Cooking Down and Dirty

A cookie cooling rack can be used on the coals if you're worried about a little ash.

I discovered cooking meat directly on the coals, "down and dirty," about a year ago.  I saw a YouTube video of a guy cooking steaks by laying them directly on a bed of hardwood lump charcoal and I was convinced I had to try it.  A couple of days later, my wife and I were at the grocery store, and as we passed through the meat department I decided then and there was the right time to explain to her that I wanted to lay a perfectly good piece of beef directly on a bed of coals and "see what happens."  Needless to say we left the grocery with some random, super cheap cut of beef that I had never heard of before.  I think it was a tiny cut of chuck steak or something, I can't even remember.  All I know is it had decent marble (delicious streaks of white fat running throughout the meat) and it was cheap.

I filled my chimney starter with hardwood lump charcoal (never use manufactured briquettes for down and dirty cooking), let it get good and white hot, and dumped it into a vegetable grilling pan that a friend had given me.  I evened out the pile of coals with a metal spatula so that it was somewhat flat, and blew off what little ash was on the coals.
 
Days before,  while I was reading about cooking down and dirty, I also discovered the art of "scruffing" meat before cooking it.  Scruffing is simply lightly scoring each side of a cut of meat with a sharp knife, so that more surface area is created for flavor to reside.  We will talk more about scruffing later!

So I seasoned my cheap cut of meat with salt and pepper, scruffed it on both sides, and walked outside to my grill, where the bed of coals was waiting.  I gave the coals one last burst of air, blowing away what little bit of ash was there, and then laid my two little pieces of chuck steak down, directly on the coals.

What happened for the next four to five minutes forever changed the way steaks are cooked at my house.  I let the meat cook on one side for about two minutes or so and then flipped it.  What I saw amazed me.  There was no black char or burnt meat, just total and complete deliciousness.  A couple of pieces of charcoal had stuck to the meat so I simply pulled them off with my tongs and put them back in the pile.  No harm, no foul.  After about another three minutes I moved the steaks over to a plate and let them rest for about ten minutes.  

As I sliced and ate my piece of medium rare, perfectly cooked steak, I decided I would never cook steak any other way.     

At my house, when it comes to steaks, down and dirty is the only way to go.