No matter where life takes you, good food will always be there. Discover the top beef meals and dishes you can encounter in different countries of the world.
German comic creator and novelist Walter Moers once said that “Ordinary folks prefer similar taste—they'd sooner eat the same things all the time—but a gourmet would sample a fried park bench just to know how it tastes.” While you may not be itching to chow down on a fried park bench anytime soon, there are a plethora of globally-inspired recipes out there you’d surely like to try for yourself.
Meat, and beef especially, is a workhouse ingredient that hasn’t yet lived up to its fullest potential. Its use in recipes is endless as a comfort food found all around the world. People across the globe have unique methods for cooking delicious beef dishes. Let’s take a peek at a few popular beef dishes from around the world that can broaden your culinary horizons.
The UK: Steak and Kidney Pudding
A favorite beef dish across the pond is basically a free-standing pot pie. Despite its name, this British dish is satisfyingly savory. Steak and kidney pudding is made by enclosing diced beef and pieces of pig or lamb kidney with gravy inside a suet pastry. As rustic comfort food, the notoriety of this hot British meal is wide-scale. You can even find it mentioned in the Harry Potter series.
Ethiopia: Kitfo
Of the popular beef dishes from around the world on this list, kitfo is uniquely the only raw choice. As a highly praised food in Ethiopia, this minced raw beef will literally melt in your mouth. You can compare it to an uncooked hamburger made with herb-infused butter, filled with delightful spices, and eaten with a spongy flatbread called injera instead of a classic bun. This dish offers the purest and smoothest taste of beef your taste buds can experience.
Argentina: Milanesa
Considered the unofficial national dish of Argentina—and widely popular in many Latin American countries—Milanesa is a crowd favorite due to its simplicity and unrivaled taste. Related to the American chicken fried steak or Austrian Schnitzel, Milanesa is a thin cut of beef that’s breaded and fried in a hot-oil pan. Due to the beef cut, the crusted meat curls up during frying and is then tossed onto a plate to be served with fried potatoes or rice and beans.
France: Châteaubriand
Chateaubriand is a remarkable menu item that's seen at a variety of fancy French restaurants. This steak dish is a namesake of the French aristocrat known as François-René de Chateaubriand. The story goes that Chateaubriand’s chef prepared a thick piece of beef tenderloin with a distinct cooking method: two poor-quality steaks wrapped around a larger boneless cut of beef that’s superiorly cooked to perfection.
These days, you won’t see people making these common steak cooking mistakes with Chateaubriand. Traditional chateaubriand is simply a large center cut steak with simple seasoning that’s roasted to perfection. You’ll always find it served alongside a classic red wine or shallot sauce to satisfy the palette.
