Newbie horrible steak cook

I never soak my smokin wood even for long cooks actually the chips or chunks don't do that much on a short cook like steaks your bad taste probably came from the hickory chips more steaming than burning

I'll bet it was from the few minutes with the vents shut. The steak was dripping it's fat juices into the lump, making nasty smoke and since all the vents are shut, a bunch of it settled on the meat. I would try a reverse sear. Or try the hot tub method.

the dwell method, where you close the vents and let the steak roast, has a HORRIBLE flaw....

any fatty steak (and a rib eye is about asd fatty as you can get) will continue to drip fat into the fire. that fire has no oxygen (you are staving it), so when that fat hits it, it just smolders.

if something is burning poorly, it will give off lots of inefficiently burned soot, which isn't pleasant.

think of a candle, when lit, barely any smoke. blow it out, and that little ember is still hot, but can't burn the wick very well, so it just smokes with a sooty unpleasant smelling smoke.

there are a few differents way to cook a steak, but io think the sear and dwell method is about the worst...

sorry you had that experience. i would try the other methods out on less costly chunks of beef next time, until you get the hang of it.

TREX method!!! It is just about impossible to mess up....

The egg was closed during the burn off of the wood chunks. The steaks had alot of fat due to the prime grade and I attribute that to the significant flame up. Also the dome temp was 650, therefore I realize I had considerably more heat at grate level. As soon as I put the steaks on the smoke was boiling from the open top. As for the doneness of the steaks all agreed they were perfectly medium. The smoke and charred taste just overwhelmed any other factor. Maybe it was the soaking of the chunks where everything went wrong. Do ya'll use seasoning woods with steaks. As for the gasket I'm confident the fatality occured due to a combination of extended high heat, and extreme flame-ups that occured when I turned the steaks. Seems like I needed a pair of three foot long tongs. Sorry I didn't take any photos, it was not a memory I ever want t revisit. Lots to learn.

telling you man, it's the sooty fat.

done it myself, and tested it with filets (much less fat), and there was an improvement.

any time you shut the egg, you create a low oxygen environment. that smoke has nothing good about it, especially when you trap it in the egg.

soak chips or don't, they won't affect it as much as that sooty burning fat

closed vent means smothered poorly burning fire. and a poorly burning fire produces bad smoke

We keep the dome temp down to around 350°F-400°F when we grill steaks. The sear is achieved by the use of a "spider" (see theceramicgrillstore.com) which allows a smaller cooking grid to be placed very low in the egg, righr abouve the lump. As the lump temp can exceed 1200°F, a really great sear sizzles right up. Then the steaks are removed to a platter while the "regular" cooking grid is placed on top of a WooII ring (yep, more toys from the CGS.com). The effect is to raise the grid to the gasket level. The meat is tossed back on and finish roasted at a very forgiving temperature with the dome closed, to the desired doneness. (I have friends that will now offer to bring over some steaks if I will but grill them, so I guess people like them.) The vents are open, both top and bottom, during the entire cook.
As for wood, chips are used because the entire cook is quite short and the chips seem to give enough smoke, and fast. They are always dry because some of the folks on this forum said they would beat me up if I ever soaked chips/chunks. Works for me.
If one lacks the special goodies mentioned, we used to use a cheap grid from Lowes placed directly on top of the lump, with three small pieces of fire brick about 3/4 inch thick placed on top. The cooking grid was placed on the bricks in order to keep it just above the lump.
For the raised grid used in the finish roasting, one can use three fire bricks turned on edge and placed on top of the fire ring, with the regular cooking grid placed on top of the bricks.
Also, keeping the temps down somewhat certainly won't hurt one's gasket.

I agree with St!ke but would like to add 2 things that are my personal preference:

1) I never use smoking wood when I'm at hot, searing temps. Roasting temps, sure, but not when it's that hot.

2) At those hot temps, I never leave the meat on for more than 60 seconds per side. typically I follow the guideline of 1 minute per side, per inch of thickness. So at 1.1/2" thickness, I'll either flip every 45 seconds or do 1 minute and flip, 1 minute and flip, 30 sec and flip, 30 sec and flip.

if I'm doing all my cooking via sear, I would do the hot tub method. otherwise I like the reverse sear also.

sorry about your steak, I've never purchased or tried to cook Prime beef. Now get back on that horse!

I'm sure you've been bombarded by advice from the forum, but with me, you're going to get restaurant advice. I worked in high-end fine-dining for about 15 years total, most of that in $$$$$ steakhouses.

My two cents: Not everything needs smoke and steak is one of those things. Just forget about smoke when you're doing ribeyes. Also, you don't need to do sear and then close the vents, or reverse sears either. You just need to sear that sucker on each side (direct heat) and then make sure to undercook a bit. You finish cooking by pulling your steaks and resting them under foil for 5-10 minutes. You'll get the hang of it after awhile.

I'd agree with both of you, particularly with the closed-vent dwell. I don't know what it is, but I always seemed to get a lot of ash on my steaks when I completely closed the Egg. Just bringing it down to a steady 400-450* for the dwell seems to work much better.