CHAPTER 8

The Cook

The barbecue mantra of “low and slow” has been in Aaron’s head ever since he put his first brisket on a cheap offset smoker. And, indeed, he’s logged thousands upon thousands of hours since then, many of them sleepily overnight, gently guiding large pieces of meat into transcendent states of tenderness and flavor. The art of barbecue is very much the art of controlling temperature—how to burn a clean, hot fire while at the same time maintaining absolute temperature consistency inside the cook chamber. But there’s something appealing about the fast cook, too. In barbecue, the product is the smoke. You’re not using the flame. When it comes to grilling stuff—which he loves to do—the flame is the product and you’ve got to figure out how to get the most of it without burning everything up. It’s a completely different challenge.

Indeed, if slow cooking is like steering a canoe on a lake, grilling is like skimming wake on a Jet Ski. And while slow cooking is art, it’s much more forgiving than fast cooking. Fast cooking relays different pleasures, but they require skill to coax out. The most flavorful steak on the planet if poorly cooked is lost to the world. Conversely, an exceptionally well cooked but average piece of meat can still be tasty. In other words, the cooking is super important for steak.

Now, truly, at last, everything is lined up. You have your meat: some excellent steaks you’ve been waiting to cook. Your equipment—sheet pans, towels, tongs, thermometer—is ready. Your grill setup is dialed in, and your fuel source is nearby. It’s time to get grilling.

We’ve taught you how to achieve different grill setups, but now it’s time to figure out when each is appropriate. This depends on factors like the kind of meat (grass fed or grain fed), the cut (lean or fatty), the size (thick or thin), and whether there’s a bone or not.

The two primary goals for great steaks are simple: (1) a robust, savory crust across the entire surface of the meat, and (2) a perfect medium-rare finish (though you can customize this to your own taste).

GOAL #1

A Robust, Savory Crust

The crust is one of the things that makes a steak a steak. No other cut of beef can achieve the steak’s deep, glistening, reddish brown crust, with its crystallized bits of protein and fat sparkling like gems and its deep, irresistible beefy smell. It’s one of the most compelling phenomena in the entire world of food. And this crust comes from complex chemical processes called the Maillard reactions.

Named for the French scientist who discovered them in the early 1900s, the Maillard reactions are often conflated with caramelization. Although both produce complex molecules and both are referred to as browning reactions based on the color they produce in food, they are different. Caramelization involves the simple breakdown of sugars, whereas the Maillard reactions, according to Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking, are all about the thousands of new, distinct compounds created when amino acids react with a carbohydrate or sugar molecule in the presence of high heat. The Maillard effect happens not only to meat but to all sorts of things that brown, including bread, coffee beans, and chocolate. Like caramelization, McGee writes, brown color and deep flavor occur, but “Maillard flavors are more complex and meaty than caramelized flavors, because the involvement of the amino acids adds nitrogen and sulfur atoms to the mix…and produces new families of molecules and new aromatic dimensions.”

That all sounds very sciency, and it is. But the bottom line is, the true glory of steak is not just a result of the cut itself but also, crucially, of how it is cooked: Maillard reactions when applied to the proteins in beef! Even if you boiled a ribeye, god forbid, to perfection, you’d come out with something far less appealing. That’s because Maillard reactions don’t occur in the presence of water. Until water becomes vapor, its temperature can’t exceed its boiling point of 212°F. That’s not hot enough for Maillard reactions to occur. High heat accelerates the rate at which reactions take place and hastens the evaporation of water. That means a dry cooking environment is needed, hence baking, grilling, and frying (yes, frying, that is, cooking with oil, is considered a dry technique, as water is anathema to oil).

So, Maillard is good. But how do you encourage it? How can you guarantee you’re going to get a great crust on your meat? Making sure you have a dry environment, a dry surface, and high enough heat (but not so high that the meat burns) are the keys. Maillard browning occurs most optimally between 225°F and 355°F, so an insane amount of heat isn’t even necessary. High heat only provides speedy browning before the heat has time to penetrate to the interior of the meat.

The most reliable, foolproof method to achieve a great crust is probably to cook the steak in a pan or on a plancha (a thick, steel flattop or griddle, whether fired by gas in a restaurant kitchen or placed on the grill over hot coals). This is because metal is a good conductor of heat, but not too good. It enables a prolonged exposure of the meat to heat, allowing a great range of Maillard reactions to take place.

Grilling can also achieve a tremendous crust, of course, but it’s a little trickier, as the heat is usually much more intense. Glowing red coals can be so hot that browning on the exterior of the steak can happen too rapidly. Before you know it, you’ve taken the meat out of the realm of Maillard reactions and into the zone of pyrolysis (a fancy word for burning).

The art of steak cooking is finding the right rate of heating to accomplish Maillard browning without blowing right through it to burning before the interior is cooked to the desired doneness. That brings us to.…

GOAL #2

Proper Doneness

So let’s get the formalities out of the way: Anyone can cook a steak to well-done. Today, most people—in the United States, anyway—consider that to be overdone, so we’re not going to spend time talking about overcooking steaks. Most steaks taste best at medium-rare. Meat has little flavor when raw and is tough and bland when overcooked. Mid-rare is the fine line between them.

There are exceptions, of course, especially when it comes to butcher’s cuts (see this page). In some cases, the cut itself and the type of beef should have a say as to how the steak is cooked. Certain cuts or styles may benefit from a little more or a little less time over the fire. And everyone has his or her own tastes.

Heat-to-meat ratios can be a little counterintuitive. For the least cooked meat you want the hottest fire. That is, a rare steak is cooked very hot because the outside cooks before the heat penetrates to the interior. Medium-rare takes a little more time and a lower flame because you have to slow it down. A well-done steak (perish the thought!) has to cook even slower over an even lower fire. Some people think well-done should be hotter and longer. That will result in a dry, tough piece of meat. Instead, sear it like a rare steak and then finish it over lower heat.

So how do we heat the interior of the steak to our desired doneness without overheating the exterior? The first thing to remember is that the thickness of the steak is more important than the weight. A two-inch-thick steak that weighs three pounds will cook much more slowly than a three-pound steak that’s only a half inch thick. Well-marbled or fatty meat takes longer to reach the desired temperature than leaner beef because heat conduction is slower through fat than through protein or water. Even the grain of the meat plays a role in the transfer of heat. If the heat source is applied parallel to the grain, the steak will cook about 10 percent faster than if the heat is applied perpendicular to the grain.

When you really think about it, the exterior of a steak is vastly overcooked—beyond well-done into the realm of desiccation and near carbonization. We mention this only as a reminder that much of the pleasure of eating a great steak comes not from uniform doneness but rather from a contrast of finishes. That crisp, complex, crunchy crust is sublime in part because it’s the opposite of the moist, satiny interior. And between these two extremes are intermediate degrees of doneness, including a thin band of gray, well-done meat just inside the crust meat that gets rarer and rarer as you move toward the center. The best steaks are when that band of well-done meat isn’t too thick but also isn’t nonexistent (it’s all about textural complexity, people!).

Sounds pretty tricky, doesn’t it? But really, there’s one key: work on the interior of the steak slowly. That’s why we spent all that time talking about two or three heat zones. Indirect cooking is your friend.

The only other question is how to measure the interior doneness of the steak. We’ve already waxed poetic about the Thermapen (see this page), so now’s the time to use it! Why leave things up to guesswork when you can be precise with an instant-read thermometer? Just make sure to aim the probe carefully at the center of the steak to get the most accurate reading and to take the temperature at several spots to get a sense of what’s going on in there. Remember that the steak will be ten to fifteen degrees cooler next to the bone, so plan accordingly.

The last thing to consider is the concept of carryover. When you pull a steak off the fire, it doesn’t stop cooking immediately. All of the heat you’ve introduced remains in the meat, working its way to the center, and you must account for this residual heat when you estimate doneness. When you’re cooking hot and fast, carryover will be more aggressive than when you’re cooking low and slow. And then, the amount and forcefulness of the carryover also depends on the mass of meat that was heated and if there’s a bone. A thin, wide skirt steak will not carry over too much as the heat will quickly dissipate, while a thick-cut ribeye will hold on to more heat. With the latter, it’s good to pull the meat about five to ten degrees lower than the desired temperature and assume it will eventually get to where you want it to be. You probably want some concrete numbers—which is always risky with steak, but here it goes: To reach 132°F, the middle of medium-rare, aim to pull the steak off around 125°F to 128°F. But remember, every piece of meat is different, and feel always trumps temp! After that, let it rest for five minutes before slicing (we know that sounds like a short rest period, but trust us, we’ve tested; see this page).

Worth Their Salt

Steak without salt is sacrilege. It just doesn’t work. Salt isn’t just salty. It enhances the flavor of whatever it’s applied to. And when applied in the proper amount, salt should never cause you to say, “Oh, this tastes salty.” Instead, you’ll say, “Wow, this steak tastes damn good!”

But the question always comes up of when to salt. Often people don’t think about it until the last minute, and then they rain a downpour of salt onto their steak while the pan is heating up. Unfortunately, this is the worst time to salt the steak.

It’s good to salt the meat in advance of cooking it, just not immediately before you heat it. Because there is an electrical attraction between NaCL (sodium chloride) and H₂O molecules when you salt a steak, the first thing that happens is the salt draws moisture out of the meat. This extracted water then dissolves the salt, instantly creating a mini brine. After fifteen to twenty minutes, the meat starts to pull the salty moisture back into its cells. The salt penetrates into the fiber of the meat, traveling deeper into it the longer you wait. People worry that salt will dry out the meat (and over time it will, but meat will also dry out on its own over time), but in fact the opposite is true: it makes the meat juicier.

If you cook the meat only five minutes after you’ve salted it, you won’t have given the steak enough time to pull the moisture back into its cells. There will be a wet slurry of salty water sitting atop the meat, which will slow down the browning of the exterior and speed up the cooking of the interior. Bad! If you start with wet meat and you’re hoping to get a nice brown crust, you could end up with an overdone interior by the time you achieve it.

Because we can’t help ourselves, and because we love this type of cooking experiment, we trial cooked a number of 1½-inch-thick ribeyes that had been salted at different intervals before cooking: 48 hours, 24 hours, 12 hours, 6 hours, 4 hours, 2 hours, 1 hour, 5 minutes, and just before going on the grill. We sprinkled each steak with a measure of kosher salt equivalent to 1.5 percent of its original weight, which meant a four-hundred-gram steak got hit with six grams of salt. All of the ribeyes were cooked straight out of the 35°F refrigerator (again, if this runs counter to what you’ve been taught, take a look at this page) on a plancha heated to 350°F until they reached an internal temperature of 127°F.

The results of the test were quite clear: the ones that had been salted longer not only cooked better—more evenly and faster—but tasted better, too. Our favorite was the steak salted 48 hours before we cooked it. On the grill, it quickly formed a deep and even crust (maybe because the exterior had dried a bit). When we looked at a cross section after slicing, there was a pretty dramatic shift between the crusted exterior and the pink interior. Most of the other steaks had a more gradual gradient. The flavor of the 48-hour steak was also the best. The salt had thoroughly penetrated and integrated with the meat, seasoning it inside and out.

The steaks salted between 24 and 48 hours all turned out equally well. The main difference from the 48-hour meat was that more gradual gradient between the well-done exterior and mid-rare interior. They all tasted good and had a good integration of salt and meat, but they were not transcendent like the 48-hour steak was.

The difficulties mounted for the steaks salted for 4 hours and under. Even on the 4-hour steak, there was a wet residue on the surface. When cooked, all of these steaks developed blotchy crusts. Most disappointing (when compared to the longer-salted steaks) was the flavor, which clearly tasted like salt on the outside and unseasoned meat on the inside. There was no integration.

Listen, if you don’t have time to plan ahead and end up salting immediately before or during cooking, we’re not going to tell you to throw your steaks away. They will still taste good, but you won’t end up with that beautiful merging of meat and salt. But if you can remember to salt your meat four hours or more in advance, you’ll be golden.

Generally, it’s nice to keep at least a couple of different types of salt on hand. Coarsely grained kosher salt is easy to sprinkle with the fingers. A medium-grain sea salt has a great briny flavor and some slightly larger crystals, which are good for an aggressive salt flavor and the occasional crunchy bite.

Even if you’ve presalted—as long as it wasn’t too heavy—a little finishing salt is an effective touch. To this end, every kitchen should have a big bowl handy of lovely, flaky finishing salt. Maldon sea salt, which comes from the southeast coast of England, is not too strongly flavored, is delicately scented with minerals, and either dissolves quickly on the surface of the food or offers a lovely little crunch when encountered by the teeth. Just sprinkle a bit of it or some other comparable salt on top of the steak before it hits the table.

Fats and Oils: Never Cease with the Grease

Another question that often comes up with steak is, do you need to use butter or oil in the pan or on the grill when cooking? The answer is largely a matter of preference and depends on the method of cooking.

On the grill: Many people spray the grates with oil before throwing on the meat. An easier solution is to rub a little cooking oil over the meat before putting it on the grill. You get more thorough coverage of the meat, and the oil acts as a conductor of heat to help the steaks cook more quickly and evenly. Just remember that when preparing the grill, always scrape down the grates with a grill brush before cooking and then put a little oil on a folded paper towel and, using tongs, wipe down the grates.

In the pan: For the same reasons just cited, it’s a good idea either to coat the meat with oil or to put a little oil in the pan. An elegant solution is to use the meat’s own natural fat. If you have a thick ribeye with a fat cap on one side, place it on its fatty side in a hot pan to render out some of the fat. When you have enough melted fat to cover the pan, turn the steak on its flat side and begin cooking.

What about finishing the steak? Should you use butter or oil at the end? That’s a matter of preference, but it never hurts. Butter can be a strong flavor, but it goes well with salt and protein and certainly improves bland meat. For pan-cooked steaks, many chefs toss in a few pats of butter along with garlic and thyme and finish the steak by pan basting the seasoned, melted butter over the meat for a minute or two before plating and cutting. For his part, Jordan loves the Italian practice of dousing the cut meat with a generous drizzle of fine extra-virgin olive oil, which gives it wonderful richness and a hint of flavor. A good olive oil can be sweet, nutty, slightly bitter—all flavors that accent the steak beautifully. And as the juice from the steak runs into the platter and commingles with the oil, you get the most delicious little liquid for dipping meat, bread, whatever into as you mop up the scraps.

Sometimes it all boils down to family tradition (Aaron’s father’s cold butter baste, for example).

Does Steak Need to be at Room Temperature before Cooking?

For decades—generations, maybe—one of the primary instructions in any steak recipe was to let the meat come to room temperature before cooking. Recipes would usually call for the steaks to be removed from the refrigerator twenty to thirty minutes before cooking to ensure they cooked more evenly and quickly. But we’re here to tell you this is baloney. There are many reasons why this is bad advice for steak.

Let’s start with the obvious: twenty to thirty minutes is a joke. A half hour is not enough time to let the meat warm by two degrees, let alone thirty degrees (the difference between your fridge and room temperature). Actually, it will take several hours for a steak to get up to room temperature. Those hours sound great if you’re a bacteria or a fly trying to get some of that juicy raw meat! Sorry, we don’t mean to be alarmist, and your meat is probably fine if you do let it sit out. If we were talking about a large hunk of meat like a pork roast or a brisket, a few hours at room temperature isn’t a bad idea (though the relentlessly cautious USDA would frown), considering how long it takes to cook and the risk of overcooking the outside by the time the inside comes to temperature. But this isn’t really relevant when it comes to small cuts like steak.

We’re going to go way against common wisdom here and say that sometimes you want the steak to be cold when you cook it. This is especially true for a very thin cut, where the trick is keeping the inside at medium-rare while producing a good crust. The colder the meat to begin with, the longer it will take to heat up, giving you the time to brown the exterior properly. Thick steaks (an inch and a half to two and a half inches) are another question. There, the challenge is getting the interior done enough in the relatively short time it takes to build a deep crust.

Basically, unless you want to leave your steak out for hours and hours, you’re going to be cooking it with some chill on it from the fridge. Guess what? That’s what almost all restaurants do. They can’t have raw meat sitting around at room temperature all day, and the chill helps with thin steaks anyway. Whether or not you’ve tempered your steaks or are cooking them straight from the chill, the point is to be aware of the temperature of the meat when you put it on. As the exterior begins to sizzle, visualize what’s happening with the cold meat internally. Understanding the temperature of the meat and cooking accordingly is much more important than having it at a certain temperature before your start.

The Tyranny of Grill Marks and the Myth of the One-Time Flip

In the past, in magazine photos, ads, and television shows, that crosshatched pattern of dark, charred grill marks was the hallmark of a perfectly juicy steak right off the grill. The thinking on that has changed, and nowadays we recoil with horror at the sight of conventional grill marks. Why? Grill marks indicate a delicious Maillardian crust, so why limit that tastiness to just a small portion of the steak’s total surface? Go for the all-over crust—that’s where the flavor is! Of course, the danger in going for the all-over crust is that the area where the bars of the grill touched the meat becomes not just crust but also bitter, blackened, burned char. So the grill marks can sometimes become a flaw, not a symbol of success.

Combatting this requires denying another steak myth, one that chefs continue to perpetuate today: the one-time flip. That’s when you put a steak on the fire or in a pan, you don’t turn it for a set number of minutes, and then you turn it only once. Although this is a good way to get dark grill marks, it is not a good way to create a crust. Science has even debunked it. As food-science writer Harold McGee told the New York Times, “It’s true that frequent flipping cooks the meat more evenly, and also significantly faster: flip every minute instead of once or twice and the meat will be done in a third less time. This works because neither side has time to absorb a lot of heat when facing the fire or to lose heat when facing away. You don’t get neat grill marks or the best char this way, but with high enough heat, the surface develops plenty of flavor.”

FROZEN

A few years ago, the food magazine Cook’s Illustrated published a piece that began, “Rather than follow the convention of thawing frozen steaks before grilling them, we discovered that we could get steaks that were just as juicy by cooking them straight from the freezer.” Not surprisingly, given how catchy notions spread on the Internet, that content was seized and amplified by various webzines, producing articles with titles like “Want the Best Steak of Your Life? Don’t Thaw the Steaks before Cooking Them” and “Why You Should Never Thaw Frozen Steaks before Cooking Them.”

Even we, anti-tempering evangelists that we are, were dubious of this advice. But we tested it out (yay, science!), taking a frozen steak and throwing it on a hot grill to get a sear and then finishing it in the oven at 275°F, just as the magazine directed. And, yes, it worked. Eventually. The steak took quite a while in the oven to cook to medium-rare. Visually, it appeared okay. And the internal temperature signaled that it was cooked properly. But then, when we tasted the meat, we were not impressed. The texture was tough and chewy, the flavor muted and dull. In short, it tasted like a steak that had been frozen just moments before. Yes, you can cook a steak this way. But why would you do that to a good piece of meat?

To Rest or Not to Rest?

The advice to rest a piece of meat after it comes off the heat falls into the same category as advice about tempering the meat and flipping it only once: it’s old-school, it’s the way both of us were taught to do it, and its importance might be greatly exaggerated.

Now, we’re not telling you to skip resting and just cut into the meat immediately. But we don’t think we need to convince you that it’s better to eat hot steak than lukewarm steak!

We tested the question of resting on five steaks, each weighed before and after cooking as well as after resting and after cutting. The steaks were rested for 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 minutes. The results were telling and clear. The steak that was unrested lost three times the amount (by percentage) of liquid than the rested steaks lost—no good. The steak that rested for 20 minutes lost the least amount of juice. But—and here’s where we get sciency again—the amount lost wasn’t statistically much more than the steak rested for 5 minutes. So our advice is, for normal steaks more than one inch thick, between 3 and 5 minutes should be sufficient. Thicker pieces of meat need more time to rest—closer to 15 minutes or even more. These you can keep warm by loosely covering with a piece of aluminum foil. Steaks that have been reverse seared are cooked so gently that the temperature is quite uniform and the juices are well distributed, so 1 to 2 minutes off the heat is sufficient. If you can touch it, you should slice it.

Choose Your Own Adventure, Steak-Cook Edition

How you cook your steak obviously depends on what steak you are cooking, and we’ll get into that, don’t worry (see this page). But for now, we’re going to use thick-cut (one inch and above) steaks like ribeyes or strips as a control group to help you decide which method is right for you.

HOT AND FAST

This is the basic way to cook a steak—starting hot and just going for it. It’s obvious, and you can do it on the stove top or on a grill.

On the stove top, you can set up only two zones: the high heat of a cast-iron or steel pan over the burner and a preheated oven at 250°F. On the grill, you can set up two or three zones, depending on your needs (sometimes that third zone is great for slow cooking a steak).

Pros

This is hands-down the easiest way to cook a steak. It requires almost no forethought or preparation to execute. This makes it effective when you’ve done no planning or preparation and just want a steak and want it now. Sometimes this happens.

Cons

You run the greatest risk of overcooking the meat. By searing and browning the outside first, you’re introducing a lot of heat to the steak right off the bat, and it’s hard to go back once the thing is heated.

How to Do It

  1. Ideally at least 4 hours before the cook, season the steaks generously with salt and keep them, uncovered, in the fridge. If you’re cooking on the stove top, preheat the oven to 250°F and heat a cast-iron or steel skillet over high heat. If you’re grilling, build a nice, glowing-hot coal bed in your grill using one of the grill setups beginning on this page. The target temperature is 400°F for the direct-heat zone and around 250°F for the indirect-heat zone. Thoroughly dry the surface of the meat with paper towels and lightly apply some neutral oil with a high smoke point (like grape seed oil).

  2. When the pan reaches 350°F to 400°F (a few drops of water flicked onto the surface should evaporate in 2 to 3 seconds) or the grill fire reaches its target temperatures, add the meat to the skillet or grill (do not cover the grill). Move the meat regularly and flip every 30 to 60 seconds to develop a nice brown crust. The color you want is a nice dark brown with orange and red tones to it. Don’t let it blacken. If it does, take it off immediately!

  3. When the crust has been achieved, move the meat to the cooler zone. This will be after 3 to 5 minutes per side (depending on the temperature of both the beef and the fire), or if you’re moving the meat and flipping often, a total of about 10 minutes. Indoors, this would mean transferring the steak to the oven (transfer the meat to a sheet pan if you don’t want the exterior to keep cooking) to finish in the preheated oven. On the grill, this would mean moving the steak onto the cool side of the two-zone setup.

  4. Using a digital thermometer, keep track of the internal temperature of the meat and pull it when it is 10 degrees shy of your desired doneness temperature. Depending on the thickness of the steaks, this can take anywhere from 6 to 12 minutes.

  5. Let the meat rest for a few minutes on the counter away from a breeze to allow the temperature to equalize throughout the interior. If you don’t want the meat to cool too quickly or you’re working in a cold room, cover it with aluminum foil. Slice (against the grain) and serve.

REVERSE SEAR

The term reverse sear was coined sometime in the last fifteen years, but in northern Spain they just call it “how we’ve always been cooking steak for as long as we can remember.” And the grill cooks of northern Spain know what they’re doing when it comes to steak (see this page).

Pros

The reverse sear is the most foolproof and practical way to cook a thick steak perfectly, and is especially popular in restaurant kitchens. When you cook the interior slowly and methodically, it ends up consistent. You don’t have the thick band of overcooked meat that conventional hot-and-fast cooking often leaves. By slow cooking the meat first, you dry off the surface, so the Maillard reactions will happen faster and more fully than with a steak with some moisture. What’s more, you end up with seemingly impossible tenderness. That’s because slow cooking allows native enzymes in the steak to go to work

breaking down some of the muscle fiber, leaving a wonderfully silky texture.

Cons

There are two reasons why this isn’t the most convenient method. The first is effort. It’s not hard to preheat an oven and a pan in a kitchen. But getting your grill set up properly (if you’re using a baffle) takes a little effort and forethought, and making sure the cool zone is holding a low temperature (200°F to 225°F is ideal) takes skill and experience.

The other major cost of the reverse sear is time. It just takes longer to cook your steak this way. A big piece of meat can take hours to get to doneness; then, you have to rest the meat for quite a while before searing. If you have plenty of time, though, you can cook your steak at a superlow temp (sometimes Aaron goes as low as 170°F), ensuring a beautifully precise cook. Your time is well served by the superiority of the meat, and patience and time become much easier if you have a cold beer in hand and some good company!

How to Do It

  1. Ideally at least 4 hours before the cook, season the steaks generously with salt and keep them, uncovered, in the fridge. If you’re cooking on the stovetop, preheat the oven to 200°F. If you’re grilling, build a small- to moderate-size coal bed in your grill using one of the grill setups beginning on this page. The target temperature is around 200°F for the indirect-heat zone. You’ll build the fire back up to blazing hot for the sear later. Thoroughly dry the surface of the meat with paper towels.

    Important Note • When doing the reverse sear on a grill, it’s important to protect the meat from the high heat of the coal bed. Even given the rectangular shape of the PK Grill, one edge of the steaks will be closer to the coals than the other, and there’s a risk of overcooking that side. Therefore, in order to truly protect the cooler side from the coals, there are a couple of solutions. You can put a piece of metal between the two sides of the grill as a baffle. This is where a small sheet pan or sizzle plate comes in handy. Or you can throw a small stainless-steel bowl on the grate over the steaks, protecting them from the direct radiative heat.

    Another Important Note • To reverse sear on a closed grill, the heat must be kept low. It’s very easy to overload the grill. Even one extra piping-hot briquette can make a huge difference in temperature. For this, you have to know your cooker and how much fuel is required to take it to 200°F for what will be at least a 20-minute cook, sometimes much longer. For a well-insulated cooker like a PK, that might be, say, six or seven briquettes. For a Big Green Egg, it may be fewer. For a thin, steel Weber, it may take a few more. The point is, be careful. If it’s too high, the steaks may dry out on the outside before reaching the desired internal temperature.

  2. Remove the steaks from the refrigerator. If cooking in the oven, place the steaks on a rack set over a pan (this is so the meat isn’t in contact with the metal of the pan). Alternatively, add the steaks to the indirect-heat side of the grill and cover the grill. Because you’ll be grilling with the lid closed, it’s important to keep track of the heat level, making sure it remains at the target temperature. If the coal bed proves too large and the temperature keeps creeping up, open the lid frequently to let heat escape. Do not move or flip the steaks.

  3. Using a digital thermometer, keep track of the internal temperature of the meat and pull it when it is at least 10 degrees shy of your desired doneness temperature. Depending on the thickness of the steaks, this can take anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes—or hours for a giant, bone-in steak. But give it time, as the low temperature allows the meat to cook evenly all the way through. When the steaks are finished with this stage, they won’t look appealing; they’ll be in good shape for the final cooking in the next step, however. Incidentally, when they’ve reached that desired internal temperature, you can pull them from the fire and let them hang out for 30 to 60 minutes while you build up heat for the next step. (Actually, you could rest them up to 3 hours—it’s important to rest before searing.)

  4. If cooking on the stove top, preheat a cast-iron or steel skillet over high heat until it’s blazing hot (400°F to 500°F, or when a drop of water will instantly vaporize). Make sure the meat is dry, then rub it with a little oil before adding it to the skillet. On a grill, you’ll need to build up your fire in the direct-heat zone. After pulling the steaks, keep the lid open and rustle the coals to get them glowing hot again or add more lit coals if needed. Coat the steaks with a little neutral oil (like grape seed oil), then put them to the fire. Move the meat regularly and flip every 30 seconds or so to develop a nice brown crust. The color you want is a nice dark brown with ocher and red tones to it. This should take 1 to 2 minutes per side, regardless of the thickness of the steaks.

  5. Let rest briefly—only a minute or two, as slow cooking allows for even temperature distribution throughout the meat, which is usually the goal of resting. Slice (against the grain) and serve.

STEAK ON THE COALS

If the reverse sear seems overly complicated to you, here’s an approach that couldn’t be simpler. Go caveman style and ditch the grill and the grates and forget about the two zones. Nothing could be more basic and primitive than this: just throw the steak on the coals. If that sounds crazy, it sort of is. But it’s also a leap of faith—kind of like when Tony Robbins gets people to walk barefoot over hot coals as a self-confidence exercise. But with this, instead of having (ideally) perfectly unseared, uncooked feet, you get perfectly seared and cooked steak. And it can really boost your steak confidence!

Yes, there’s sensible theory behind just throwing your steaks onto coals that are over 1000°F. When the steak is in direct contact with hot coals, it is indeed conducting that heat. However, meat, which is 75 percent water, and fat are not good heat conductors, so the steak cooks relatively slowly. In addition, because the meat sits right on the hot coals, there is no room for air and, therefore, no fire, as flames can’t exist without oxygen. The result is that meat can be seared and cooked even when thrown into the fire.

Pros

There’s an appeal in this most primal, basic, simple way to cook meat. Cavemen might have even had more sophisticated methods. So some people love this technique for its simplicity and for the smoky, charry way it makes the steaks taste. It’s also impresses guests and saves on cleanup time—no scrubbing down the grill.

Cons

Often the taste of coal-cooked meat has a somewhat charred, earthy, ashy note that may even include a few bitter bites here and there. Nothing is wrong with this, and, like we said, some people enjoy it. But we happen not to love it. Also, the exterior doesn’t cook terribly evenly, meaning it’s downright difficult if not impossible to achieve that lovely all-over Maillardian crust.

How to Do It

  1. Ideally at least 4 hours before the cook, season the steaks generously with salt. If working with steaks an inch thick, it’s a good idea to temper them for at least an hour or so, to bring up the internal temperature, as they’ll cook quickly on the coals. And if your steak is more than 1 ½ inches thick, before throwing it on the fire, you may want to reverse sear it (see steps 1 through 3 beginning on this page) in a 200°F oven to 15 degrees below your desired temperature. This step is optional.

  2. Build a nice, glowing-hot coal bed using lump hardwood charcoal or real wood coals. Do not use briquettes because of their impurities. The coal bed must be large enough so that when you turn the steaks in step 4, you can turn them onto fresh coals. It’s better than returning them to the same coals.

  3. When the coals are at peak heat—glowing orange, not emitting flames, and covered lightly with ash—blow (or fan) all of the ash off of them. They will have reached anywhere from 900°F to 1100°F, so be careful and don’t burn yourself!

  4. When you’re ready to cook, don’t oil the steaks first, as that introduces a flammable substance. Dry them with paper towels and then, using tongs, nestle the steak into a flat bed of coals, trying not to leave any major air gaps. Cook without disturbing for 3 to 5 minutes on the first side (this depends, of course, on the thickness of the steak), then flip the steaks onto a fresh section of coals. If you smell burning meat (not searing but burning), you know it’s time to flip. Cook the second side for another 3 to 5 minutes.

  5. Using a digital thermometer, keep track of the internal temperature of the meat and pull it when it is about 15 degrees of your desired doneness temperature. There may be some small coals or a little ash clinging to the steak. This is not a problem. Simply brush them off with the tongs.

  6. Let the meat rest for a few minutes on the counter away from a breeze to allow the temperature to equalize throughout the interior. If you don’t want the meat to cool too quickly or you’re working in a cold room, cover it with aluminum foil. Slice (against the grain) and serve.

BLAST FURNACE STEAK

Here’s another technique that has surfaced in the last several years, bubbling up from the ranks of steak obsessives who are always trying to find new ways to blast their meat with ever-increasing amounts of heat. The tradition of cooking steaks with brutally, almost comically high heat is not a new one. In the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, the old term Pittsburgh rare exists for a steak that has been heavily charred on the outside but remains rare or, more likely, raw on the inside. This comes from the fact that steel workers in Pittsburgh were known to throw steaks into the iron-smelting furnaces that operated at over 2000°F. The story goes that they rarely had much time for lunch and needed high-energy food for their grueling work. The steak would go into the furnace (sometimes slapped onto the side wall), would be turned after a number of seconds, cooked a little longer, and then removed. This is just a slightly more extreme version of Aaron cooking steaks on a shovel in the 700°F coals of his offset smoker’s firebox, which he used to do occasionally for dinner when he’d be up all night on a long cook and the brisket wouldn’t be coming off for twelve hours.

In the event that you don’t keep a roaring blast furnace or lit firebox regularly going at home, the way that’s become popular to blaze steaks with potent flames is to cook them directly over the charcoal chimney. It’s true that the chimney works by insulating and concentrating the heat of a few coals to get a larger amount lit. As you know, when it comes to temperature, the chimney gives off wisps of powerful red and blue fire and brings coals to a brilliant, glowing orange state. Why not harness that heat for searing steak?

This technique works best with steaks less than an inch thick. Any thicker and there’s simply not enough time to cook the interior before the exterior carbonizes. It’s great with thin, tougher cuts that are better with rare interiors, such as flank and outside skirt.

Pros

Superheated coals concentrated in the chimney cook the outside of the steak in a jiffy before too much heat can work its way to the interior, making it perfect for a high-contrast sear along with rare meat in the center. Also, you don’t have to set up the grill and cleanup is minimal.

Cons

Try this technique at your own risk. Some people love it, but in our experience, the risks of ending up with a bitter, overcharred steak is high.

THICKNESS VERSUS WEIGHT

Despite what you may have heard, when deciding how long to cook your steaks, thickness has a much greater impact on the cooking time than weight. A two-pound steak that’s only one inch thick will cook considerably faster than a one-pound steak that is two inches thick.

How to Do It

  1. Ideally at least 4 hours before the cook, season the steaks generously with salt and keep them, uncovered, in the fridge. If your steaks are more than ¾ inch thick, before throwing them on the fire, you may want to reverse sear them (see steps 1 through 3 beginning on this page) in a 200°F oven to 15 degrees below your desired doneness temperature.

  2. Heat a charcoal chimney following the instructions on this page. Thoroughly dry the surface of the meat with paper towels and lightly apply some neutral oil with a high smoke point (like grape seed oil).

  3. When the charcoal is glowing hot and emitting tongues of orange flame, put a thick metal grate over the top of the chimney and put the steak on the grate. Make sure the whole setup thing is steady and not out of balance. The charcoal heat will instantly start sizzling the surface of the steak, and flames may leap up to lick the meat. Flip and move the steak often so no side starts to burn until you get a nice all-over deep brown crust. About 1 ½ minutes per side should do it.

  4. Let the meat rest for only a minute or two or, for a thinner steak, slice immediately (against the grain) on a cutting board that captures the juices, then serve.

The Steak-Cut Decision Tree

You now know literally everything you could possibly know about every permutation of grill setups and cooking methods that will yield a perfect steak. But the one thing we have not discussed is which setups and methods are most appropriate for each cut and type of steak. You didn’t think we’d forget that important variable, did you?

For more specific guidance on how to cook various cuts and styles of steak, refer to the flow chart inside the front cover of the book.