First Reverse Sear

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hova1914

Smoke Blower
Original poster
Feb 21, 2013
105
12
Washington, DC
Decided to try a reverse sear to see what all the fuss was about. Got a couple of porterhouses for SWMBO and I. Seasoned with olive oil, salt, minced garlic, and cracked pepper and let sit overnight. Also injected some chicken breasts with a dale's marinade/minced garlic mix, seasoned with some McCormicks and let sit overnight as well. Let the steaks come to room temp, set up for 2 zone cooking with some hickory wood chips, and cooked the steaks on indirect heat until they reached an internal temp of 95 degrees. Flipped and let cook until temp was 115.
Patted steaks dry and put them on direct heat for the sear. Did about 3 mins per side for swmbo's rare steak (blue plate) and about 5 mins per side for my medium steak (red plate). I cracked some pepper over each finished side as I flipped. Pulled them off and plated them to let them rest a bit.
Set the grill up for regular cooking, added more wood chips, and put the chicken on. Served the steaks with some long grain wild rice, broccoli, and red wine.
Although it takes longer, the reverse sear was NOTICEABLY better than the regular sear. SWMBO said that if she didn't see me out grilling the steaks, she would have sworn I bought them from a restaurant. We're officially reverse-sear converts. The steaks turned out so well that I'm thinking about trying a reverse-sear for my burgers since I cooked them like I (used to) cook my steaks. So if anyone has ever tried reverse-searing burgers, I'd be interested in hearing how they turned out.
 
Awesome job!   I just reversed some ribeyes tonight myself.  You'll learn the by the thickness and adjusting what IT you want to take them to before searing.  These were a little less than an inch so i took them to 130...did a quick 1-2 minute sear per side, rest them in foil and they were dead on medium....beautiful, juicy and incredibly tasty.    
 
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Oh  i do burgers all the time...especially when i get fresh 95% at the butcher and add onion soup mix and dash of worcestershire sauce.   Smoke them at say 225-250 and go to say 135ish IT and then sear over hot coals is best.    The best  burgers you'll have...remember they are pretty red when smoked, looks like they're raw but it's all smoke ring. 
 
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Oh snap! I'm all excited to try some reverse seared burgers now! I do have to admit that I was a little worried about letting the steaks sear for so long after letting them cook to temperature on the indirect heat side. I thought the point was long slow cook, fast hot sear; so I was afraid I'd over-cook them. 3-5 mins per side just seemed like an extremely long time to me, but since it was my first time I wanted to follow directions and tweek from there. I wanted to try bringing the initial IT higher next time and have a shorter sear and see how that works out, and your post lets me know that it should come out great (if not better) doing it that way. Thanks for the help/suggestions!
 
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