The World Steak Challenge 2018 is approaching, providing a great opportunity to put your knowledge of the end product and faith in what you are producing to the test.
The World Steak Challenge is an international competition and is designed to put steaks through a standardised judging and cooking process to place the emphasis on the quality of the meat, this favours the natural qualities within the Aberdeen Angus breed so this should give you a head start!
This year the World Steak Challenge will take place at the Magic Roundabout, London on Wednesday 4th July 2018.
If you would like to find out any further information on the challenge, then please ‘click here’. Entries close in June 2018 for this year’s competition so don’t let the opportunity pass you by!
The process for this year’s challenge is shown below:
Judging process
All steaks entered will be judged by using the internationally agreed criteria.
Stage 1:
Technical testing will cover two areas, raw and cooked.
Raw criteria:
- Appearance
- Aroma
- Colour
- Marbling
- Consistency of fat trim
Following the raw analysis, steaks will be cooked to a level of medium and probed to a core temperature of between 50-55 degrees Celsius before being allowed to rest for five minutes and then sampled by the judges.
Cooked criteria:
- Appearance
- Aroma
- Tenderness
- Flavour
- Succulence
The first section of judging will be technical. Scores will be added up and all the steaks attaining more than the top standard will be given a Gold medal to highlight the best quality achievable.
Those missing out by the closest margin will win Silver medals. We will also recognise those that deserve a Bronze medal. All medal winners will gain the right to use their official Gold, Silver or Bronze medal logos on packs and in all promotion.
The top-scoring Gold medal winners from each category will progress to the second stage of judging, which determines the category winners.
Stage 2:
All Gold medal steaks will be cooked on a BBQ by chefs and BBQ experts for an agreed time and specification based on a home BBQ cooking environment and scored by a new panel of judges drawn from a wide range of nationalities and expertise to ensure international differences in taste are accounted for.
The scores awarded here for each steak will be added to the total from Stage 1, making one final score. At that point, the World’s Best Sirloin, World’s Best Rib Eye and the World’s Best Fillet will be decided. The highest scoring Grass-fed and Grain-fed steaks will also be recognised.
The steak with the highest overall score will be declared the World’s Best Steak and its supplier given the title World’s Best Steak Producer.
Independent Judging
The judging is independent and monitored at every stage. All steaks will be coded throughout the judging process so that the producer’s name and country of origin will not be revealed until both Stage 1 and Stage 2 are complete. In this challenge, there is no minimum or maximum maturation date for products entered into the competition. Every steak will be judged on its own merits against the internationally agreed judging criteria.