Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation The Reverse Sear

I've seen this mentioned here before. The idea is slow baking/grilling a steak until it almost reaches desired doneness, then searing over a hot fire, or in a skillet, to finish.

Does anyone do this with good result?

Do it all the time with great results. Mostly with tomahawk ribeyes.

How long, about, do you slow bake it, grill indirect, before doing the sear?

Same here. Low oven (180) till about 110-12 in a rib steak. 30 seconds to a minute each side in CI skillet that is smoking hot.

Same question, and I know this will vary, but how long of a bake to get to that temp? 5 min? 10 min?

About 30 to an hour depending on thickness or meat temp going in.

I run my BGE at 225 indirect and give it some smoke. Pull it when internal temp his 115. Crank up the egg and give it a quick sear on my spider and grill grates. I usually let my steak come to room temp before cooking FWIW.

Thank you, gentlemen...provides some perspective.

(Now, cue mindbender to flop in and p*ss on the cornflakes...too bad, he's too late...)

If you are cooking indoors or don't have good temp control outdoors you can just heat on a rack in 200 degree oven until 115 then pull it. Crank up oven to max temp (~475) and return meat for a minute or two.

Indoors or outdoors I think it's the only way to cook thick cuts of meat if you like med rare.

Elk loin

when I was in the restaurant biz, my cooks could do a thick steak to any temp desired, and never burn one, or deliver it under cooked.
Takes skill, but it's being done every day, all across America, by well trained cooks.

Sure, how many did they ruin before they got that good?

I essentially do the reverse sear when I sous vide thick steaks or large roasts. Cook to rare and then sear in cast iron or on the grill to get the medium outside with a good crust. The really nice thing about this is I drop the meat in the sous vide bath when I leave for work or out for the day and finishing up dinner when I get home is a 10 minute job.

Here's a NYS I did the old way last weekend...was nice and red inside. I'll be trying reverse to see how it compares.

Serious question: what's the point?

Why not sear first then slow roast? My understanding is the sear keeps juices in during the roasting. Reverse order would seem to lose that advantage?

The sear keeping juices in isn't true. Alton Brown did some experiments on his show several years ago and demonstrated the fallacy via weight.

If you like your meat medium to medium well then reverse sear provides no benefit.

If you like rare or medium rare on a thick piece of meat then it provides the best method of getting the perfect inside temp that is edge to edge and not medium rare in the very middle with shades of gray/medium leading to the outer edges.

It's also a more relaxed method of cooking with larger window for reaching your target internal temperature without overshooting. You do need a good thermometer like a Thermopen.

Overpriced patio bling. $80ish bux versus $14.00 that reads exactly the same as my calibrated lab grade therm and it's still on the original 4 year old battery.

I can wait the extra 2.5 seconds for a readout.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-CDN-DTQ...-Thermometer-NSF-Certified-/282057081707

Stop being so practical...

Gee whiz. Thanks for the expertise.
Good info there.
But who pays $80 for a Thermopen? I guess I should have said get an "instant read thermometer" and pay whatever you want. Pretty handy for brewing beer too.

Damn bullets ain't going down in price and I've been doing a lot of shooting lately. LOL

I do as it's the quickest and most reliable thermometer available. The cheap $14 ones are just that cheap

Sorry Dan, gotta disagree. Thermapen might be 2-3 seconds quicker but my 4 year old CDN digital therm is a tank and reads within a tenth of my lab grade (calibrated) thermometer on the original battery and it gets used hard.

Interesting. Thanks for the explanations and link. I’m going to have to try this.

Traditional sear and slow roast on a 6lb ribeye roast this past Tgiving:




Rare is the only way to go.

Damn, that looks good.

Noted the butter pat on the potato !

Oh, did you...

Required for food photo-op.

Margarine is sold is deceptively similar-looking sticks.

Bent yer mind, eh?

P.S.