Wagyu British Beef Whole Ribeye | ±2.5kg

Wagyu Whole Ribeye - Roast Whole, or Cut Into Steaks

±2.5kg. Serves 8 to 9. Delivered chilled. Around 1½ hours as a roast.

1. Chilled, or defrosted if you froze it
Delivered chilled in a vacuum pack. If you froze it, move it to the fridge and allow 26 to 28 hours. Once opened or defrosted, keep at 0-4°C and use within 24 hours.

2. Decide: joint or steaks
A whole ribeye does both. As a roast with all the trimmings, count 250g a head. As steaks, cut between the bones of the grain at 3cm, which gives you roughly ten steaks of 250g. You can also do both: a joint from the thicker end, steaks from the rest.

3. Temper properly
Out of the fridge 2 hours before it goes in the oven. A 2.5kg joint straight from the fridge will be raw in the middle long after the outside is grey.

4. Dry, season, tie
Pat the surface dry and season heavily with coarse salt. If the eye of fat makes the joint want to fall open, tie it at 4cm intervals so it holds a round shape and cooks evenly.

5. Start it hot
Oven at 240°C. 20 minutes, no more. This is for colour and crust only. You can sear it in a heavy pan instead if the joint fits.

6. Then low
Drop the oven to 140°C and leave the door shut. Roughly 12 to 14 minutes per 500g from this point, but treat that as a guide and the probe as the answer.

7. Pull at 48°C
Take it out well before the temperature you want. A joint this size carries on cooking on the board and will climb to 52-54°C, which is medium rare.

8. Rest 25 to 30 minutes
Loosely tented, somewhere warm. Long rests do not make a joint cold, they make it sliceable. Skipping this is how the juice ends up on the board instead of in the meat.

9. Carve across the grain
1cm slices. Find the direction the fibres run in the eye of the muscle and cut across them. Serve the fatty outer edge as well as the eye, it is the best part.

Keep the fat
Pour the rendered fat from the tray into a jar. Wagyu dripping keeps for weeks in the fridge and is worth more than most cooking oils. Roast potatoes in it.

Optional: melt a flavoured butter over the rested meat rather than cooking the beef in it.

If chilled
Keep refrigerated at 0-4°C in its unopened vacuum pack and use by the date on the label. You can freeze it unopened at any point up to that date - at -18°C or below it will keep well for up to 12 months.

If frozen
Keep frozen at -18°C until needed. Use by the date on the pack.
Defrost in the fridge, in its packaging, allow 26-28 hours. Never defrost at room temperature or in a microwave.
Once opened or defrosted, keep refrigerated at 0-4°C and use within 24 hours. Do not refreeze once thawed.
A faint metallic smell on first opening the pack is normal for vacuum-packed beef and will disperse within a few minutes in open air.