Step 1: Buy Trump Steaks
Step 2: Have your undocumented Mexican chef cook them while complaining about illegal immigration.
Step 3: Enjoy your steaks, which have been cooked to the proper Cheetos-orange colour of the Donald.
Step 4: Despair that you will never be Donald Trump.
I am going to have to dig but I read once that you don’t touch the meat more than 3 times… once to put it in, once to flip, and once to take out. I have had AWESOME grilled steaks and burgers not that I don’t fiddle with the meats and screwing up the temperature by opening and closing the grill top. I know the Internet disagrees (google’d it just now) but I like what I like…
I’ve found this true of most foods that I cook. Eggs are a perfect example of “don’t mess with them.”
The problem with that is that you’re restricted to a single cooking zone on your grill — wherever you first put it on (or at most two, if you switch to a different location for the other side). So you enjoy none of the benefits of bringing it up to temperature first before searing, or of searing first and then warming. Instead you’re limited to searing the whole time, and this leads to over-cooked outsides and/or undercooked insides.
Depends on what you’re cooking, though. For burgers, I think that’s ok. Same with steaks - I did some pretty thick rib eyes a while back 5 minutes on each side then rested covered on a warm plate.
However, for something like try tip or a large chunk, you’re going to want to move it.
One thing I do with rib roasts, though, is drop them on ONLY indirect, put the cover on and leave it. So it’s only touched once… 
When it comes to grilled steak. I prefer zero smoke. no flavoring beyond simple salt and pepper. I season and let them sit for an hour in the fridge. Then pat them dry. super hot grill. Sear both sides and move to the cool side, lower them burners and let them finish off until they are rare to medium rare. then pull off and top with any compound butter and tent to rest.
Fridge-drying and pre-salting - sound advice (that goes against conventional wisdom).
But…sous vide a hangar steak at 133 deg F for 2.5 hours (TBSP butter and spring of thyme in vacuum bag prior to sealing if you prefer) then sear on grill or in a skillet at the end = tender, beefy bliss. No steak knife - no knife, period - required.
Some folks sear and then seal for maximum Maillardyness, but I can’t tell the difference.
Ask where you buy meat if they have any dry aged beef. Lots of places do and for price premium, it’s worth it to not have to devote a chunk of fridge real estate for a week.
The grocery store I go to (HEB) sells their dry aged prime cuts for about $25 / pound.
Rare steaks for life you freakish pink meat lovers.
Saw Kenji speak at the Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven a few weeks ago. His talk was pretty much about this same subjects. Despite being vegetarian, I found his talk fascinating. I find understanding the science behind making food better helps me apply that same understanding in other recipes.
I also recommend his advice on pizza-making. It totally changed my making-pizza-at-home game.
complete myth. the more you flip them the more quickly and evenly they will cook.
Animals eating animals
Serious Eats covered this by doing direct comparisons of different flipping frequencies. The short answer was: the more flips the better although under 30 seconds between flips didn’t leave enough cooking time. More flips led to more even cooking.
I highly recommend Lopez-Alt’s book The Food Lab. It’s all drawn from Serious Eats articles however it’s nice to have the hard copy. I use it in conjunction with the site.
meh. if you’re not sous videing, you’re doing it wrong.
I swear by soy sauce, garlic and turmeric, as bbq sauce.
I’ll have to try the aging process…
The very idea of eating food cooked in plastic bags is disgusting, and the few times I have tasted it I thought the taste even worse than the idea. Ugh!
Grilling aged beef is OK if you can’t spit-roast your freshly killed meat over an open fire, I guess.
if you could taste the bag, it wasn’t done in the right kind of bag.
sous vide steak at 134f for about an hour.
heat a cast iron pan @ 500+f in oven
open windows and turn on fan
remove pan from oven and place on high burner fro 15 minutes
dry steak thoroughly with paper towels
rub 50/50 mixture of vegetable oil and butter directly on steak
put steak on pan until charred (couple minutes)
give the pan a minute or 2 between steaks to fire up again
let meat rest.
Eat You Fool!
