Sootie Steaks

Unknown

Just had a bad experience cooking beautiful rib eyes. Used the recipe
shown in the BGE book. I was careful to follow directions as listed.
Got the temp up to 650, then put the 1" steaks on for 1 and 1half
minuts per side, but before I could close the draft, a thick cloud of
soot poured out of the daisy wheel and covered the steaks with black
mess. I continued anyway by closing both top and bottom drafts and
let the steaks bake for 4 more minutes as specified. The meat was done
to a tea, but ruined by the thick soot. What did I do wrong? Steaks
too expensive to make same mistake again.

Nature Boy

Doctor J,
Sounds kinda like you mighta had a funky piece of charcoal (see TimM's "moonrock"). Maybe he'll post the picture. If you missed soemthing like that, and burned it, you could have a problem. [p]The fat coming off the steaks will give you a good cloud of smoke, especially after a flip, but short-lived.[p]I usually move the steaks to the side, and dwell with the bottom vent closed, and the top open. Not a true dwell I suppose, but I don't like to leave my meat on the grill with all the vents closed. Just my opinion though![p]Beers!
NB

Tim M

Doctor J,[p]I am confused - you got the temps up to 650, so that took about 20 min or so. At this point the fire should not be smoking at all - just fire and lots of it. Bottom vent 90% - 100% open and the slide/daisy wide open on the chimney. This will get you about 650 deg and should not go over that to much. [p]Toss on the steaks - I would suggest 1.5" or larger since these temps cook fast - real feast and rib-eys with all the fat will cokk really fast. I am unclear where the soot came from or if you got to the dwell part and saw the smoke as you were dwelling (baking as you called it). I can't see where you would have any soot. [p]Dwelling a steak will add a lot more smokey taste to it than just grilling until done. [p]Also - please don't follow any of the manuals recipes without checking here first. Many are just plan wrong.[p]Tim
[ul][li]Tim's Bge Website[/ul]

WessB

Doctor J,
I`m not sure if what I am going to say is the same as you are talking about, but I`ll throw it out anyway.....I have had several times where some black...stuff...for lack of a better word...peels off the inside of the dome...it seems to do this more with a low slo cook..something to do with the steam.....anyway..after figuring this out I started to pay closer attention to these almost ash looking things and decided I would use either a grill brush or a 3m scrubber pad to remove any loose stuff from inside the dome..and i really havent had much trouble with it since then...HTH..[p]Wess