Hope everyone had a great Christmas and your New Year is off to a good start. My holidays were great, lots of good food, and spending time with family and friends. I spent the whole month cooking, every weekend or day off I had something on the smoker. I smoked pork butts, tenderloins and turkey breasts, but the highlight of my grilling extravaganza was the cowboy cut rib eyes that I cooked on Christmas day.
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| Cowboy Cut Rib Eye, Merry Christmas to Me! |
Since I could not find Cowboy cut steaks in the store, I decided to cut my own. I started with a big ol’, choice grade, bone-in prime rib and then, with a sharp knife, I cut the rack into steaks by slicing between the bones. The results are a big thick bone-in rib eye steak, about 1 ½ -2 inches thick. To season these amazing beef slabs, I mixed up an Ancho Coffee Rub that is currently in beta testing.
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| Cutting steaks, just slice between the bones. |
Since these were uber-thick steaks I decided to employ the reverse sear technique. I started by cooking the steaks over indirect heat at 225-250F until the internal temp hit 115F, which took about 20 minutes. I pulled steaks off the grill and let them rest while I set up the BGE for direct cooking. Once the egg was up to 500-550F I put the steaks back on and seared them for 2-3 minutes on each side. The internal temp when they came off the grill was 127F and when I served them they were a medium rare 135F.
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| Searing the steaks after the slow cook. |
I’ve tried the reverse sear several times, but have had mixed results. This time it worked. The steak was a perfect medium rare all the way through with just a thin edge of sear. This beef beast was the best of both worlds, the rich flavor of prime rib and the tasty char of a steak. When I first slapped this bad boy down on the plate I thought it was going to be too big, but it wasn’t. Once I cut into it and started eating I could not stop, I ate the whole freaking thing. The Ancho Coffee rub was fantastic, just a few more tweaks and I’ll be bottling this up for everyone to enjoy. This steak will go down in history as one the greatest Christmas steaks ever.