Jon's steak method

If you grill true Wagyu this method gets some modifications.  This also needs modifications for some of the interesting "butchers cuts" you can get that may need to be kept rare but are thin.

• Steak selection
  • I prefer thick cut steaks without bone in them.  Bone is just a thermodynamic anchor that makes for a more complicated piece of meat to grill.
  • I like very thin marbling but a lot of it.  Like, white lines in the meat that are as thin as possible.  If there is a network of marbling with say less than 1/4" spacing, that should be good for any sirloin, New york strip or tenderloin.  Ribeye is more complicated but basically the same network of fat veins with as minimal huge fat veins as possible.  Generally, redder is better but I haven't found that to be that big of an issue.  Because you have to buy such large packs of meat at Costco, I always vacuum seal some and freeze.

• Prep
  • Salt meat 24 hours ahead.  So far, my favorite salt is Redmond's
  • Before putting on grill I may or may not let the beef warm up for between 1 and 4 hours.  I'll put course ground pepper and olive oil on the steak before putting on the grill.

• Charcoal
  • Chimney - variety of ways to do it but it should take between 15 to 20 minutes to get charcoal good and going.
    • How much charcoal?
      • Jon: fill the chimney
      • Kyle: Personally I don't think you can really use too much.
  • Dump charcoal on grill and let the grill heat up for around five minutes.
    • Jon: If I'm cooking a lot I may put some extra charcoal on the grill immediately after I dump the chimney.
    • Kyle: Two additional modifications to that. One has to be your grill volume and the distance of the grate to charcoal. Second, I like to have two zones, a super hot zone and a no charcoal zone. I like to have the ability to put the steak in an area of less heat for control. Especially if say, Jon brings over steaks of varying thickness. I need to manage the cook time a little.

• Cooking the steak
  • Throw the steaks on the grill, at least half an inch apart, directly over the heat.  I don't like the reverse sear for a variety of reasons but the biggest is that I think the flavor of the smoke gets onto the surface of the meat best when it is raw and for the next five to ten minute
  • I flip the steaks fairly regularly to get the heat going in at a moderate rate
  • I start checking the internal temperature at some point that I think the outside is starting to look like where I want it to be.
  • If the internal temperature isn't where I need it to be and the outside is done or close to, then I place the steaks onto indirect heat areas of the grill.  I may close the grill to get more 360 cooking and also lower the temperature of the grill.   Mom and Dad have done this thing where you put the steak in the oven at this point.  I'm basically kind of too lazy to do that but it seems to work really well and would let you get some other stuff cooking on the grill.
  • I try get any beef off the grill by 125 degrees.  I'm often looking for around 120 and sometimes as low as 115 if I think its really got a lot of thermal momentum.  I would also point out that I would definitely rather take the meat off sooner rather than later if I feel like the thermometer isn't giving me temperatures I am sure the meat should be at.  I don't know why but sometimes it just seems like something goes on and the beef is acting weird and not giving me accurate reads. Then I make the decision to tent or not based on how everything has gone.  Once in a while I even cut the meat in two immediately to slow the post grill cooking.