The cuts of the day: rib and porterhouseRib steaks should be at LEAST two inches thick. Ask your butcher to cut these pieces from a rib roast, leaving the bone on. The steaks must stand on their edge during cooking. You can't do that with anything smaller than 1.5".
Porterhouse is another great candidate for this treatment. Same rule - make sure it is broad enough to stand upright.
The only two seasoning ingredients needed to wow your company are fine sea salt and minced garlic. Stock up 'cause you'll need a lot of both if you end up using this recipe as much as I do.
Let your meat get to room temperature to ensure that the seasonings can penetrate.
Cover every surface of the steak with sea salt. A lot of sea salt. It should look frosted when you're done - if your cuts are the right thickness it will be difficult to overdo. The salt both seals and seasons the meat.
After you've salted, spoon out a generous amount of minced garlic and spread it with the spoon, pushing it into the surface.
Let your steaks sit for 10-20 minutes. By the time you are ready to put them on the grill the frosting of salt will have been absorbed.
Start a fire in The Grillery. Use newspaper and small kindling to get going, then add larger pieces of hardwood. No need to build a bonfire - the best heat management is done over a small flame.
Raise the Grillery surface just out of reach of the flames and place the steaks upright on the bone, toward the back of the grill. Lean them against the back of the grill box or the crank axle if they insist on falling over.
The trick is to cook the steaks standing on the rib for most of their time on the fire. This protects the meat from overcooking and distributes the flavor up from the bone.
Start basting immediately. Put some butter or olive oil in the drip pan to start things off. Once the steaks have gone a few minutes you'll have a great sauce to brush on the meat.
How to know when to drop them down on their side? Cut and look - when the meat near the bone starts to go from rare to medium-rare knock them over. Since you are continuously basting the meat there won't be any loss of juices after the knife.
Cook to your preference, lower into the flames for a short final sear and serve.
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4 comments:
Man, these steaks were tasty! Good to see the grill-blog is up and running!
A few issues:
1. Salt will not "seal" in anything. Leaving that much salt on meat for that long actually draws moisture out of the meat, resulting in a steak that is dry as cardboard. See: prosciutto.
I agree about the use of sea salt on steak but only applying it immediatly before sending the meat to the fire. A few seconds is all that is needed to draw the meat's proteins to the surface which aides in the browning of the surface (the real reason for using salt).
2. Garlic, which should not be needed on any quality piece of beef, like Porterhouse, can be added but not until just before dismount from the grill. I'm talking 30 seconds or so. If applied before cooking the garlic will burn (due to the high temp and cooking time) and the result will be a bitter taste. A possible alternative could be an olive oil/garlic bath right after dismount (like Brazillian Churrasco). Achieves the same thing only more effectivly. Works well with butcher cuts like hanger and skirt steak.
3. The only things bones add is cooking time. Yes, you must bring the beef up to room temp but keep in mind the marrow in the bone could still be cold or even frozen. This means when the muscle is done the bone marrow is still raw and cold. Debone. Save them for stew.
I understand that a porterhouse is a handsome cut but, unless you're Lugar's or Wolfgang's, you're gonna end up with an unevenly cooked steak at best and possibly ill guests at worst. Buy precut filets and NYs, same thing.
4. Basting with olive oil over flame? You're kidding, right? Besides the immediate pyrotechnical safety issue, the fat-in-fire flare-ups can result in the creation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which are a known carcinogen and taste sour. Grill over embers, not open flame, and a well-trimmed cut of beef will not flare with the same intensity as olive oil, or at all.
5. Cut and look? Your knife should stay in the kitchen. Once you cut into the beef the clock is ticking and the juices are flowing. You will not replace these juices with the oil baste, rather the oil will actually accelerate the juice flow as the oil (from the baste) and water (the beef) do their thing and push each other away. The best determinate of done-ness is experience.
A gentle prod with the tongs is the only indicator I need. Remove the beef just before you think you need to and place in a pocket wrap of aluminum foil (I add herbed butter to the bottem). This uses the meats existing radiant heat to finish the job, plus captures the escaping juices for eventual re-absorbsion as the beef cools, drawing in all that buttery/herby goodness.
Sorry if this seems like a flame (no pun) but I am constantly seeing overly complicated methods for cooking beef that result in only average eating. I'm not saying these techniques don't work, they will, but some of these steps are unnecessary, and some are detrimental.
I have few passions in my life, beef is one.
I share the beef passion, I assure you.
Agreed that burned garlic can end up bitter. Note however that when we do this recipe the steak and covering is continuously basted in a combination of beef juices, olive oil or butter- avoiding the burning and drying problems you correctly point out in issue #1 and issue #2... coming off grills that don't facilitate the use of juices and baste.
Oh boy I sure disagree with your dismissal of bone-in steak grilling, but I bet no amount of blog posts will sway you. We have done demo grill events with bone-in and bone out ribeye treated identically and the taste difference is pronounced. To each their own! I like porterhouse for the same reason - each side gets some of the bone-up flavor.
Issue number 4 is incorrect on the Grillery. The v-channels keep 90% of the juice or oil from being lost in the flame and stop nearly all flareups.
The knife is fine for checking done-ness, especially if you don't consider yourself a pro. If you are basting with your recovered(not flared) juices the moisture loss is trivial at the end of the cooking.
No worries, I certainly don't consider this a flame(har har). If anything I'd love to give you a look and/or taste of a steak using our grill.
I think our only disagreements lie in the differences between grills!
Best,
Ben
One more thing on the bone-in preference:
Note that we cook these steaks standing on the bone. They spend only the last few minutes on their sides.
The meat is largely cooked by the heat transmitted through this bone - adding significant flavor to the surrounding steak. This also protects the steak from the direct heat, making a perfect grilling job easier.
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