Once you’ve chosen a good cut of steak, which grilling expert and author of “The Vendor’s Life Cookbook » Chad Belding helped you select in his previous story, time to cook it, upside down!
Grilling the perfect steak isn’t a long process, but it is a precise process. Temperature, time, seasoning and cooking tools are important, and Belding walks you through the following four-step process. This grill recipe is a little different from most. Most people sear the steak first, but Belding prefers searing it upside down to give it a nice outer rind and keep it tender and juicy.
Try this recipe and you’ll never grab the same thing again!
Chad Belding’s Guide to an Upside-Down Steak
You will need: Grill, dry rub, meat thermometer, cast iron skillet, tongs. (See below for Belding’s specific product recommendations.)
Step 1: Apply the dry rub
Take your thawed steak from the fridge and your favorite dry rub, and carefully massage the seasoning into the meat. This step is essential to maximize flavor. Belding has its own line of 10 different rubs to TheProviderLife.com.
“Whether it’s steak, beef, or wild game, I wholeheartedly believe in dry pickling,” Belding says. “That dry rub is able to penetrate the steak and get into the pores and get really good flavor through the resting and cooking process. Carefully rub this dry rub into every square inch of this steak. I like to use Provider Life’s Crosshairs rub and mix it with Drop Tine.
Step 2: Preheat grill to 300ºF while letting steak rest
Belding makes sure to let the steak sit at room temperature for 15-20 minutes before cooking. During this time, he heats the grill to 300ºF — no more than that. If that doesn’t sound hot enough, it’s probably because you’re thinking a traditional searing, in which the steak is subjected to the highest temperatures first, often using a cast iron skillet. Don’t worry, you’ll be using the pan, right in the back.
“A lot of people think you have to sear before you grill,” says Belding. “I learned from Chad Ward to Whiskey Bent BBQ of what we call reverse cooking, where you burn at the end. This reverse sear is going to give you a really good aesthetic looking steak that has the grill marks and bark on it. It’s not soft and soggy – it’s a steak.
Step 3: Grill the steak to 122°F and prepare the cast iron skillet
Throw the steak on the preheated grill and prepare the cast iron skillet (either on your stove in the house or on your grill if you have that setup) for when you remove the meat from the grill. Using your meat thermometer, grill the steak until it reaches 122ºF, then remove it and transfer it to the heated pan.
Step 4: Sear the steak in the cast iron skillet, let it rest, then enjoy
“Sear it for 2 minutes on each side,” says Belding. “The internal temperature will reach around 130 to 131 degrees. Remove it from this reverse searing heat, let it sit for 10 minutes at room temperature, then slice it against the grain. It will be around 132º to 133º, a medium rare internal temperature and a perfect raspberry red color inside. You’ll also have this really nice bark and char on the outside, where you’ll taste some of that smoke, you’ll taste those dry rubs, you’ll taste those juices, you’ll taste some of that fat, and that’s the steak perfectly cooked.
Accompaniments with your steak
What to eat with your steak? Belding prefers a diet low in starch and sugar to stay lean and promote optimal health, so any type of vegetable is a good choice.
“If you’re in an exercise mindset and keeping your sugar and carbs low, go for some asparagus and maybe a sweet potato,” he says. “But you don’t need to eat a lot of noodles and white rice or anything like that to have a pleasant experience with this type of steak.”
If you want to drink with your steak, enjoy a glass of wine or whiskey. “There are a lot of great Merlots, Cabernets and Pinot Noirs that go very well with steak,” Belding says. “A good whiskey would work too. A high-strength single-barrel style, Tennessee sour mash whiskey pairs very well with beef.
5 tools every fit guy needs for grilling
Belding explains why these items are must-haves for any grilling enthusiast.
Traeger grill
“Traeger grills are amazing for cooking steaks. These are wood pellet grills, so you have a hopper containing wood pellets which are heated and burned by an auger system which causes convection type cooking throughout the barrel. A pellet grill like this is going to be able to grill steaks, grill a pork butt, grill a brisket, all of it. He can make vegetables, he can make desserts. I love it because it’s convection controlled, which means the meat is hit in all the different areas of the barrel with the heat and smoke.
Lodge Cast Iron Skillet
“Whether inside the kitchen or outside, I love cast iron because it retains heat. It gets very hot and chars the outside of meat, whether it’s a pork chop or chicken skin. It gives it that good bark I want on my meat.
Meater Meat Thermometer
“No matter how male you are, you should have a meat thermometer when cooking meat to make sure you’re cooking it optimally. The one I use is the Meater. It’s actually inserted into the steak and goes in the grill. I use it with an app on my phone and it alerts me when I reach a set temperature. It’s a new way of cooking. »
Traeger utensils (tongs, pigtail, spatula)
“I like a good spatula, something sturdy. Traeger makes a great spatula that has a large space on which you can scoop up big steaks without worrying about them falling off. You can flip them very easily with this style of spatula. I also believe in a really strong pair of tongs that you can pick up a steak with and flip it over. I also like having a pigtail broiler. It lets you poke into the steak, twirl it around, and flip it, then it picks up the steak without dropping it.
Supplier’s cookbook
“The supplier’s cookbook is a great thing to have because it’s very thought out with where the meat comes from, how you take care of the meat from when you buy it to when it comes in in the freezer or when you cook it (or from when you catch a fish and what to do with it).The book covers many different areas: when you chill an elk or a deer or an animal elk for a gut, how to properly and successfully treat and go through this care in the field, etc. From the field to the table, this is life we live, to go out and hone the skills to kill it and put on the table. There are a lot of steps to go through. This cookbook is a great resource for all of that.
