Guest Foodie: Alfredo Bran & Grilling Steak Techniques

The Foodies' Kitchenmayo 16, 2010

This post is also available in ENGLISH (INGLÉS)

Grilling is the most basic form of cooking; all you need is food, fire and the right recipes and methods to ensure grilling success. If the weather conditions are right, we will always take the opportunity to get together with friends for an afternoon of grilling debauchery, in which my husband and a friend’s husband would always become masters of the grill.

A couple of weeks ago we visited very good friends of the family, the Bran’s, to enjoy the warm sunny weather at their beautiful home for a typical “churrasco”: Steaks, Guacamol, Chirmol, Tortillas, Corn and Beer. You can’t have steak without beer.

The Bran’s have a wonderful brick grill in which Alfredo taught us the basics of grilling steaks:

Place the grill about 5-7 inches away from the burning coals.
Don’t test the food the minute you put in on the grill. Leave it to have a chance to cook, and to sear on the bottom. This will prevent it from sticking.
When it has seared at the bottom after about 2 minutes, turn it over, and put salt on the seared side. If you salt your meat when it is raw, you will lose moisture as it cooks. Sear it first, then put the salt in.
Don’t cut the meat to see if it is done. All you’ll do is drain the juice out of it. A rare steak feels squishy; a medium steak feels springier; a well-done steak feels very tight and hard. The rule of «the longer it cooks, the firmer it gets» also applies to fish and poultry.
After you have grilled your meat, don’t cut it right away. Otherwise all the juices will come running out. Cover it with foil and let is rest for about 5 minutes. Even after the meat has been taken off the fire, the inner temperature will raise about 5 degrees more.