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.

Click here for the rest of the process

Filet Mignion that almost wasn't - Many videos of the process

Grilling is not a science. Some may call it an art. But one thing is for sure, sometimes things don't go as planned and improvisation is required. This was one of those times. The conditions outside were not ideal for grilling. 40 degrees and the wind was blowing strong. Keeping a grill at the proper temp can be tough in a situation like that. Normally with a Filet Mignon like this I would sear on each side for 2 minutes and bake for another 3-4 minutes on the side with no coals. The conditions this night changed that time frame and the method pretty dramatically. Click below to get the details.


But first let's start from the beginning. For this session I cooked a very nice size Filet Mignon. Stopped by John's Butcher Shoppee off 270 and St. Charles Rock Road and was delighted to find that they had Filets on sale for $8/pound. This bad boy on cost me $8.31:

Yeah, that is a new cell phone for reference. The old Razr is no where to be found.

While at John's I picked up some of their Marinade:

I am a bit partial to Andria's (something John's carries) but I decided to give their "marinade & flavorizer" a go... Here are the ingredients for their marinade:

The main reason I decided to give this a shot is when I saw the Sodium in this and the Sodium in Andrias. Andrias has almost 3 times the sodium John's does. And I have to say I'm happy I bought the marinade. It was really good. Can't wait to have it on something that is marinaded overnight such as the Bison Steaks I'm doing on Friday.

I threw the Filet into a ziplock with some garlic, black pepper, olive oil and the marinade and put it in the fridge for about 90 minutes:

The reason I used oil instead of my usual cola is because I don't want to ternderize the steak anymore than it already is. For tender cuts you want to go more towards oil based marinades rather than acid based marinades.

After 90 minutes or so I pulled it from the fridge and let it come to room temperature on the counter. You can see how the red steak has browned a bit by pulling in the marinade from the bag into the steak:

Time to find the proper wine pairing with my steak. Rosemount Shiraz should do the trick nicely:

This was the bottle that started it all. Different Vintage, but it was about 10 years ago that I was at a house warmin party and someone walked in with a 1998 Rosemount Shiraz. The guy said, "I realize it is Australian but go ahead and try it. It's great." Now at the time I thought of Australians and wine about the way I felt about the French and cars. Despite that I tried that wine and it was incredible. Turned out that 1998 was the best year Australia has ever had in recent history and they were churning out fantastic wines. I was buying it and giving bottles away to people. And thus began the shift in my family from a bunch of beer drinkers to wine drinkers.

Now out to the grill. With more than a few people mentioning how dark some of my outside shots are I attempted to rectify that with a 500 wat Halogen light. Seems to have worked better than the mag light I held under my arm for the last video I shot!?!?!

And here we have a grill set up for two zone grilling. Coals flaming hot on the left, nothing on the right. Oh, and as I always do just before I grill, I give the grate a good cleaning.

Now to those videos I promises in the title. This is me searing the Filet on one side. For some reason in this video it looks like the flames are hitting me in the face. Trust me, that didn't happen:

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And here we have me searing the other side of the steak:



How do I tell if a steak is done? By feel. I push on the steak. The harder it is the more done it is. As you can see in this video, after a full 5 minutes the Filet was just not cooking. The wind was whicking the heat away too fast so I put the steak closer to the coals:



I pushed it closer to the coals and cooked it 2 minutes on each side and it was still way too spongy so I had to transfer it to right over the coals if I wanted the thing to be more than raw. So much for those beautiful grill marks. Time to form a nice tasty crust:



One little trick here. I needed to get air to the coals to keep them hot but keep the heat in and around the steak. To do so I just cracked the lid a bit as seen here. Some would say that with a weber I just would need to open the bottom vents, except I hadn't dumped the ash in a while and those vents were under a couple inches of ash and not much use:



And here we have the steak on the plate and ready to rest for a little while. As you can see in this video that the steak is much firmer than it was when I was testing the doneness after 5 minutes of baking on the side of the grill:



I let this guy rest for about 4 minutes under foil while I got the movie ready for the evening:


With Pitchers and Catchers arriving in Jupiter tomorrow I felt a baseball movie was in order. Sure half the movie is a chick flick but it's still a great baseball movie:

Same ritual every year. In the weeks leading up to opening day I run the gamut of my baseball flicks including Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, the Natural, and For the Love of the Game. And no, I am not some Kevin Costner nut. The only other move I own that he is in is Silverado, but he makes great baseball movies. Back to the steak


Here we have the Money Shot:


And a bonus money shot of an awesome, tender, and juicy bite:



Click here for the rest of the process

My rarest steak to date on this site

That hunk of beef may still be mooing. This is for all you folks out there that order a steak with the hooves and horns knocked off and warmed up a bit. This is one of those glorious steaks...


While I was preparing my chili last Thursday I was also getting this beautiful piece of meat ready to be grilled on Tuesday night:


A picture from that side doesn't really do the steak justice in terms of thickness. The shot above shows the nice marbling but doesn't really give this credit it's due. This one does a better job:



I marinaded this guy in Worchestershire, garlic, black pepper, a little coke and some pepper oil to kick up the heat a bit:


Pepper oil? Take some dried peppers, put them in an oil bottle, add oil, put someplace dark, in a couple of months you have a nice spicy oil. Sadly the oil had little impact on the flavor of the steak. Just decided to try something new. Sometimes when you take a swing you hit a homerun. Sometimes you hit a single. Sometimes you swing and miss. No big deal.

The steak is ready for the fridge and an all night soak in that marinade:


The next day I pulled it out of the fridge, rinsed off the marinade, let it come up to room temp and then added some coarse salt and black pepper:


While my coals were heating up outside I got a proper beverage to enjoy with the meal. 91 point wine for $12 is a great deal as this bottle was really good:


BTW, for those of you wondering where I got the name GrillinFool, well maybe because on a Tuesday night in January I was outside grilling when the temp was this (not to mention windchill and it was pretty windy):


As for the grilling proces, here is a video of the process. Considering how dark my videos have been in the past I decided to try to do something about it. I got all kinds of fancy by holding a mag light under my arm, filming, and cooking all at the same time. The mag light lighting method is not the best method. I need to come up with something else for this. Maybe a portable shop light. But here is the video and it helps show the process from start to finish:



Here is the steak brought in to rest. Nice cross hatch:



Click here for the rest of the process

First Guy Night of the New Year + Video of Flame Searing Steaks!!!

Dad and I got together for Guy Night on January 9th. He brought the wine, I provided the steaks and potatoes and he also came through with a nice little bag of Royal Red Shrimps from the Gulf. Every year my folks go down to the Gulf of Mexico and pick up a cooler full of Royal Reds right from the dock, remove the heads and straight into the freezer. They are phenomenal. They have more flavor than your standard shrimps. So surf and turf (and spuds) it was.


Let's get to the ingredients for this meal. First off, a couple of fat New York Strips. Here they are coming up to room temp. Never cook cold steaks. I don't know the science behind it but I always cook my steaks at room temp:

Before I cooked them I wanted to try out the branding iron my 8 month old son got me for Christmas. I think my wonderful wife had something to do with helping him order it but I hear it was all his idea. And I must say it is really cool. At least when using a cut of meat big enough to accommodate the entire brand and these two bad boys did so nicely:

I was able to brand both without having to reheat the brand. Totally cool!!!

But before we get to the cooking of the steaks, including video of the searing both steaks, I should go over the sides. Two of the easiest sides you will ever make - Roasted Potatoes and Grilled Shrimps.

I took about five red potatoes and chopped them into similar sized chunks in order to ensure they cook evenly:

Then simply add some garlic, a good size pinch of salt, a few cranks of black pepper and drizzle in the veggie oil of your choice (in this case Olive Oil). If you want to add some herbs or red pepper flakes or anything else you feel like, go for it. For these I used some dried oregano. No reason other than the jar was the closest to me. If you want to use infused oils like garlic oil or hot pepper oil, that would work too. Here we have the potatoes with all the ingredients waiting for a spoon to mix the ingredients through:


I let the potatoes marinate in the oil/garlic/pepper/oregano for about 15 minutes. Then I preheated the oven to 400 and spread the potatoes out on a cookie sheet:


In the oven for 45 minutes at 400 and then about another five minutes under the broiler and we have nicely golden roasted potatoes:


As soon as I put the potatoes in the oven I lit the paper under my chimney starter while dad got to work on these beauties:


After he shelled and deveined the shrimps we were ready to dump the coals and throw our steaks on:



But first the wine. Again dad came through with an amazing wine. Dead Letter Office Shiraz:



With the coals dumped it was time to do some searing. Same story as all my other steaks. Two zone grilling with coals on one side and nothing on the other. Pour some oil, sear on the flames, rotate for the grill marks if you wish, pour more oil, flip over, repeat. Pull to the side to bake. Before we get to the video, let me show a valuable piece of equipment that I use every time I make steaks. It's a long bottle for oil that allows me to hold the base of the bottle and not burn myself when I pour the oil. Smaller bottles will put your hand right over where the flames are about to erupt from your grill. The wine bottle is there for size perspective:


***ALSO, BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN FLAME SEARING A STEAK, PARTICULARLY IN THE WIND. AVOID DOING SO AROUND WOOD OR SIDING. YOU MAY WANT TO KEEP SOMETHING NEARBY TO PUT OUT A FIRE SHOULD IT GET OUT OF CONTROL.

Now that that is out of the way back to the grillin. My dad likes his steak a little more done than I like mine so his went on first. Here is the video of the process. Forgive me for the low lighting, I am by no means any good with a camera for still or for video:



Flipped dad's over and repeated the process:



Here is a shot of this steak pulled off the heat and off to the side to be baked for a few minutes. How bout the cross hatching? This is not normally a priority for me, but I wanted to show how it is done:


Here is the other side with the Brand. Oh, how I love this new toy!!!


I baked Dad's steak for maybe 4-5 minutes before putting mine on. When mine bakes for a couple of minutes it will give Dad's about 6-7 minutes total baking time and thus a nice medium rare that he likes.

I noticed when doing Dad's steak that the oil poured on the fire that was upwind from the steak did not really have any impact on the steak as the wind blew it away from the steak. So when I did mine, I poured the oil in a tighter spot rather than in a large circle and put the steak on the grill a little upwind from where I poured the oil so the wind would blow the flames into the steak. This will make the oil last longer thus you will use less. You can see the oil lasted much longer in this vid:



I only showed the searing of one side of my steak. After three videos of the process I think you get the idea.

After baking mine a couple of minutes following the searing I pulled both off to rest:


Dad is a big fan of foiling the steaks while resting. I've never done it but we went with it this time. You don't need to seal it tight, it just helps retain some of the heat while resting as well as the moisture:


While the steaks were resting the shrimp went on. Since I was having so much fun with the flame searing I went ahead and flamed them as well. You can see that I am using a grill pan which will save me a lot of time instead of having to manage 15 or so shrimps at one time:


Time to bring this meal together. Here we have Dad's plated:

And here we have mine:


I suppose you want the money shot now. Well in this post you get two for the price of one. Here is Dad's:



And here is mine:



Total time from start to finish to make this meal, 60 minutes. Now on to the movie:


I almost forgot. Dad and I did it up right this time with a little dessert wine with the movie. Old Benson's Tawny Port. Here is a pic of this nectar of the gods!!!


I looked at this pic and it looks like Dad and I cracked a second bottle of wine. For those of you who are not familiar with Port, I feel another picture is necessary to get some perspective on what Port is all about:


That bottle is not a full size bottle and neither is the glass. But a pic with just the two of them looks like they are both normal size. One drinks port in 1.5-2 ounce increments. I like to explain Port with this analogy. Wine is to Port as Coffee is to Espresso. Port and Espresso are both more concentrated versions of wine and coffee, respectively. Port is thicker than wine and sweeter than wine. Incredible stuff.

Click here for the rest of the process