Dry Brined Ribeye Cooked Like a Caveman

Well not quite a caveman as I did use the reverse searing method popularized by many great chefs including

Kenji Lopez-Alt from Serious Eats – Click Here –

Meathead from AmazingRibs.com – Click Here –

Both Sources have the jist of what I do below as well as an amazing plethora of information on techniques, recipes, and the most fun part; food science!

The reverse sear works best with a thick piece of meat in order to not overcook the interior of the meat; for this I picked up a 2″ thick ribeye from local butcher Ben’s Meats. Ribeye are great for this type of cooking as there is a lot of intramuscular fat and marbling which when cooked to the right temperature renders in the meat causing it to have a delicious buttery texture

Here is a great guide to Ribeye Steaks

About 6 hours before cooking I trimmed the steak a little and dry brined using kosher salt –

Tip is to salt it like you would salting your meat at the table.

Dry brining has a lot of great benefits including penetrating the meat deeper and bringing out the flavours. You can dry brine for 24 hours if you have the time, but make sure it is at least an hour before cooking as the water and salt needs some time to work; I wrapped loosely in butchers paper in the fridge

Referenced elsewhere but the best resource I have seen when it comes to dry brining and benefits comes from Meathead at Amazing Ribs – Click Here –

After taking out of the fridge I put the steak on a wire rack and into the oven preheated to 250 F with my external temperature probe. Reverse searing is a great technique to ensure that the centre of the meat is up to the ideal temperature and there is an amazing crust on the outside

As recommended by Kenji I pulled the steak at 125 F taking about 1:15 getting ready to sear

Note: I usually like steak on the very rare side, but if something like a ribeye vs a filet is cooked to a rare temperature it will not reach the appropriate temperature to melt the internal fat and can be a tough piece of meat

This is not the most appetizing picture but thought it showed one of the other benefits to a reverse sear in that it amply dries off the outside of the meat in order to get ready for a really good sear, and take advantage of the glorious Maillard Reaction

Now time for the fun – I decided to try the so called Caveman technique for searing meat. There are a few tried and tested ways to sear a steak, but this one seemed the most fun in the moment. Started off by getting the coals on my Big Green Egg nice and toasty

Next step to the Caveman Method is to put the steaks directly onto the coals; this is apparently helpful because of the high heat (a hot charcoal fire can be in excess of 1000 F), and the lack of air between the coals and the meat can help with flareups (this turned out untrue which you will see by the big fire 🙂 Ash will get onto the steaks, but not a significant amount; and fuck it, it’s cool!

After about 2.5-3 minutes I went for the flip and had to battle some fairly substantial flames

Flipped it and the char/crust was top notch, looked beautiful; also fire is really fun

Another couple minutes and the steak was taken off to rest for a few minutes

And for the inside look

We sliced it thin and topped with home made rosemary salt (will post recipe) and it was fantastic, juicy, with great texture. The outside was slightly charred on a couple of the corners, but it really added to experience. The final internal temperature ended a little north of what I wanted which ended at 138 F vs my goal at 133 F so would probably pull from the oven closer to 120 F; that would be my only change to the cook

Overall it was a great piece of meat, the right technique for the cut, a fiery cooking experience, with a delicious result

Cole rating: 9.5/10