T-Rex Steak Question

You'll get answers both ways.

I think you will get a little better sear leaving it open since th flames will lick the steak better that way. Closing the lids will damper the flames but not the heat.

I have done it several times both ways, and I prefer leaving the lid open for the searing phase.

i learned from The Whix's paella tutorial that you can have a monster sear with the lid open, even with the lower vent shut.

searing lid open can be a real good thing. for one, when the lid is shut, the sear is cooking the underside, but the top is still being roasted from the dome and hot gasses. when the lid is open, and you have sear temps raging, the cooking is almost entirely restricted to the underside. the dome does not radiate onto the steak, and the hot gasses are being vented completely. so essentially, searing dome open gives you great control over the sear portion of the cook.

i use the hot tub method most often, but if i were to Trex, i'd do it dome open, actually. that way i'm only cooking one side, developing the sear. the rest of the cook would be to roast, with dome shut.

don't forget, flames are much cooler than the radiant heat. flames are pretty, but they don't do much in a cook. flames touching the meat are actually what the big "cancer scare" articles warn about with grilling food. cooking by flame takes longer to sear a steak (like in a gasser), and longer flame-sears produce much more cancer-causing agents than shorter radiant-heat sears.

blah blah blah. who cares, stike, just cook the damn thing and eat it!

that's an excellent point. most of the effort dragging temps back down are really directed at cooling the dome, or more accurately, waiting for it to cool.

as a newbie when i overshot 250 say, i used to try to 'spill' heat by opening the dome. i'd see the temp drop and think 'great it's cooling off'. i didn't realise that all i did was spill the hot gasses temporarily, and actually introduced MORE air. so my temp would tempoarily drop, then spike up. then yours truly would open the dome again, etc. etc.

i might not know much now, but i knew even less then!

The "cancer scare" articles are more about high heat than flames. The scare is that the high heat converts things like fat in the meat to hydrocarbon benzene rings that can be modified in the body to produce chemicals that damage DNA.

Not the flames, the heat. And it really centers more on well done meat than seared meat. But I digress....

i leave the dome open during the sear phase.
(i don't think it's clear open or closed on the whiz's trex page)









and breathing causes cancer, so whatcha gonna do? :P

hmmmm

i'm supposed to be working. hahaha my wife walks in and catches me chatting up the forum anymore, and she'll kill me.

cooks illustrated had an article on 'helping' a cheaper cut of steak (was it a hanger?) by putting it in a ziploc (no air) and submerging it in very hot (your hottest) tap water for maybe 20-30 minutes, with a change of water if/when it cooled.

what they were doing i believe was trying to almost 'age' it in a way by hurrying up the development of some of the esters produced by enzymes in the meat, and also speeding up the breakdown of the meat by the same enzymes. (gee, stike, talk about glossing over detail and paraphrasing!)

what it ALSO did was raised the temp of the meat. you hear "room temp" all the time. no one has ever achieved "room temp" meat by leaving it on the counter, i don't care what they say. a steak from the fridge, sitting out for an hour or more will still be maybe 40, 50 degrees internal. but hot-tubbed, the core temp of the steak can be as high as 100 degrees. my tapwater is 130, and i've put steaks on at 105 internal.

90 seconds each side, and i'm done, perfect medium rare (depending on thickness, etc.). you are so close to your desired internal temp, that all you need to do is sear to your liking.

but, it's no faster than Trex, and i don't perceive the elusive change in flavor from the magical elfin enzymes and their esters that cook's illustrated professed with the other cut of meat. i just find it easy to toss the steaks in the bag and hang out inside for another glass of wine, and then throw them on the grill, eating just a few minutes later. we usually eat steaks an inch and a half thick, and sometimes they are super-dense dry-aged. doing the hot tub method means every steak we put on starts at the same temp as all the others, and i get predictable behavior.

lazy-man's Trex, maybe. both methods yield a greater cross-section acroos the meat of your desired 'doneness'. i like medium-rare/ rare. my pre-warmed steak has a miniscuyle band of great high-temp sear, and the entirety of the rest is medium rare, all the way across. a cold-cooked steak (or even 'room temp') usually has the seared perimeter, a gray 'well-done' border, then 'medium', then finally a center portion of 'medium rare'. Trex, Xert, and the hot-tub give you more 'medium rare' than many other methods.

whew.

actually, the two pix in the middle are the same steak. i think you'll find i take photographs of everything i cook on the eggs. it's an obsession... oefptd (obsessive egged food picture taking disorder) :woohoo:

Dude, you're a goner!