Beef is like liquor. The better the liquor, the less you mix it. Good booze is drank straight. The better the beef, the less you cook it. I like my filet's bloody rare - just cripple it & run it close to me!
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Beef is like liquor. The better the liquor, the less you mix it. Good booze is drank straight. The better the beef, the less you cook it. I like my filet's bloody rare - just cripple it & run it close to me!
You need to try a blackstone or similar griddle. I prefer my steaks grilled but a griddle can do a great steak and is easy to master and hard to screw up.
Oh, and here is the right steak doneness chart lol:
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A couple other guys have nailed it with timing, but let me sum things up:
- Get the grill HOT before you start. You want that initial sear and grill lines are bonus points
- Rub some olive oil on the steaks before you start. It'll help with sticking and really boost the thermal conduction into the meat.
- Flames are your worst enemy...at least when you aren't confident in how to use them.
- Start with room temp steak. The smaller the thermal trip the meat has to take, the easier it is to properly arrest it at the point you want.
- Stop opening the grill. Plan your cook, stick to it, and you can always turn them back over if it wasn't long enough.
- Get a thermometer. I've never trusted all the little thumb and forefinger tricks for steak...go by temp and trust it, just make sure you can hit the middle of the steak with the probe.
- Pull the steak 5-10 degrees early, then cover with foil and let rest for at least 5 minutes.
- A pat of really good butter right in the middle of the steak is a nice touch without taking away from the meat itself. I occasionally like my steak with fried onions and Béarnaise, but not everybody swings that way.
If you want to really knock steak out of the park, but in a way you can't screw up, sous vide it first. I consider myself quite adept at grilling...to the point that our COVID project was a 14x24 outdoor covered (including removable panels for the northern Wisconsin winters) grill shack complete with sink, running water, tv, sound system, and bar centered around the grill. I still sous vide my steak first sometimes.
Sous vide it up to 120 or so, then finish it on a roaring grill, 30-45 seconds per side to sear it and give it that grilled flavor. You basically can't overcook it this way. Some will call it blasphemy, but when you're talking about a 2" thick steak, it's the only reliable way I've been able to pull it off. If I didn't tell my guests how I did it, you'd think it cooked the whole way on the grill.
Tough and tasteless is what you get with no pink showing. My wife will only eat hers that way. i am convinced if she were blindfolded it would go better for her. If they don't wan't any pink meat showing figure they like tough and tasteless, shoe leather.
A couple other tips worth mentioning:
Salt early, and salt waaay more than you think you should. This does not make the meat salty.
And use kosher salt, not table salt. Yes, it's all salt, but the difference is in the size of the grains. Kosher comes from kasher, and "kashering" meat is the process of salting the meat to remove moisture. It's literally what kosher salt is made for.
The purpose of the salt is to draw water out of the steak, giving you a steak with a stronger, meatier flavor. If you salt heavily and put it back in the fridge for a few hours, you'll actually see a puddle of water on the plate and on top of the steak. That water came out of the steak. Lots of grocery stores actually soak their packaged steaks in water to increase the weight.
What does water do when it gets thrown on a 500 degree grill? It steams. You don't want steam, so you remove as much of the water before cooking as possible. Salt does not remove the fat, which is where the real flavor comes from.
A lot of people say let it come up to room temp, but that depends. Restaurants, even great steakhouses, don't do that. They're in the fridge till it's time to cook.
If you like it rare in the middle, a cold steak is easier to put a strong sear on without overcooking the middle. If you're going for medium or better, the center of a room temp steak will come up to temp faster. So, it depends.
A temp probe is the most reliable way to get the doneness you want, but after you've done it a few times, you'll start to know from the texture and and feel of the steak when you pick it up.
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Lower heat and fiddle with it. Using tongs pick meat up and take not of floppiness. If it’s really floppy it’s raw. If it’s a little floppy then it’s rare. If it saga some but isn’t floppy then it’s medium. If you go any further than that then it’s burnt. If you make a point of using meat of similar thickness then you can get the hang of it fairly quick. I taught my 10yr old daughter how to cook pork chops like that.
Depends on the beef cut how I like it. I go from a black and blue steak to med-rare most times as does the wife.
Idaho45, play to your strength. What do I mean by that. I bet you can sweat pipe. Use that skill. Allow me to explain.
FWIW, I can grill, make southern BBQ, hot smoke, cold smoke, but what I'm going to tell you about is the technique I use when it's cold out and it works really good. It works just as good in warm weather.
Don't grill. Sell it. Once you try what I suggest you'll get great results and never look at a grill again. This may sound suspect but I assure you if you can set the thermostat in your home you can pull it off. Get a Sous Vide (SV) "machine". Prices have come down and they give excellent results. Want med' rare? Just set the temp on it to 130°F ish. Want more well done, just set it to that desired doneness (temp') and you'll get it. Timing? Not critical as long as you don't go under. I'll explain in a minute. What I give below will be abbreviated instructions since better instructions are found online.
You want to cook a steak to med' rare. Set the SV unit to 130°F. Put it in your chosen vessel, I use a pot or if I'm cooking lots of meat a small "cooler". Use the right amount of water to "fill" the cooking vessel to satisfy your SV unit. The SV unit is turned on. Each piece of meat gets individually bagged and sealed. A ziplock bag will do. The air is driven out, easy to do. Then the meat is put into the vessel. They stay in there for the required amount of time; this can be figured out from charts or if you're into math there are formulas. Yeah, me neither, I use the charts. But a good steak can be in the bath for 6 hours, a corned beef can be in it for days at a higher temp'. No it won't spoil; it sounds weird, but it won't. At the end of the time suggested by the chart, the meat is pulled out and then (here comes the manly part) you get the torch out. I use a butane torch to make sure the rotten egg smell of the propane doesn't get into the meat. I use a solution of 50/50 dextrose/sodium bicarb' and wet the meat with in it. Then the torch is played over the meat to brown it and develop flavor. That's your "grilling" part. The result is (in this example) a med' rare steak with grilled flavor. But not just that, the meat is med' rare from edge to edge with NO grey meat that got too hot and went past med' rare. Want more well done? Just dial in the finished temp desired. Another advantage is that if the chart says you need 8 hours and you go 10 hours it's no big deal. It'll get more tender but will never overcook. What I mean by that is that a steak cooked at 130°F cooked "too long" at that temp' will never become well done. Go wildly too long and you might wind up with something too tender.
For more information just find it online. There are sites that discuss it in great detail and books can be found.
I've been using the technique for years and it's replaced outdoor grilling for me during the very cold winter months. It not only replaces grilling though. It does corned beef with excellent results. Want med' rare corned beef? It can probably be done, but it will take days. It'll do roasts, poultry, all sorts of things. It'll make you look like a genius chef and it's no more involved than the Sous Vide unit and the ability to set a thermostat and read a few charts and add up the times.
But again, for more information just google it.
Baldwin has a good site but it may be too "in depth" for you. Logsdon has another good site. In the time since I started in SV things have changed and I have no doubt that MANY more sites will be found that are good. As I said it's been years since I started in doing it and once one knows the technique, myself anyway, I stopped researching basic technique. So while the sites I know of still exist there are many more.
With charcoal get your self a spray bottle with water. When you get a grease flare up you shoot out the flames precisely. As you stand there watching the meal cook then burst into flames you can also practice your quick draw and point shooting. Helps keep the entertainment value up.
Any cooking by me is verboten.
Don't feel bad, none of us started out as experts. I consider myself pretty good, but I still have failures, most of us just don't talk about those, LOL.
I haven't used charcoal in a long time, a couple years maybe?
I bought some flavorless brats and thought putting a char on them would help the flavor. Well, two nights ago I grille them, while I wasn't watching, the skins broke and charcoal flamed up. I ended up with dried out, charred brats...but they were still eatable with lots of BBQ sauce...and Brats are one of the easiest things to grill :-P
Tried some more burgers tonight and they turned out perfect! Made sure the meat was perfectly defrosted, then formed them gently into patties, pressed down in the center, then seasoned liberally with pepper and garlic salt.
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Coals were perfect when I put them on, only turned them once, then baked the pepper jack cheese on them. Even toasted the buns. Served with green beans roasted on a cookie sheet in olive oil and salt and pepper. Delicious! My girlfriend was very happy! She is doing the Keto diet, so no buns for her.
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There you go. They look good!
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Gas grill, LOVE them. Turn on and keep on high for about 10 to 15 minutes depending on your outside conditions.
Wipe down the grill with oiled paper towel, toss meat on the grill, and then turn down the dials to about medium high.
Let sit 2 to 3 minutes, rotate 90degrees, 2 to 3 more minutes, then flip and repeat. Steaks should be pretty dang close to Medium to medium rare depending on thickness.
Burgers are done, if you want more burnt( yeah, well done in other words) give them a couple minutes more each side.
Wrap the vegs in tinfoil after putting some butter and spices on them. If no spices or butter then a few ice cubes. Start the grill, put them on low and cook for 20min or so then the steak. Grill it slow checking until done right for you the turn the grill on high and reverse sear. Let sit a few minutes after talking off then eat.
Remember, meat will continue to cook a few after taking it off so remove just before you are satisfied
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Idaho45guy, congratulations! Some people say to never turn steaks or burgers more than once. Others strongly disagree. I can't tell whether I've flipped a burger or a steak once or 6 times. It helps, IMO, to keep from overheating one side of the fire is a tad too hot. One tip for the Weber charcoal kettles: Open the top vents all the way and regulate the heat by opening or closing the bottom "cleaner" vents. That helps any creosote flavor escape and gives better temperature regulation.
+1
Do not butter a fat steak like a rib eye. High heat to sear and turn it down ofter 20-30 seconds a side.
Leave the hood up to dump heat from the grill Keep a live hose and sprits to cool it down or put out the porch fire from having the grill on it.
Cook it rare or medium and hand the girlfriends to her and point to the Micro-wave.
My wife of 50 years wants well done and the Micro-wave is for the last 40 years since we have had one, is how she gets hers.