Cooking steak under a chimney starter

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drjiveturkey

Knows what a fatty is.
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I remember watching Alton Brown cook a steak this way so decided to give it a try. A little canola oil, salt and pepper to season. Then I filled a weber chimney half way with lump charcoal and placed it right over my steak. 2 minutes per side. Made a really nice brown crust. Dump the coals back into the grill and finished off indirectly on the grill. Better than anything else I've tried. The 2 problems were, I can only fit 1 steak at a time. When dumping the coals into the grill after searing a few spilled out and left scorch marks on my deck. Next time I will lift them out of the starter with tongs and drop the through the lift grate.

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I did the same thing using an elevated grate over my "regular" grate.
My biggest problem was that somebody stomped on the deck which made a few chunks of carbon fall onto the meat. Crunching your teeth into that kinda sucked, but the meat was excellent.
 
Beautiful color on the steak. I go back and forth between under the starter and putting grate on top of starter.

On the one steak at a time problem, here was my solution: use a second charcoal grate on top of charcoal baskets in my Weber. That puts the charcoal right below grilling grate. A full chimney gives enough hot coals to easily cook 2 steaks if all coals are put to one side.
 
Gonna have to give that a try. I like the idea of "broiling" with the heat source on top, the fat and juices will soak back into the meat instead of just dripping out.
 
Try using lump charcoal and putting the steaks directly on the charcoal. It is fantastic.
 
you can get the same effect putting the grate on the top of the chimney and cooking the steak there.
 
I don't know if my chimney is large enough to fit a steak under it. But I'm gonna try! Great looking steak!
 
aawa said:
you can get the same effect putting the grate on the top of the chimney and cooking the steak there.
Click to expand...

Not really. The idea of cooking under the chimney starter is to sear the steak in a 500+ degree environment with the heat source within an inch from the meat. You also will not get flare ups when any fat renders off the steak. The key is to just sear both sides of the steak to help seal in the juices and then finish it on top of the flames. Many great steak resturants use a salamander oven to achieve this effect.

-NCGrimbo
 
padge31 said:
Try using lump charcoal and putting the steaks directly on the charcoal. It is fantastic.
Click to expand...

Caveman style. Seen that on youtube. I've done that with a pork dish called banh uot thit nuong. Its a vietnamese style grilled pork skewers, usually I make it from thin slices of marinated pork butt.
 
When we were in the process of moving, all of my grills were packed up, and I cooked every steak I ate on my smokey joe under the charcoal starter. Its a great way to cook a steak. Nice work there by you. BTW, this also works great as a broiler to melt cheese on burgers.
 
I was just thinking of doing this last night. I got all proud of myself thinking I invented a new way to sear steaks :doh:. Alton beat me to it again. Gotta try it for sure now.
 
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