This coming Thursday, the inaugural World Steak Challenge takes place in Hyde Park, London.  A chance to find where the very best steak in the world comes from.

The idea behind the competition is to offer producers of steak (cattle farmers, cattle ranchers and beef wholesalers) from across the globe the chance to benchmark their products against their competitors.

There are entries from: Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States and Uruguay.

A few weeks ago I was approached by the organisers and asked to be a judge on their international panel, which of course I said yes to. So I am now looking forward to tasting the very best steaks from around the world and helping to decide who is the world’s best steak producer.

The Contest Details

• After 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. All steaks that achieve the highest gold medal scores in the technical judging will go into the second stage of judging.

• Gold medal steaks will be cooked on a BBQ by chefs for an agreed time and specification, scored by a new panel of judges drawn from a wide range of nationalities and expertise to ensure diverse international tastes are accounted for.

•  The scores awarded at this stage for each steak will be added to the total from stage one to reach an overall score.  At this point, the sirloin/striploin with the highest total score will be awarded the title World’s Best Steak and its producer World’s Best Steak Producer.

• The judging will be 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 is not revealed until both stages are complete. In this challenge, there is no minimum or maximum maturation date for products entered.

The World Steak Challenge site is well worth a visit and bookmarking as a useful source of information about steak from around the world, plus lots of great tips on how to cook great steak. You can also check out this brief YouTube video about the contest and its aims.