Bison Steaks

This is the first time I have ever done Bison steaks. I've had Bison burgers but only prepared for me at a restaurant. I'd heard good things about it and wanted to give it a try. And I have to say I was not at all disappointed. The steaks were very similar to beef but they had a heartier consistency than beef. And despite having very little fat they were just as good if not better than beef in terms of flavor. For the rest of the pictures and the write up click below...



I want to start with a little about Bison before I go any farther. First off, Bison is not cheap. I bought two Rib Eye steaks at $18.99/pound. Second, the steak is very lean. There was very little marbling if any in these steaks. The NY Strips had a little marbling but were and extra $1/pound. They say that the lack of marbling is due to the Bison being grass fed over corn fed like most of the beef we buy, but I don't know if that's true. I want to apologize for not getting some pics of the meat before I threw it in a marinade. I was distracted when I got home and was prepping them for the following evening and totally forgot to get some pre shots.

Here are the steaks after I pulled them out of the marinade. Decent size but if you have been here before you know these pale in comparison to some of the other monsters I have done on this site:


The marinade was as simple as can be. Garlic, fresh ground black pepper, and this marinade:


I gotta say I like this stuff. It's milder than Andria's so I didn't feel the need to cut it like I do Andria's with coke or oil. It has much less sodium than Andria's as well. I'm gonna add this to the repertoire as a regular. Expect to see more of this stuff on this site.

One thing I was disappointed in was the wine:


The Gallo Reserve stuff is really good normally. And this got a 90 point rating and was only about $11. I was very excited. Love to find good 90+ pointers for $10. But I gotta wonder if they got the labels mixed up with a batch of merlot. Zin is supposed to be meaty, spicy, hearty. This was very smooth and velvety, which is all well and good if one is drinking a merlot. I wanted something to stand up against the Bison. This was not it. I wonder if somewhere there are people drinking a Gallo Reserve Merlot and wondering why it is so spicy?

People ask me all the time how I know when the coals are ready to dump. Well when doing steaks the cook time is only a few minutes of searing and a couple of minutes of baking, if necessary. So you don't need to save the charcoal for a long grill session. You want hot and fast not slow and low so no need to save the charcoal. So when the charcoal chimney looks like this you are ready to go:


After dumping the coals you can see that they are ready to go for a high heat sear. This is a HOT fire:


Same as always, coals on one side for the searing. No coals on the other side for the baking.

My wife likes her steak a little more done than I like so hers went on first:


Seared for about 60 seconds, rotated about 60 degrees and seared some more and then flipped:


Here is a close up of a great sear:


Put hers off to the side to bake. After a few minutes of baking here comes mine for the sear:


Different flash setting along with the edge of my wife's steak which is off the heat but I have it close to the coals as it was a cold and windy night. If I had it all the way over, as far from the heat as possible, it would completely stop cooking while I flame seared mine as there would be no heat anywhere near it for about 4 minutes:


I only baked mine for maybe 2 minutes. The steaks were thinner than I normally make and Bison is supposed to be cooked for a little less than beef. If it were a hot summer night with no wind, I probably would've just seared and pulled mine off. But here we have both on the cutting board ready to rest - hers on the right, mine on the left. Hers has a little better sear than mine as the fire was hotter when I did hers. While hers baked the fire died a bit:


After taking this shot I threw some foil over the top to let them rest and retain some of the heat:


And here we have the money shot of mine. My wife does not care for me delaying dinner with the taking of pictures of said dinner so I didn't risk upsetting her by making her wait while I got pics of her steak. But here is the money shot of mine. Grey around the edges. Pink to red in the middle. Almost perfect where I am concerned:



Now, I want to talk about the differences between Bison and Beef. Bison is meatier, leaner, more expensive and maybe a little tastier. Although that could be the new marinade I used. I need to marinade a steak all night in it to see if that is the difference. Remember I only marinaded the Filet I did a few days ago for a couple hours. But the question that begs to be asked - does a meatier, leaner, more expensive and a little tastier Bison steak warrant the extra cost over a beef steak? Do the Bison benefits merit paying $8/more per pound? Probably not. I liked it a lot, but I also have a little boy that my would like to one day send to private school. I will do it again. I want my dad to try it. But I can't see myself doing Bison very often. But if you have the means and want a healthier steak then this is the way to go.

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How the GrillinFool celebrated the Super Bowl - Part II - Sliced Ribeye Sammiches

Normally this is just served on Christmas Eve but my dad broke this out for the SB. This is an excellent recipe for feeding a lot of people as it is simple and once the meat is cooked it can remain in a warm oven for quite some time while the rest of the meal is prepared. This is so simple and so flippin good!!!


Basically go to your local butcher and ask him or her to slice a ribeye cut wafer thin. We're talking about right at a quarter inch thick. While traveling for his job my Dad got the meat at the Save-A-Lot in Princeton, Indiana for $3.99 per pound. And the meat cutter there, Jim, sliced it perfectly for this. When you get home put those slices in a ziplock with some Andria's and coke and allow to marinade overnight.


If you don't have access to Andrias, Worcestershire, garlic and cola will suffice. You could do Dr. Pepper if you want as well.

The next day, set yourself up a grill with high heat on one side of the grill and low on the other. One side to quickly sear the meat and the other side for a nice ribeye spa which is where you put the marinade in a disposable tin pan. Once the steak is cooked, toss it in the pan to keep it warm:


Let's get a look at that succullent meat. How good does this look:


Once the grill is hot, slap that meat on the heat:


Sear it quickly on one side:


Then flip and repeat:


It doesn't take very long. 60 second on each side should do it if the fire is hot enough. Remember this stuff is very thin. As the slices finish cooking transfer them to the spa where you can see the sauce is steaming:


As the pan fills apply more of the marinade as you can see here. That black stuff is extra marinade:


Despite it not taking long to cook each slice, there are a ton of slices and only so much grill space so to finish all of the meat it might take an hour or two. In a situation like this, that just means more time for drinking as my father was demonstrating as he was tending to the meat:


Once the pan if full, slap some tin foil over it and throw it into a warm oven. When it's time to feed the masses, pull off the foil and set next to whatever condiments you desire.


For me all I need is some mayo or sometimes a slice of cheese:



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The Perfect Steak

I am a true believe that the perfect steak is rare or medium rare. Anything beyond that is cooked improperly. That being said, using this method for grilling a steak can improve steaks cooked beyond medium rare as well.

My favorite steak of all time is the bone in ribeye and that is exactly what I cooked for this meal. This particular steak was indeed a monster. I put my cell phone into the picture for reference. My cell phone is a standard Motorola Razr.



Another angle to get the idea of the shear size of this thing



All I did was add a little coarse salt and fresh cracked black pepper to this bad boy. To some this is all one needs. Normally I marinade my steaks, even filets. The key is using the right kind of marinade for the right kind of cut. But for this one, and for my first demonstration here I went with a simple, almost pure steak.

First off, let the steak come up in temp. Pull it out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature. Second is the real trick to cooking the perfect steak - two zone cooking. Coals on one side. Nothing on the other. Sear the outside on each side to form a nice crust to seal the juices in, then pull off the heat to the side with no coals, put the lid on and bake till desired doneness.

And when I say sear, I really mean sear. I don't jerk around with searing. I get the coals flaming hot and then I pour on some sort of veggie oil and flame sear my steaks. ***Disclaimer - I do not recommend doing this near siding, a wood deck or anything else that could melt or catch on fire. Also avoid doing this in high wind. I almost learned that one the hard way.


To give you some perspective in the day light. Here is a picture of me grilling steaks at my folks this last Summer. This is the flame searing process and thus the necessity for the disclaimer. And yes the GrillinFool did have hair at one time before he started shaving it all off:


The hardest part is having the patience to let that expensive cut sit over those flames without flipping it. Sear for a couple of minutes and rotate 90 degrees and sear for a couple more minutes for nice grill marks. I don't really care about grill marks so I just sear it.

For this steak I seared it and then pulled it over to the side with no coals for maybe 5 minutes. Realize that this bad boy was close to 24 ounces. Smaller steaks (and more importantly thinner steaks ) will take less time to bake to the desired doneness.

Now comes a very critical step. Resting. You just created a nice crust to seal the juices in. You just pulled that steak off a hot grill. Those juices are in a very excited state. They are moving a million miles an hour inside that steak. If you slice it now all the juices will run out before you get to your 3rd bite. Hence the criticism of using a grill fork to turn steaks over in my inaugural post.

The ideal resting place would be on a cooling rack for cookies so that the juice that does leak out (and there always will be just a little) will not soak through the crust on the bottom. I'm not that anal. I just put it on a plate to rest. More perspective on the size of this thing. It is resting on a standard size Fiestaware dinner plate.



A steak of this size needs to rest about 5 minutes. It should rest long enough to allow the juices to settle down. You're not going for letting it rest until it gets cold. Just till those all important juices calm down.

Those of you who are not fans of rare or medium rare steaks usually get to this point and assume that the blood and juice is going to leak all over the plate when I slice it open. I will prove you wrong with what I like to call the money shot



And here's an even closer view of the money shot


Normally I like my steaks just a little redder than that, but this thing was so huge that I baked it for a little longer than it probably needed. Despite that, it was juicy and delicious from the first bite to the last. And I ate the whole thing....
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