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The genius of the reverse sear
Now here’s where things get interesting. If you cook a thick steak over IR you can get a gorgeous dark Maillard crust. As it continues to warm, the layer below turns brown, the layer below that turns tan, the layer below that turns pink, and finally, in the center you get a layer that is perfect medium rare. Most of the meat is overcooked and the exterior may well be burned. I call it the rainbow effect.
But if you put the steak in the indirect convection zone at about 225°F with the lid down the energy transfer goes slowly and more evenly. At low temperatures energy has time to swim all the way to the center without overcooking the surface. The temperature can be close to the same bumper to bumper. Prof. Blonder says “It’s like watering a potted plant. Sprinkle too fast and the pot overflows before the water can seep in. Sprinkle slowly and all the soil is moistened.”
Called reverse sear because we sear at the end rather than the beginning, it works best on thick cuts, more than 1-inch thick. Start a steak on the indirect side at about 225°F with the lid down so it warms gently and evenly from all sides. Then, when the center gets 10 to 15°F below your target temperature, let’s say target is 130°F, when it hits 120°F, take it out of the heat for about 10 minutes so the surface can cool a bit. Don’t worry, the inside will stay warm. But this cooling allows you to sear a bit longer without pushing too much heat into the core. Then move it over direct scorching infrared at Warp 10 and lift the lid so all the energy is pounding only one side. Because the lid is up, the top side is cooler and energy isn’t trying to overcook it from above. Then flip it and pummel the other side with IR and let the energy that has built up on the side that was facing the fire a minute ago bleed off into the cooler air rather than migrate to the center. And in defiance of tradition, we flip the steak every minute or two. Reverse sear. It is an important foundational method outdoors and indoors.
How many cookouts have you gone to where the chicken skin was charred and the meat was close to raw in the center? Because poultry skin has a lot of fat in it, direct IR can wreak havoc with it. Chickens are best cooked with indirect convection airflow most of the process, and then, when they are almost done, you can move them over IR with the lid up for just a few minutes, watching carefully, to crisp the skin.
I use reverse sear for everything from huge prime rib roasts to baked potatoes (they are optimum at 208 to 210°F). The only time it doesn’t work is on thin foods like skirt steak and many vegetables.
Reverse sear is perfect for pellet cookers. Because most are built like your indoor oven with a metal plate between the flame and the food, they rarely produce enough IR to get a good sear. So when I want that scrumptious smoked pork chop with a killer sear, I fire up my pellet cooker at 225°F and put a cast iron pan in there. The meat doesn’t go in the pan yet, it bathes in the warm convection air at first. When the meat hits 120°F on the interior I put a thin layer of oil in the pan (bacon fat anyone?), open the lid, plop the meat in the pan, press it hard against the hot metal, let conduction sear it, flip, and pull it off in the 135 to 140°F range.
For thin cuts
I love fajitas al carbon, fajitas cooked over charcoal. They are usually made with skirt steak, a thin flap of tasty hardworking muscle from the underside of beeves. There are two cuts of skirt, inside and outside, and outside is a bit thicker and my preference. The problem is that they are both so thin that they can be well done long before the exterior gets some nice Maillard flavor. Especially if you marinate it because that makes the surface wet and the first few minutes of cooking are wasted evaporating the water which cools the meat and retards the cooking. Yes, you can pat the meat dry, but then you are removing most of the marinade.
For thin cuts like skirt steak, skinny pork chops, or shrimp, reverse sear doesn’t work well. There are four good solutions.
Sear one side only. Cook it for only a minute on one side, just to take the rawness out. Then flip it and crank it to Warp 10 until it gets a dark sear. It will have a great crust on one side, be tan on the other, and remain rosy or pink in the center.
Cook frozen meat. Yes, you heard me. Get it frozen in the center and then sear it over Warp 10 on both sides. By the time the exterior is a beautiful dark brown, the interior has thawed and risen to optimum temperature. This also works if you marinate the meat. Skirt is a good cut to marinate because the striations in the grain have nice grooves for the marinade to nestle into, and because the meat is so thin, even if the penetration is shallow it is still a large percentage of the thickness. But the problem with wet meat is that it must dry out before it can brown. If you marinate skirt for a few hours and then freeze it, then grill it over rip snorting high heat, the surface can dry and brown before the frozen center turns grey.
The afterburner. The afterburner is the name I’ve given to searing on top of a charcoal chimney as described on page 000.
Torching. You can get a decent shallow sear with a propane torch as described on page 000. It runs at about 2,000°F. The problem is that it can burn the meat in a hurry and because you have to keep it moving the sear tends to be shallow.
The genius of the reverse sear
Now here’s where things get interesting. If you cook a thick steak over IR you can get a gorgeous dark Maillard crust. As it continues to warm, the layer below turns brown, the layer below that turns tan, the layer below that turns pink, and finally, in the center you get a layer that is perfect medium rare. Most of the meat is overcooked and the exterior may well be burned. I call it the rainbow effect.
But if you put the steak in the indirect convection zone at about 225°F with the lid down the energy transfer goes slowly and more evenly. At low temperatures energy has time to swim all the way to the center without overcooking the surface. The temperature can be close to the same bumper to bumper. Prof. Blonder says “It’s like watering a potted plant. Sprinkle too fast and the pot overflows before the water can seep in. Sprinkle slowly and all the soil is moistened.”
Called reverse sear because we sear at the end rather than the beginning, it works best on thick cuts, more than 1-inch thick. Start a steak on the indirect side at about 225°F with the lid down so it warms gently and evenly from all sides. Then, when the center gets 10 to 15°F below your target temperature, let’s say target is 130°F, when it hits 120°F, take it out of the heat for about 10 minutes so the surface can cool a bit. Don’t worry, the inside will stay warm. But this cooling allows you to sear a bit longer without pushing too much heat into the core. Then move it over direct scorching infrared at Warp 10 and lift the lid so all the energy is pounding only one side. Because the lid is up, the top side is cooler and energy isn’t trying to overcook it from above. Then flip it and pummel the other side with IR and let the energy that has built up on the side that was facing the fire a minute ago bleed off into the cooler air rather than migrate to the center. And in defiance of tradition, we flip the steak every minute or two. Reverse sear. It is an important foundational method outdoors and indoors.
How many cookouts have you gone to where the chicken skin was charred and the meat was close to raw in the center? Because poultry skin has a lot of fat in it, direct IR can wreak havoc with it. Chickens are best cooked with indirect convection airflow most of the process, and then, when they are almost done, you can move them over IR with the lid up for just a few minutes, watching carefully, to crisp the skin.
I use reverse sear for everything from huge prime rib roasts to baked potatoes (they are optimum at 208 to 210°F). The only time it doesn’t work is on thin foods like skirt steak and many vegetables.
Reverse sear is perfect for pellet cookers. Because most are built like your indoor oven with a metal plate between the flame and the food, they rarely produce enough IR to get a good sear. So when I want that scrumptious smoked pork chop with a killer sear, I fire up my pellet cooker at 225°F and put a cast iron pan in there. The meat doesn’t go in the pan yet, it bathes in the warm convection air at first. When the meat hits 120°F on the interior I put a thin layer of oil in the pan (bacon fat anyone?), open the lid, plop the meat in the pan, press it hard against the hot metal, let conduction sear it, flip, and pull it off in the 135 to 140°F range.
For thin cuts
I love fajitas al carbon, fajitas cooked over charcoal. They are usually made with skirt steak, a thin flap of tasty hardworking muscle from the underside of beeves. There are two cuts of skirt, inside and outside, and outside is a bit thicker and my preference. The problem is that they are both so thin that they can be well done long before the exterior gets some nice Maillard flavor. Especially if you marinate it because that makes the surface wet and the first few minutes of cooking are wasted evaporating the water which cools the meat and retards the cooking. Yes, you can pat the meat dry, but then you are removing most of the marinade.
For thin cuts like skirt steak, skinny pork chops, or shrimp, reverse sear doesn’t work well. There are four good solutions.
Sear one side only. Cook it for only a minute on one side, just to take the rawness out. Then flip it and crank it to Warp 10 until it gets a dark sear. It will have a great crust on one side, be tan on the other, and remain rosy or pink in the center.
Cook frozen meat. Yes, you heard me. Get it frozen in the center and then sear it over Warp 10 on both sides. By the time the exterior is a beautiful dark brown, the interior has thawed and risen to optimum temperature. This also works if you marinate the meat. Skirt is a good cut to marinate because the striations in the grain have nice grooves for the marinade to nestle into, and because the meat is so thin, even if the penetration is shallow it is still a large percentage of the thickness. But the problem with wet meat is that it must dry out before it can brown. If you marinate skirt for a few hours and then freeze it, then grill it over rip snorting high heat, the surface can dry and brown before the frozen center turns grey.
The afterburner. The afterburner is the name I’ve given to searing on top of a charcoal chimney as described on page 000.
Torching. You can get a decent shallow sear with a propane torch as described on page 000. It runs at about 2,000°F. The problem is that it can burn the meat in a hurry and because you have to keep it moving the sear tends to be shallow.
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