The Reverse Sear

The reverse sear has been growing in popularity recently and is a great way to cook a great steak, especially over a wood/ charcoal BBQ. Using a similar slow cooking concept to Sous Vide, but in a way that adds flavour to your meat. Sous Vide is an easy way for chefs to cook consistent steaks and looks nice on the plate, but water and plastic are two of the worst things for a good steak! With the reverse sear you get perfect meat and a great flavour. Although it’s become a trendy way to cook recently, it’s nothing new. This is how any well trained chef would cook a steak ‘bleu’…let it warm through, sear then rest. Traditionally a steak would be seasoned and seared, known as sealing. Although it was called sealing, it’s not actually sealing the juices in its just giving the steak flavour with the maillard reaction (but will leave that for a future post). Then the steak would be cooked to the desired level. With Reverse Searing we’re just doing that the opposite way. Bring to just below the required temperature, then quickly sear the steak then let it rest. This method is a great way to cook thick steaks, but anything under about 3cm cooks too quickly, so use this for your tomahawks or an extra thick cut steak. When Reverse Searing a digital probe thermometer is essential as you’re looking to raise the temperature to the correct level before the final sear. Before searing you want to have the temperature of the steak about 10c below your required final temperature, so for a medium rare steak, start searing when it reaches about 45c.