Is it actually possible to cook a good steak on a sandwich press?
After Pauline Hanson prepared a steak dinner for Barnaby Joyce in the Houses of Parliament, we put her leftover grilling technique to the test to see if it was masterful or the wrong steak.
The sandwich press is a versatile piece of engineering. Besides ham and cheese, it can reheat pizza, fry eggs, and make quesadillas easy.
But pounding extremely marbled wagyu into a sandwich press wasn’t something I had considered until then. Pauline Hanson’s dinner with Barnaby Joyce last night. Hanson cooked three steaks on the sandwich press in his Parliament House office as part of his campaign to court Joyce’s withdrawal from the Coalition backbencher to One Nation.
Initial thoughts around the Good Food table this morning ranged from “disgusting” to “inane”, but as someone who isn’t averse to boiling instant noodles in an electric hotel kettle, I thought the steak press method needed to be tested. Maybe Hanson was onto something? Joyce’s beef looked like it had a pretty enviable crust. Also, I hadn’t prepared lunch.
After spending more time analyzing the 24-second video of Hanson’s cooking office steak I had some observations that are more than any person with a full-time job should make.
- The steaks were from Gina Rinehart’s beef company, 2GR. (You didn’t expect a grass-fed hippie cow raised regeneratively in Hanson’s kitchen to cause a stink, did you?) They looked extremely well-marbled and—by my best guess—were striploins. 2GR wagyu strip loin sells for $145 per pound at bone-in retail.
- In an incredible scene, a steak hits a sandwich press unseasonedRemove directly from vacuum pack.
- The Queensland senator turns the meat with a fork.
I cooked two 8-ounce steaks properly (but not with Rinehart-level marbling). Sydney Morning Herald office sandwich press. One flavored with Saxa after being grilled, a La One Nation (see photo above); the other was garnished with Olsson’s sea salt before going to press for the best chance of a good crust and edible lunch.
What I will say is that the Houses of Parliament should provide staff with busier sandwich presses than the owners of this imprint, otherwise Hanson would have replaced his own Breville (or whatever the brand is – available photos can’t confirm this). Our Nero brand press could not reach and maintain the temperature required for a proper crust and cooking on the steak. There was more burning than sizzle.
Maybe you could get a good result with a thin steak, but those 2GR full-blooded wagyu slices were the big boys. Our office Nero’s would take at least 30 minutes to cook one. The 250-gram steaks were removed from the grill after 12 minutes, when they were in danger of overcooking, but retained a pink-brown-gray hue somewhere between the turn-on Devon and the mutant Kuato. Total Recall.
However: If the burner were hotter, I’d be worried about setting off the smoke alarms. How did Hanson get that dark (and less salty) steak crust on his office sandwich press? I’m not saying nonsense here. I’m just asking about appliance brands and cooking times.
Texture-wise, our Nero sandwich-pressed steaks were good, except for bits of fat that weren’t rendered properly. The pre-seasoned one tasted okay, as hot-cooked salt beef usually does, but it wasn’t quite the keto-diet office hack I was hoping for. Good Food recommends cooking the steak in a sandwich press only if there are no other heating options, but you’re probably better off just ordering delivery.
