fire grilled bone in rib eye.

So, i don’t know much about welding, even though i work with steel most days while building knives, it always seemed like a lot of effort to go to . I bought the cheapest mig welder on catch.com.au a while ago and only used it a handful of times, it’s definitely not the best out there, but it gets the job done.

I’ve been looking around for a fire pit or similar that i could use at the workshop to cook over fire, there’s a ton of choices but i wanted one that i could mount on top of the barrel smoker, so i decided to make one.

I had some left over mild steel sheet lying around which turned out to be the perfect thickness at around 5mm. i came up with a basic design , cut the panels with a grinder and proceeded to weld it together. probably took around 3 hours to weld given the low cycle time of the welder, it overheated every 10 minutes or so which meant a wait of about 15 minutes to get it back working temp. As i said i’m no welding genius, but for the most part it came together how i wanted, and as always there’s nothing that a can of black spray paint won’t fix the look of.

i decided to go with an open ribbed bbq plate as wanted as much flame and smoke exposure as i could get, turns out i found one at bunnings that fit perfectly ( i loathe bunnings by the way, but unfortunately there isn’t really a small local hardware store where i live ).

After an inaugural firing to run it in , the first official BBqing was ready.

Here’s what i know about cooking steak on a fire.

I went with a 1kg bone in ribe eye trimmed it a little and wrapped the bone in foil.

applied a liberal amount of salt flakes, and waited for the fire to burn down to coals, first tip is cook your meat over coals , not flaming wood, you want gentle radiant heat.

i generally subscribe to the flip it once school of thought, however in this instance as it’s a thick cut i turned the steak regularly for more even cooking, once i had built up a decent crust on the outside i moved it to a less hot part of the grill plate and shuffled some coals out of the way to lower the temp. The steak was probably on the bbq for around 10 - 12 minutes, before i transferred it to a dish and added a good knob of butter, cracked pepper and fresh Thyme and let rest for another 10 minutes. ( i don’t add pepper until after it’s cooked )

The sauce.

creamy mushroom sauce is the go to around here, it’s dead easy.

slice up a large field mushroom, or any other mushroom that you like. add it to a large cast iron skillet with a crushed garlic clove , finely chopped onion and a good knob of butter. I added some fresh thyme as well. Heat everything until the mushrooms have wilted then add around half a cup of cream, when it just starts to bubble, take it of the heat and let it rest for five minutes. if it’s too runny for you just return to the heat and cook it some more, just be careful not to overheat the cream.

What’s steak with out frites.

thinly slice 2 large potatoes, as even as you can get. i double fry them, so slowly batch fry a handful of chips in canola oil until just before they start to color, once you’ve fried all the chips once, pat them dry and place them in the freezer to cool down and dry out.

when you’re ready to plate up return your chips to the fryer or cast iron skillet with 3/4 filled with oil and fry until golden brown. make sure to drain the oil before serving

A couple of things to think about.

cooking your steak more than medium rare is just not right.

cook over coals, not flaming wood.

say no to tomato sauce or bbq sauce on steak.

thinly cut potatoes equal crispy fries

buy a good quality cast iron skillet.

you can watch me make the bbq and cook a steak here.