Steak Searing w. Adam Savage and Kenji Lopez-Alt

gdenby

A nice vid over at Serious Eats/Youtube showing the 2 working thru 4 different steak searing methods. All start w near identical steaks SV'd at 123F. Vid is a bit over 30 minutes.

Summary for those w/o time or a slow link.
1. "Searz-all" propane torch adapter. Lowest heat, least sear.
2. Standard charcoal kettle grill, a little hotter, better sear, but thicker grey band.
3. A grill on top of a charcoal chimney. Quite fast, 2 min, very nice sear, little grey. Limited to a single steak. 
4. Over a forge. Very fast, less than a minute, w. the crust beginning to char. Decent flavor, but a thinner crust than the chimney

Egg application, get the meat down as close to the lump as possible. Preheat the grill for marks.

Theophan

That was really interesting -- thanks for pointing it out!

I'm puzzled by the Searz-all.  It seemed that the lower temperature made it work less well, but I would have supposed that the purpose of that device would have been to make the heat more diffuse (less "hot spot") but inevitably also, then, lower temp.  I'd think that might be great for crème brûlée, but maybe they actually made it worse for meat.

I'm very happy with the sear I get in the Egg in only a minute, usually, at 650° or so (at the fire-ring height), and unlike the chimney, I can do more than one at a time.  I just haven't felt like a spider or caveman would do enough better that I want to change.  I think they maybe without intending to, biased the test against their kettle grill by having the heat lower than they could have in their kettle.