugar and honey, then simmer for 4 to 5 minutes until the liquid has almost halved.
- Finish with cream: Stir in the cream and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, until it halves again and coats the back of a spoon. Rest the steaks on a board for 5 minutes, then serve with the sauce.
FAQs
The mustard goes on twice, is that a misprint?
No, and the five teaspoons split four to one for a reason. Four of them go on the steaks, one goes in the sauce right at the end.
On the steaks it is doing two separate jobs on two separate faces. Underneath it sits against the hot pan and seasons the meat as it browns, while on top it works as glue. Pork loin is lean and smooth, so grated potato has almost nothing to hold onto without it.
Chops or steaks, does the butcher’s label matter?
Less than you would think, since the cut is not doing anything clever here. It just has to be flat and lean, so a chop works as long as you take the bone out first. Leave the bone in and the steak sits at an angle in the pan, which sends the potato sliding off the high side.
What the cut is doing is carrying an enormous amount of butter and cream. The pork stroganoff starts from the same pork medallions or steaks and lands at 228 calories a portion, against 930 here, because it finishes in stock and half-fat crème fraîche instead.
How dry is dry enough for the potato?
Wring the tea towel until nothing runs out, then wait a moment and wring it again, because more always comes. Grated raw potato holds far more water than it looks like it does, and every drop left in there turns to steam in the pan and lifts the crust away.
The other thing that loosens it is turning too soon. Give it the full two minutes so the butter has set the potato into one sheet, and go in with two spatulas rather than one. Raw grated potato behaves nothing like cooked, which is why tattie scones steam theirs and rice it hot into flour. Raw and grated crisps up, cooked and mashed binds together.
450ml of cider for one sauce, really?
You end up with nowhere near that much. The pan reduces by half, then by half again once the cream goes in, so 450ml becomes something closer to 150ml of very concentrated sauce.
Pick a dry cider, because there is already honey and muscovado sugar going in and a sweet one tips it over. If you want to see where else that combination turns up, somerset chicken builds a cider, wholegrain mustard and cream sauce too, though it adds stock alongside the cider and finishes under a grill with Cheddar melted over the top.
Why braised red cabbage specifically?
Because the sauce is butter, cream, honey and sugar, and it needs something with acid in it rather than another rich thing on the plate. The red cabbage they point to ends its own method by saying it is great with roast pork, so the pairing is theirs rather than mine.
It also fits the timing. That cabbage cooks on the hob for 40 minutes covered, then another 10 with sliced apple stirred through, which means the oven stays free for the steaks and the two finish together.
