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Grill, Baby, Grill! : Ruined Rib Eye Edition
The Ender
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, I just ruined about $40.00+ worth of rib eye steak this evening.
Man cooking is a fun activity that is entirely enjoyable and I am so good at it.
So, I'm trying to figure out how this happened. To put my bias upfront: My stepfather claims that the reason I ruined the steaks & have had a couple of other food-burning episodes is because I'm a shitty cook who has no idea what they're doing (he also implied that if I learned to cook on a grill like a 'real' man, instead of on a stove top or in an oven, I wouldn't be having these problems with the fucking grill). My opinion is that the grill isn't being properly maintained, so it's impossible to fucking cook anything evenly on it.
So, details:
1) Step-father / owner of the grill claims that the grill never needs to be cleaned, so it doesn't matter that it's never been cleaned since it was purchased about a year ago (I'm not totally sure how many times it's been used, but I'd say about 100 times would be a fair guess). As long as the grill is brought to maximum temperature, so I'm told, and left there for about 5~ minutes before I cook anything, any leftover material from it's last use should be incinerated and be a non-issue.
2) I more or less just follow the above procedure, then crank the flame down (knobs turned to about 1/4) to get the grill temperature around 350~ Celsius before I throw anything on. Then, almost without fail...
3) ...2-3~ minutes later, a large fire starts at the bottom of the grill, and the food gets caught in flames that shoot about a foot out of the grill. At that point I find that, essentially, I can't control the temperature in the grill - all I can do is completely turn off the grill, close the lid and wait for the fire to become oxygen-starved.
In fairness, I really don't know grilling well, but it seems to me that the problem is that a bunch of grease / fat has built-up at the bottom of the grill and that it really isn't just enough to try and burn it out.
Am I wrong? If I am wrong, and this is more or less normal behaviour for a grill, how the Goddamn fuck are you supposed to evenly cook food on it? Meat just catches fire and is incinerated. Am I supposed to wrap it in tin foil or something before I put it on? Am I supposed to turn the grill on, turn it off again, then oscillate between these two states?
Man.
I hate grilling.
Man cooking is a fun activity that is entirely enjoyable and I am so good at it.
So, I'm trying to figure out how this happened. To put my bias upfront: My stepfather claims that the reason I ruined the steaks & have had a couple of other food-burning episodes is because I'm a shitty cook who has no idea what they're doing (he also implied that if I learned to cook on a grill like a 'real' man, instead of on a stove top or in an oven, I wouldn't be having these problems with the fucking grill). My opinion is that the grill isn't being properly maintained, so it's impossible to fucking cook anything evenly on it.
So, details:
1) Step-father / owner of the grill claims that the grill never needs to be cleaned, so it doesn't matter that it's never been cleaned since it was purchased about a year ago (I'm not totally sure how many times it's been used, but I'd say about 100 times would be a fair guess). As long as the grill is brought to maximum temperature, so I'm told, and left there for about 5~ minutes before I cook anything, any leftover material from it's last use should be incinerated and be a non-issue.
2) I more or less just follow the above procedure, then crank the flame down (knobs turned to about 1/4) to get the grill temperature around 350~ Celsius before I throw anything on. Then, almost without fail...
3) ...2-3~ minutes later, a large fire starts at the bottom of the grill, and the food gets caught in flames that shoot about a foot out of the grill. At that point I find that, essentially, I can't control the temperature in the grill - all I can do is completely turn off the grill, close the lid and wait for the fire to become oxygen-starved.
In fairness, I really don't know grilling well, but it seems to me that the problem is that a bunch of grease / fat has built-up at the bottom of the grill and that it really isn't just enough to try and burn it out.
Am I wrong? If I am wrong, and this is more or less normal behaviour for a grill, how the Goddamn fuck are you supposed to evenly cook food on it? Meat just catches fire and is incinerated. Am I supposed to wrap it in tin foil or something before I put it on? Am I supposed to turn the grill on, turn it off again, then oscillate between these two states?
Man.
I hate grilling.
With Love and Courage
The Ender on
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This is exactly what is happening. The actual cooking surfaces should be cleaned with a wire brush before and after use while the grill is hot. The areas where grease collect should probably be cleaned every month or so, depending on how often the grill is used. You should be able to download the cleaning instructions for the particular model online.
As a short cut, you could try scraping up most the residual fat/grease with a spatula before you cook or keep a spray bottle of water on hand to try to put out any grease fires.
Also look to Alton for most cooking advice
I personally brine my steaks before grilling them. This adds more moisture to the meat (water enters the tissue with the salt, without making it actually salty), making the meat juicier and far less likely to burn. It's more successful with pork, chicken, and shrimp, but I find that it works alright with beef, too. It takes about 4-8 hours of prep time before cooking, though, which you may not have.
I put a bunch of coarse sea salt on my steaks and let it sit there for ~20 minutes (depending on steak thickness) and then rinse it off, wipe the steaks dry, and throw them on the grill with the same effects.
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Anyway: thanks for the water-soaking tip. I might try that next time.
I'd clean the damn grill myself, but it's an expensive beast of a thing and I really don't want to take it apart & mess with it.
EDIT: Also, is there a good method for cooking steaks in a frying pan rather than using the grill? I've pan-fried burgers and they've always turned-out great, but of course burger patties are much thinner than steaks.
I've been cooking mine like that ever since. They come out great.
I just throw it on a pan, on medium heat and let it fry in its own fat for a bit. Then I top it with a nice chunk of butter and let it finish off. I think the most challenging thing about steaks is knowing when they're done.
Also check out this thread: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/156460/roasts-and-casseroles-cooking-and-food-thread/p1
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A few things that we've picked up along the way...
1) The steak should be at room temp before cooking
2) The grill should be hot when you put the steak on
3) The grill should be clean enough that flames never actually touch the steak
The Best in Terms of Pants on JCCC3
Butter and/or cooking fat and/or oil serves a vital purpose. The heat hits the oil, all the oil heats up, then the oil heats the meat. This ensures that the meat is (more) evenly heated. If you try it without the oil, the heat will hit one part of meat and then cook it at that spot without spreading as much to the rest of the meat. This is why you should always grill steak with oil/butter or use a marinade/brine that has oil in it (this tip is only for grilling, NOT for other techniques).
I'm not sure how much steak you got for $40+, but you should consider buying from costco. You can get sub-primals from costco for relatively cheap. A sub-primal is a single cut of meat about ~9-15 lbs. You need to cut it yourself, but you get a drastically better quality meat for about half the price as most grocery stores.
Some steak tips:
Flip frequently, about every 10-15 seconds. It's a steakhouse myth that you should only flip once.
Don't try to 'sear in flavor'; it doesn't actually do anything.
Let the meat sit after cooking. Allow the meat to sit for 1/3rd the cooking time after you take it off the heat source. (NB: As a standard rule of thumb, every steak will go one level up of 'done-ness' after you take it off the fire. So if you want to eat steak that's medium, take it off the fire when it's medium-rare and sit until it reaches medium).
Also, if you really want to mess with your father in law and cook indoors, you should try going with ghetto sous vide. It's hard to mess up with it, it can handle any size or style of meat, and best of all it keeps all foods delicious and tender. Here's a video showing you how to do it.
This is all mostly wrong. Oil is used as a conductor for heat when there is metal blocking the heat source. Grill is direct heat and does minimal help.
Next, I really doubt Costco can beat a nice dry aged Angus.
What's next, oh, you flip once. If you flip more than once all the juices that are pooling on the top side gets flipped off when you flip them. Don't do this.
Searing is caramelisation of the outside and absolutely adds flavour. It does a shitload. So much so there is an actual scientific name for this.
You don't take meat off to rest so it cooks more internally unless your steaks are over an inch thick, you take it off so the fat and blood in the steak congeals slightly and when you cut it it doesn't leak, while it makes your potatoes tastier, it makes the steak drier.
Ender, the tips here will lower the chance of fat fires. But honestly, it sounds like there are some magic fucking tricks to this grill and next time you might just want to swallow your pride and let your dad cook and see what he does.
The only thing I can think offhand is that he uses less fatty cuts like rump where if, you are buying more expensive pieces like say sirloin or t-bone the amount of fat your are shedding is massive compared to him.
Satans..... hints.....
In case neither of you know, never use water on a grease fire. Ever.
Here's why.
CostCo actually has a pretty boss butcher's department. I've gotten some amazing porterhouses there.
Zerg,
You flip a steak once and only once.
Searing doesn't "lock in flavor" or seal in juices or whatever, but it does give the steak a sort of char coating that some people dig.
IIRC, The Ender lives in the EU, where beef is a good deal more expensive, so $40 for a couple good rib-eyes isn't that far out of line. I think he just translated it to $ for our benefit.
This is not awesome advice for cooking steak. As others have said, searing is a must, you should only flip once and cooking a good piece of beef sous-vide is a terrible method.
I do agree with your Costco recommendation though. They have some good meat. I still prefer just hitting up the butcher at the local farmer's market.
I have an infrared grill with a removable "bowl" that catches all that stuff, so it's a bit easier on that type of grill. Also it gets super hot really fast.
Searing the steak in a pan and finishing in the oven is the very best way to cook a steak without a grill.
Also, that everything that zerg said is pretty much wrong while everything else that Blake mentioned is pretty much right.
You're getting flare-ups. You need to either move the meat to an area where this won't happen (usually a lower temp zone) or move it to a piece of foil sitting on your grid that serves as a heatshield and prevents rendered fats from hitting flame.
Finally, don't grill steaks, at least not expensive and/or fatty cuts. Or if you need to use the grill put a cast iron skillet on the grill and cook the steak in that. Grilling fatty cuts means you have to tend it a lot more (the more futzing you're doing with it, the more you have to handle and possibly tear the meat, the dryer and less nice looking the final product will be) than just using a damn pan. Expensive steak houses use high end broilers where the heat can go north of 800 degrees at the flame is over the meat, not under, so there are no flare-ups. Once you're an experienced griller you can try steaks. I'm an experienced griller and I always go to a pan, because I get more consistent results and I don't have to watch it as much.
You pull it when it's slightly underdone. You'll then move to platter and cover with foil to rest 5 minutes or so. It will continue to rise in internal temp during this time.
That video demonstrates what happens when you add water to a grease fire in a contained vessel, such as a burning deep fryer or such. The grease under the fire is boiling at temperatures in excess of 250 Celsius, and when introduced the water flash boils, it's volume expanding ~1700 times (eg 1 cubic inch of water becomes ~1,700 cubic inches of steam) and displacing the boiling grease and aeresolizing it, at which point the fuel-air ratio becomes quite a bit more optimal for combustion, thus the large flash of flame.
Barbecues are a bit different, as the material that's burning is usually just a few drops of grease either on the heat shields or lava rocks. A spray of water from a misting type bottle (as opposed to a straight stream) will significantly reduce the heat of burning material and either knock down or extinguish the flame.
Again, this is only true where the material that's burning is just a few drops or bit of material. If a burning pool has formed, there is something wrong with the way the barbecue is setup. Most propane barbecues have channels in the base that direct liquid runoff to a drain on the bottom, which usually has a small wire hanger below it with a can attached. All the runoff is meant to flow down the the drain port and into the can, to be disposed of later. If the barbecue is on uneven ground/not level, or the runoff channels are blocked, you could have pools of grease forming in the base. The manual will have the proper procedure for cleaning.
I cannot recommend reading the whole article enough. Even if some of the advice doesn't apply to you (since you're grilling with gas, not charcoal), it does a great job of breaking down the processes behind the recommendations. You should come away feeling a little more like you understand what's going on. To get you started, here are the highlights:
Since people seem to take the flipping thing seriously, I brought science-pictures and experimental results from here (see "Flipping Your Meat").
No.
Grease fires need large amounts of liquid and rely on the water sinking below a large amount of grease.
It's late, but no.
Satans..... hints.....
Way overthinking this.
1. Clean your effing grill. It is important to do so because of fires. Your step-dunce is flat out wrong.
2. Steaks can be cooked by searing one side, then searing the other side, searing the first side again, then the 2nd side again (get some cross hatching going, it looks nice) then turning the heat down to cook in the innards to your liking, then pulling off and tenting while you plate the sides. I don't like flipping that much because it's a chore. It's essentially like doing pan sear and oven but on a grill.
It makes perfect sense that flipping a steak constantly will yield a more even result, but that's far from the only factor in a great steak.
i get away from cleaning my grill's grease trap by using a gril that had the bottom bit mostly rusted off, though hoenstl I have never had a grill that collected enough grease/fat to be visible let alone cause huge flareups like that
He's not talking about just not cleaning the grease trap. He's talking about not even brushing the grill. Ever.
I'm guessing the heat distribution plates (whatever they're called) are absolutely caked with grease. That's going to cause a flare-up even with nothing on the grill.
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Serious eats is amazing. Seriously.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/05/how-to-grill-a-steak-guide-food-lab.html
there's a seriously better link
If that's the case he should turn it on and let that stuff cook-off at around 300 Celsius (500 Fahrenheit) for like 15 minutes.
youtube.com/watch?v=vgF3gKBNKbM