The Mother of all Steak Grills

I like my steaks seared on the outside and medium rare (closer to rare) on the inside. I cook a good steak, but they just do not have the quality of a steak cooked at a top rated steak house. The biggest difference is the amount of heat produced by a restaurant’s equipment versus home equipment. I have heard chefs mention their ovens and grills reach temperatures of 1500 or more degrees. No typical home system comes close to that temperature. I can come close in my kitchen by searing a butter coated steak in a smoking white hot black iron skillet for about a minute on each side, then finishing it off in my oven preheated to 500 degrees. The problem with this method is that it produced more smoke than my kitchen vent could handle (I have an above average vent system). Outdoors I can do so by overloading my grill with charcoal and rigging the grill to raise the charcoal tray closer to the cooking surface.

Last week I found this photo taken earlier from my barbecue pit when I working on another article.

I thought to myself, that is some heat! Heck! It looks like Tom Cruise’s Jet Fighter in “Top Gun” with the afterburners on. What if I put a grill on top of my charcoal starter and grilled a steak on it? I am sure someone has tried this before, but not me. Not wanting to sink a lot of money into a ribeye that might turn out like a marshmellow that fell into the campfire, I rushed down to Walmart and purchased two of their “low cost” ribeyes.

Here’s what happened.

I seasoned the steak, minus pepper. (I feared burned pepper might turn bitter) Placed the steak on the grill for about a minute before turning. It was necessary to shift the steak every few seconds to keep the now glowing hot grills from severly branding the meat.

I cut my test steak to see if I achieved my desired results and was quite pleased.

Looks perfect to me. So I tried a second steak, added seasoning after it was cooked and here is my finished steak.