Bavette | What is it?

In Canada, it’s only popular since a few years. Though, the French people uses it since forever in their cuisine. These days, nonetheless, it gains a lot of fans in our country. We are talking about the bavette, or beef flap, or flank (those are all synonyms).

Nowadays, lots of foodies swear by this stringy meat, but still, a lot of other don’t really know what it is. Keep on reading and you’ll learn everything there is to know about the beef bavette.

Why is it called a “bavette”?

In French, bavette means “bib” or even “flap”. That’s why it is also called a beef flap meat. But why is it called like that? Some will think that it’s because it comes from the beef’s chest or neck, where we usually hang a bib.

FALSE! As a matter of fact, this meat’s so-called because its cut’s shape strongly reminds of a baby bib.

Where is it from?

And to answer the previous question you might’ve had… No, it doesn’t come from the animal’s chest or its neck. This fibrous, long and flat meat cut actually comes from the abdominal region, more precisely from the belly and the bottom sirloin.

See it on this following schema:

As you can you see above, there are mainly two parts which can provide what we call bavette steaks. (1) is the bottom sirloin, and (2) is the flank.

How to cook it?

The beef flap is a meat that is best cooked rare or medium rare, or even medium, according to your taste. But just know that if you cook it for too long, it will lose a bit of its delicious flavours.

As this is a pretty tough and stringy cut, we suggest marinating it a few hours before you cook it to tenderize it a little.

Your marinade should incidentally contain an acid ingredient to help it eliminate more meat muscular tissues.

Here’s an article that might be interesting:

Article – Marinade vs Dry rub : what should we use?

Do you want another tip? As the bavette is a thin cut, you should cook it at very high heat, but for a short period of time. Depending on your doneness preferences, leave it 3 to 6 minutes on each side, for an optimal result.

And once it’s ready, let it sit a few minutes. Then, slice the meat opposite to the grain, always.