Granddaughter Sami Cooked A Delicious Reverse Sear Ribeye Steak For Beth And I

Our 17 year old granddaughter Samantha (Sami) Stewart is spending a couple of days with us and last night she made a delicious reverse sear steak for us.  She had not done this before, and I provided some coaching but only Sami touched the steak from the time it came out of the refrigerator until it was served to us at the table.  The pictures below show Sami at each stage of the cooking process. 

I have done a couple of posts on Reverse Sear as the best way to cook a steak and if you want the recipe that Sami used and the background on the approach you can find that at: https://billwinetravelfood.com/2022/08/18/temper-your-steak-and-then-reverse-sear-it/.

I had a local butcher cut me a 2″ thick boneless ribeye on Monday and did two days of dry aging before we had it on Wednesday.  I talked about a simple approach to doing a couple of days of dry aging in one of my other blogs and you can find out about that process at: https://billwinetravelfood.com/2023/05/06/dry-aged-reverse-sear-tomahawk-steak/.

An hour before Sami put the steak on the grill to start the tempering process I brought it out of the refrigerator to come up to room temperature.  Sami painted each side with a thin coat of Dijon Mustard and then ground salt and pepper on it for the cooking.  Because the steak was so thick it had stood on its side for the dry aging and Sami covered all the sides with the thin coat of mustard and then the salt and pepper as shown in these two pictures.  That took about 15 minutes to complete.

Sami then went out and used the butane torch to light the starter to ignite the lumps of hardwood charcoal in the chimney starter and had them burning bright in just 10 minutes.  I use the Fogo All Natural Premium Hardwood Lump Charcoal that I buy in the 35 lb. bag. 

The Kamado grill was set up with the fire box divided in half.  She then poured the burning charcoal in the back half and topped it off with a pan of small lumps that lit quickly from the hot fire and brought the grill temperature up to 375° so the ceramic was ice and hot.  She closed the Kamado and the Flame Boss 400 WiFi Controller and the sensor for the pit temperature was then put in place set to a cooking temperature of 225° and the top vent closed 90%.  In about 30 minutes the cooking temperature was at 225° for the tempering. The Meat sensor was inserted into the steak an Sami stood the steak up on the rack set in the highest position over the portion of the fire box with no coals and the meat temperature sensor was right next to keeping the cooking temperature where the steak was at the target of 225°.

When the internal temperature of the meat read 90°, Sami lit another starter over a chimney of small lumps.  She wanted to get the cooking temperature up to over 600 degrees as quickly as possible for the Reverse Sear process.  The controller was reset for a cooking temp of 450°, the highest it can go to and that go the fan at 100% to get the coals already in the grill back to red hot. 

When the internal temp of the steak was 105°, about an hour after it had been put on to temper, Sami pulled it off onto a pan, added the flaming coals from the chimney to the coals in the grill, and put the heavy steel grate on in the lowest position right over the hot coals.  She then closed the Kamado, took off the Controller and opened the lower vent all the way and opened the top vent all the way.  In about 5 minutes she had a red-hot fire with visible flames ready to sear the steak. 

She put the steak on for 3 minutes and then flipped it and used an instant read digital thermometer to check the internal temp.  We wanted the steak to be 130° for Medium Rare.  After 3 minutes on the other side, she flipped the steak back to the original side down for another minute and flipped it again.  In 30 seconds the internal temp hit 130° and she took the steak off the grill.  You can see the proud smile as she took the steak with a great bark on it into the sliced and served. 

Sami sliced the steak into slices about ½” thick and as you can see in the picture, it was perfectly medium rare.  She then assembled the pieces on the serving platter back to look like a whole steak and brought it to the table for us to enjoy.  Beth had made a twice baked stuffed potato and a delicious salad to go with the steak and the last picture is Sami taking a bite of the delicious steak she cooked for us.