Cooking Steaks Right: Thick vs Thin and Thermal Mass
Thermodynamics for carnivores
If you want to cook a steak correctly, a lot of things have to go right. If you want to cook a steak incorrectly, you only need one thing to go very wrong. And when it comes to steak cookery, the thing that often goes wrong is carryover cooking, especially in regards to searing.
There are so many factors at play, that we decided to do some testing to show how some of the variables affect the results. In particular, we were concerned with steak thickness and its effect on steak doneness. Thickness is correlated with thermal mass.
Thermal mass is, in essence, mass. But more than that, it’s mass plus geometry, which is to say that both the size and the shape of a piece of food affect how it will react to heat. A two-pound ribeye that is three inches thick will respond to heat much differently than two pounds of thin skirt steak, about a half-inch thick, laid out on a grill.
But how does that thermal mass influence how the steaks cook? It does a lot. We reverse seared a few steaks (and more off-screen that we used to experiment on) to find out how thermal mass works both against us and for us in our search for perfect steaks. Using RFX MEAT® and RFX GATEWAY® was key to the success of this cook because it allowed us to go from the low heat of the initial cook right onto the grill, where the flare-ups were no problem for the end of the probe.
Watch the video and learn more about how thermal mass and carryover cooking work so that you can take better control of your steak doneness from now on!
Love all the Thermoworks tools of the trade. From pens to lollipops and other products to ensure a wonderful experience of the Art of Garde Manger, indoors and outdoors.
The video was very educational and love the explanation of thermodynamics . The steaks were cooked just perfect but the problem was seeing flies enjoying the steaks themselves,. Such a turn off for a final viewing to 3 beautiful cooked steak because you should have brought the steaks indoors and that would have been a grand finale. I realize how much steaks are these days but a bad taste for a wonderful product.
PS. I ordered 2 of the wireless
Robe Starter kits and # extra probes.
We hate when the flies get on camera, too. I hope you enjoy your RFX!
Hello, FRX new owner here.
How to set up the RFX for for a reverse sear beef?
Any help?
Tks
The most important thing is to make sure you’ve inserted the probe up to at least the minimum immersion depth line, preferably the recommended line. It will go from low heat to high heat without any problems, so doing a reverse sear is super easy. Ifyou need help setting the RFX sysytem up on your phone.wifi, etc, it’s best to call our Tech Support and talk live to a real person at our HQ.
What a POS “article.” All it really says is “buy our crap.”
I’m sorry you didn’t find ANY of the thermal info useful, but this IS a blog run by a thermometer company as part of our outreach to get people to purchase. I don’t think that is a secret we’re trying to conceal. But we certainly try to make it useful for people who are not buying. Writing that post actually changed the way I cook steak because I learned so much more about carryover than (thought) I knew before. And yes, the thermometers we recommend in it are very useful as tools for understanding it and cooking better.