Okay Foodie, This is for You

DAD hears that no one likes his food related posts, so for the one anonymous person that is responsible for all of those page hits, here is your personal post.
 
With the approach of 237th annual commemoration of the the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a.k.a. grill outside and watch fireworks day, a.k.a the fourth of July, everyone and his brother it seems is full of advice on how to grill the perfect steak.

They are wrong.

The problem is not that they cannot grill a perfect steak. It is that their advice cannot necessarily help you to grill one, because it is largely bad advice for the occasional backyard grill master wanna-be.

So give Dad a chance to share some advice with you on how to grill the perfect steak. (Click more below).

Dad has written before about the subject and won't repeat all of it here. You can read his previous post here.

In this post Dad will discuss the oft repeated, but wrong headed approach so often given in food related articles: build a roaring fire.

They all say it. Build a big fire. Dad'll use this quote from the article linked to above as a proxy for what everyone claims:

Don't Spare the BTUs

[Executive Chef] Schenk says it is all about heat. High heat sears the cooking surface of the meat, ensuring a juicier steak and allows the charring to happen. With high heat, one can get a nicely charred rare steak. A little flame is your friend; a lot of flame is a definite concern. Keep two sides of the grill hot and move the steak to the second hot spot if the first grilling area is aggressively flaming up. Dousing with water is a last resort; you want to keep the grill as hot as possible. But if it's between the house going up and a well charred steak, I'd give a nod to keeping the house intact. http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/best-steak-grilling-tips-pros-121700567.html

That is fine for him, but what he won't tell you is that his kitchen is probably equipped with a special purpose salamander just for steaks and chops. He has a degree of control the backyard BBQ does not. His advice should be, build a special grill designed just for steaks.

Not at all practical.

Here is what really works for weekend and holiday grillers:

Build Just Enough Fire to Accomplish the Task.

Practically speaking, most people build too big of a fire (or use too much gas, this post is petroleum charcoal briquette centric). If they have and use a chimney starter, the fill it twice or more. That is completely unnecessary. So how much is enough and how much is too much volumetrically? Well the answer depends on how many steaks you are going to grill, the size of your grill and other factors. But you likely have too much charcoal under your meat if the briquettes are resting one atop each other. You should only need a single layer of fresh charcoal.

At this point, you might be thinking to yourself, "Now look NF Dad, I've been building Hell sized fires for years and getting great results. What makes you think you know better 'en me?" You, dear foodie, are apparently from the south in Dad's mind.

Great. If you like your results and can consistently produce them stick with the tried and true. But give the rest of the post a read. You might change your mind.

Without going into a pedantic discussion distinguishing heat and temperature, suffice it to say that a single layer of charcoal sufficiently close to the meat is enough to obtain black and red steaks (Dad's preferred result). A Hell fire can do the same, but the additional heat produced by such a fire unnecessarily raises the risk of over cooking the steaks brought on by carryover during the rest period.

In Dad's experience, large fires produce inconsistent results. At times the steaks were perfect. At other times they were overdone. It was not until he recalled a program by Alton Brown discussing the topic that he made the connection between what was going on in Brown's example of a very hot oven to what goes on on top of a grill.

To summarize, Brown explained that heat in meat was like speed in a car. The faster the vehicle travels, the harder it is to stop it. He demonstrated the imprecision of high speed with a remote control toy car. At high speed, the car overshot the stop sign every time. At low speed he was able to stop the vehicle exactly where he wanted it. Grilling is no different. On top of a raging fire, if you pull the steaks at the target temperature or just below it, they are likely to overshoot your desired doneness.

Now, it could be that you are experienced enough to know exactly when to pull your steaks from that roaring fire. But imagine having such a degree of control afforded by a comparatively smaller fire to be able to reach and not overshoot a single degree Fahrenheit.

Why does this work? In Dad's early days of grilling it did not. He built small fires and turned out internally overdone steaks with a sickly gray exterior. What does he do differently today? First, he ensures that the surface of the meat is as dry as possible before grilling. Browning will not occur until the superficial moisture has evaporated; meanwhile, you are boiling your meat. Also, he adds sugar to his salt during the 3 day (or more) dry aging (see previous post at link above). It turns out that sugar promotes browning and brings an unexpected depth of flavor to beef.

"Will my steaks take longer to grill?" you may ask. Yes, but grilling is not merely about getting dinner on the table, especially for those willing to build a charcoal fire. It is as much about the process, and if you enjoy it, what is wrong with lengthening it?

This is not the last word on the subject. Intermediate and advanced discussions would discuss seemingly contradictory advice, but also present reasons for the seeming contradictions. The general audience reading grilling articles on line, however, are better served with the advice given above. 

So, to recap, for great steaks consistently done, build a smaller fire than your inner Tim Taylor would otherwise tempt you to build. A single layer of briquettes will give you more control and more consistently done steaks than the forest fire you might usually cook on.