The first time I heard the term “reverse sear” was about five years ago, on Food Network, but that was already more than a decade after a young, rock-star chef and culinary consultant named J. Kenji López-Alt started talking about his discovery of a new method for cooking thick steak to perfection. 

Rather than searing the meat first— you know, “to lock in the juices,” as we’ve all been advised since forever— Kenji tested this method of bringing the steak to ideal temperature in the oven first, and then throwing it onto the hot grill or skillet to sear it. The food world took notice of this brilliant discovery, but I’d been reluctant to try it, for reasons I can only explain as sentiment and tradition.

We’ve all seen the drawings on cave walls, with a man cooking animal parts over fire. This is the way we’ve always done it, and here I was, questioning what was already working. Still, I had to ask myself, are some of my mindsets about cooking set in stone because they date back to the actual Stone Age?

But Kenji hasn’t steered me wrong yet, as evidenced when I tried his brilliant baking soda technique that I like to call the miraculous mayo marinade. I use that one all the time now. Or last summer when he posted a recipe in NY Times Cooking, describing how to use salt to draw out the flavors of ingredients in this Mexican street corn guacamole, which Kenji says is his favorite and understandably so. And of course, the tremendous a-ha moment I had when I realized how positively simple it is to make my own sausage, following his salt-wait-grind-mix instructions.

So this summer, I finally decided to try the much-lauded reverse sear, and I’m here to report my experience. First things first, I had to pick up some steaks.

And not just any steaks. According to this article on Serious Eats, I needed to have steak that was close to 2 inches thick, and that usually means a custom order. When I explained to my local butcher what I had in mind, he pulled a huge slab of bone-in meat from the cooler in the back and went to work— slicing it nice and thick and trimming off the excess fat and bone. I’ll pause right here and acknowledge how much I appreciate having an actual butcher in town, one that sells locally produced meats with sustainability in mind, rather than a forced selection of meats from God-knows-where, shrink-wrapped over styrofoam trays. If you have a community butcher shop, please support it. 

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We ended up with two locally raised, grass-fed N.Y. strips that weighed roughly 2 and 1/2 pounds total— whew, that’s a lotta meat. At nearly 28 bucks a pound, this was not going to be a cheap experiment. My husband (and resident grill master), Les, was a great sport about the whole thing, even though the method defied his sensibilities, too, and even though it meant a longer wait for dinner.

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Here’s how it was supposed to go.

1. Dry rub the steaks the night before — I used just kosher salt and black pepper, and they rested uncovered in the fridge.
2. Slow bake the steaks at low temperature (250° F) to just-shy of done — 25 to 30 minutes (we’ll just see about that).
3. Sear the steaks to perfection — we had the grill fired up and ready to go!

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Are we there yet??

First, the process that was supposed to take 25 to 30 minutes ended up taking much longer. Were my steaks too thick? Was 40 minutes out of the fridge long enough to knock the chill off? Whatever the case, the steaks looked awful during this slow oven time. It’s a little upsetting to see expensive cuts of meat looking so— what’s the word? Grayish. 🫤

I started checking at the 30-minute mark, and we weren’t even close to the 115° F internal temperature we needed for a medium rare finish. This project was running slower than molasses in January. We resisted the urge to turn up the oven temp, but the clock was ticking, and we were getting damn hungry by this point.

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C’mon, I’m starving!

Finally, we decided that 110° was close enough, and when those steaks hit the infrared side burner of our Napoleon grill, it was quite dramatic! The sear was spectacular, and from that point, it took a mere four minutes to plating. We were grateful that Kenji’s instructions said there was no need to rest the steaks before serving. All that business of letting the juices redistribute was covered during the slow roast. Just slice and enjoy! I barely slowed down to take pictures.

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Finally, the taste test!

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The texture of the reverse-seared steak really was perfect— crusted and flavorful on the outside, juicy and tender inside— and it was delicious. But was it superior to a seared-first steak— the kind we usually grill? I can’t say for sure, and I also can’t confirm that it was the cooking method alone that caused this perfection, as I also followed Kenji’s instruction for salting and seasoning the steak the night before. The overnight “dry-brining” technique used to make me uncomfortable, too, but I’ve done it with turkey, chicken, pork and duck, and had fabulous results. Maybe the dry brine on its own would have given us the same end result.

Would I do the reverse sear again? Possibly, but only on rare occasion and under the right circumstances. Les already does a terrific steak on the grill, following the old cave man method, and I do a darn good job with them in a cast-iron skillet. It is unlikely that we would ever choose such large steaks to begin with; nutritional guidelines say that 4 to 5 ounces is appropriate for a serving, and we usually push that into the 8-ounce range, but these were over a pound apiece! We should have shared one, I think, but I wanted leftovers.

The reverse sear technique could be useful if we had a large gathering for a grilled meal (probably why top-notch restaurants are doing it). Things can get a little dicey when you’re trying to get a bunch of steaks grilled at once, and the low-and-slow process would allow extra flexibility for accurate temperature and quick finish, and more time for cocktails and chit chat while we wait—nothing wrong with that.

One final observation about reverse searing, and this one didn’t hit me until the next day when I sliced up some of the leftovers of our enormous steaks to top a salad. I can truly say that never-have-I-ever had leftover steak with such flavor and texture. The meat was still juicy and tender, much more so than I expected for round two, so there’s that.

I’m curious to know others’ experiences with reverse searing; if you have tried it, please let me know in the comments section below how things went for you. If you haven’t tried it, will you be firing up the grill (and oven) to give it a go this weekend?

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