Ronan's Cooking

Steak

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3 min read

sides

Videos

BBQ

Coals need to be super hot - never try and save coals by doing half a chimney it needs the full thing so it stacks high enough and retains heat. By the end we should be charting the grates like we did on the Tomahawk. It smelt like steak for days after!

So when you tried thin steaks a few days later the temperature simply wasn’t hot enough, especially since the steaks were thin and would have needed a cast iron to be ripping hot! See this video. Need super high heat but also keep moving the steaks about to get even cooking

Temperature should be 300C when thermometer over coals (?)

Good quick overview - put steaks on the cold side of the grill then rotate it. That way they don’t get grill lines in some places and underdone in other. Instead you end up with a consistent crust rathe

Fun short showing way to use the chimney to sear then finish off with the BBQ

For a large steak, sear then cool side with lid on until target temp (40C-45C)

Pan

Quick guide to temperatures

For Rib-eye take off when 45C for me, 40C for Liv

Thin steak

  1. Salt meat 40-60 mins before hand. Pat down before frying
  2. Heat pan really hot
  3. Place steaks and don’t move for 1.5-2 mins
  4. Flip and another 1.5-2 mins
  5. Don’t cut up meat for thin steaks as it goes cold
  6. add finishing salt to cut meat
  7. Bon appetite

Thick steak

Sear then oven

This is traditional but is hard to execute

2-3 mins each side then oven for 6 mins (like Pan fried Duck breast)

Cold sear

Start off cold and keep flipping

Reverse sear

Put in oven first on really low temperature (like 120C, which makes the temp even throughout

Take out when around 40C

sear for flavour

Facts

Pg 133 of On food and Cooking Myoglobin can be three colours:

  • red when attached to an oxygen
  • Purple when oxygen is taken away
  • Brown when attached to H2O

So vacuum packed meat is purple and blooms into red when opened. When meat is fresh it has the enzymes still present so stays red, but these degrade turning the meat brown

The link colour of cured meat (like Italian sausage in 2025 Matt’s flat near Parma) is also due to myoglobin reacting with salt. As is the pink ring from BBQ food, this is myoglobin interacting with small amounts of Nitrous oxide generated by the fire Pg 149 of On food and Cooking

Ingredients

ingredients

Graph View