Layered Wagyu beef steak

➊ We cut the large part of the boiled tip 90 degrees across the grain. This works best if it is cut on a slicing machine while it is still slightly frozen. Alternatively, and with a little time and patience, a ham knife will also work. The thickness of the cut should be in the range of 1-2 mm - the thinner the better.

➋ Then stack the wafer-thin slices until they are about 4 cm high. This can quickly become 25-30 layers. The more layers per cm, the more delicate the end result. If you come across slices that have veins or visible tendons during the process, these should be sorted out. Even a 1 mm thick tendon is and remains a tendon that can get stuck between your teeth.

➌ Now stick small wooden skewers into the piles of meat so that you can cut cubes with an edge length of approx. 3 cm. The offcuts are perfect for Philly cheese steaks, or you can chop them up again and have minced meat for 1-2 burgers.

➍ Season the resulting cubes to taste on all sides and fry them like a mini steak on all 4 sides for 1 ½ minutes each. I recommend a target core temperature of 55 °C. I usually fry the cubes up to 45 °C
and then let it rest for a while.

➎ The skewers go wonderfully with a starter salad, or you can serve them solo as a small finger food snack.

David's BBQ tip: "In this way we have created a very tender 'piece' of meat with a strong flavour. The effort is very high when you compare it to a tendon-free piece from the back. But it is much cheaper and with comparable tenderness and a little extra flavour. If the cut of choice does not have enough fat, you can add thin, heavily marbled slices from other cuts to the cubes. This method is of course suitable for other pieces that are just above the tenderness limit, such as the lower leg, top leg and nut."

David Pietralla: "I love picanha or boiled beef, especially from German Wagyu. In reality, only the tip of the German boiled beef is suitable for real picanha, i.e. pan-fried steak meat. The flat tip up to the point where the muscle thickens (for the butchers: up to the third vein) is super tender steak meat. But with Wagyu in particular, due to the high prices, it is hardly feasible to buy a 3 kg boiled beef and then only use 1.2 kg of it for pan-fried meat. The rest of the boiled beef is usually heavily marbled and very aromatic, but the fiber is simply too firm. The shorter the fiber, the more tender the meat - so we shorten the fiber and then put it back together so that we can still grill a nice pink core."