Best Steak Cooking Equipment

DO NOT buy the premium version of the Weber Smokey Joe. It costs about ten dollars more but does not perform as well as the standard version. For $35 plus a bag of charcoal, you can do some serious steak grilling in less than 20 minutes. Since it only weighs 10 pounds, you can cook those perfect steaks anywhere it is legal to have an open fire. Use fire starter cubes to get the charcoal burning and build a two-layer fire. That will give you all the heat you need.

Good searing and intense cooking can come from the heat source itself, but when you add something heavy to cook on, you will up your game. In this case, I’m talking about cast iron. The Lodge Sportsman Grill has remained a favorite of serious steak lovers for years. Though it is small and portable, it is 30 pounds of solid weight. Use a starter cube to get the fire going and fill it with charcoal. If you are cooking in the dark, the cast iron will glow hot. That thermal energy transfer rivals most grills costing thousands of dollars.

So if the secret to high-temperature cooking is heat and mass, then a good cast iron skillet will work wonders. One of my preferred methods is cooking a steak in a cast iron skillet. The trick is to get the cast iron raging hot. Heat it over a gas burner or set it directly into burning charcoal. Most gas grill side burners are weak, so unless you have one that can produce more than the standard 12,000 BTUs, I would suggest the charcoal solution. Be very careful, though. This level of heat will burn straight through most oven mitts.

Any good Kamado Grill can produce a perfectly cooked steak. Some of these units can hit nearly a thousand degrees (though 700 is more than enough). The Big Green Mini Max is designed for grilling the best steak. These high-end grills are primarily used in European restaurants, where they are fired up, and steaks are cooked to order. This little tabletop grill is efficient and possibly the best steak cooking machine ever made.

Have you ever attended a steak cooking competition? To grill like one of the top performers, you need the PK Grill and a set of GrillGrates. The PK grill is a cast aluminum charcoal grill that hasn’t changed much since the 1950s. GrillGrates are anodized aluminum cooking grates capable of conducting heat at lightning speed. With this arrangement, you will render grill marks so beautiful it will bring a tear to your eye.

If you don’t want to deal with charcoal. There is another option. Infrared. I am not talking about the low-temperature Infrared of Char-Broil, but the intense infrared used by higher-end manufacturers. The Solare Anywhere Infrared grill is portable, powerful, and priced for less than $400. This little powerhouse produces cooking temperatures near 1,000 degrees F. and is perfect for grilling up to four steaks at a time.

If you want to take infrared as far as it will go, then you need to turn to TEC. These are the people who invented the infrared grill. Their latest technology converts 99% of gas burner energy to infrared while eliminating any potential flare-ups. The TEC Sterling produces incredible temperatures that sear like a dream. It can be built into a custom enclosure. At, this is the grill for the advanced steak cooker.

In professional kitchens, cooks place do not place the steak over a heat source, but under it. These broilers, called Salamanders, are like steak cooking blast furnaces. The Otto Wilde Grill, one of my favorite toys, can produce temperatures up to 1,500 degrees F. The cooking “shelf” raises or lowers to adjust the intensity. Voila! A perfect steak is ready in minutes. The heat is infrared and purely radiant. The surface of the meat is seared evenly, and the outer crust is unbelievable.