The following article was written by local Chef Andrew Dunbar.
Fire and meat. It’s a tale as old as time.
Since we, as humans, were living in caves, we taught ourselves the art of cooking a T-Rex steak over an open fire. In the time that’s passed since, I like to think that we—and more importantly, I—have mastered the art of making the perfect steak. In the upcoming “At Home with Andrew” class on Thursday, August 24, we’ll be learning how to achieve that perfect crust on your steak while keeping the inside moist and perfectly cooked.
Cooking over an open fire is a great skill to have. Many people, including myself, don’t have a grill. Why don’t I have a grill, you ask? Well, it’s because I have an open pit fire in my backyard and since its arrival, it’s hard to go back to mere grilling. But, why would cooking over an open fire be important to the Average Joe?
Honestly, because it’s more practical than it seems at first glance. Campgrounds often just lay a rack over a fire place. And you could always use that fire pit in your backyard that’s normally just used for entertaining purposes to cook things. Then, there’s always a chance that a zombie apocalypse might pop-up. Or, you could do it just to impress your friends and family.
The trick to a great cooking fire is, well, to get rid of the fire. We want coals, baby! Coals blazing like it’s the early-1960s in Centralia, Pennsylvania! The more hot coals the better. The flames of a fire are honestly nothing more than a light source. Seriously, a flaming fire creates more smoke and smoke can make for an unpleasant flavor.
“But, hey,” you say, “I like smoked meat!!” Calm down—we’ll get to the difference in a second. We will spend some time talking about how to make and prepare a great fire that will turn into a great bed of red-hot cooking coals. This will include what woods to use and how to know when they’re ready.
So, besides a fire pit and some fire in it, what else will you need for this particular installment of “At Home”? While a nice cast-iron rack would make this round of cooking much easier, things such as a cast iron pan, an old grill grate, or a shopping cart on its side are also acceptable substitutes. We might even experiment with throwing the meat right onto the coals and seeing what happens.
After having acquired the device upon which we’ll be cooking, we’ll be wanting a nice, thick-cut piece of meat. I will have a small array of different sized pieces to show the difference in terms of cooking. Ideally, though, what you should be looking for is a somewhat fatty cut—such as a ribeye that is 1.5”-2” thick—for the best results. We’ll need salt—something that’s a bit coarse, such as kosher or sea salt—garlic, and some fresh herbs. I’ll be using some thyme, rosemary, and maybe some parsley, but ultimately we’ll see what the garden has to offer that day.
Andrew Dunbar
So, let’s talk about that smoke thing from earlier and about how an open fire cooks differently than a stove or grill. With an open fire, the woods that are burning often release a lot of chemicals such as lignans and it’s these lignans that give food that smoky flavor. While in a smoker, the wood that’s being burnt is typically in a controlled heat (see pellet smoking) or they are offset—the smoke is directed at the meat, while the heat is indirectly doing the cooking, which gives the chemical bonds adequate time to form. While cooking directly over a fire, we have neither sufficient space nor perfect heat to complete the process. As such, an open fire that is full of flame and smoke will often start to give the steak a bitter, rancid taste. So, to help combat this from happening, we will, as talked about above, talk about making sure the fire—or more accurately, the coals—are perfect.
While “At Home with Andrew” is a pretty lighthearted cooking tutorial that allows for plenty of time to talk and get deep into the scientific explanation of why smoky flavor makes a mouth happy, it’s also just a fun, laid-back event with a few special guests on my end, including my dear friend, Eric, returning once more to let us know about pairing wine with steak and grilled food, in general.
Seeing as a thick steak may take a bit of time to cook, I’m sure that we’ll have more than one bottle of wine to dri……, I mean, discuss. This month’s “At Home with Andrew” will broadcast live on both Manitowoc Public Library’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/manitowoclibrary) and YouTube channel at 6 PM on Thursday, August 24. So, even if you can’t cook at home alongside us that evening, I hope that you can join us to talk about food and have some fun.
Because food without memories attached is just something that you eat. But, when it’s a night filled with laughs, friends, great wine, and amazing food, well that’s a meal worth remembering.
