Slow 'N Sear / Competition Steak Cooking

I did this cook today in my Weber Gen 2 Performer Kettle in another one of those middle of the Winter warm and wonderful Spring like days. I think it’s our third day at about 70 degrees. 

Trimmed up a couple of steaks that weighed about one pound each and were about 1-1/8” thick and applied two different competition rubs. The top steak has a rub with dill seed in it and is my wife’s favorite and the bottom steak is my favorite and has a little heat in it. Both are very good rubs for competition steaks. 

I moved the Slow ‘N Sear as far to the middle of the cooker as it would go and then foiled each side of the unit to force all the intake air up thru the center of the accessory for maximum air flow and heat. I filled a Weber chimney full of all Kingsford Professional  all hardwood charcoal briquets for this cook and lit if off for this cook. I would rather use all lump but I think that SCA and Kingsford will team up again this year and offer the additional “double your contest purse” if you win and I sure can’t pass on this great offer. 

My tools for this cook. I decided to try two different methods of cooking the steak in the Weber Kettle to see which one might be the best for the setups I had on hand. 

I did the first steak on my standard size Grill Grates after a 15 minute warm up (to 625 degrees) and this took a total of 10 minutes to get it seared up and looking good. 

After the first steak was done, I setup the kettle with my cast iron steak grid setup and let it warm up for about 20-25 minutes to my cooking temp of about 500 degrees and this steak took about a minute less to get to my pulling temp of about 136-138 degrees for that perfect finish temp of medium that the SCA rules call for. 

You know...I think both of them looked great and would be competitive in a contest. 

Both steaks in the presentation box and ready for turn-in. 

The results of the cook looked about right on the doneness of warm and pink in the center (medium) and my sear marks on both steaks came out well. For ease of cooking, I thought the steak on the cast iron grid was the easiest to cook. I also found out that I could have used much less fuel (maybe 2/3rd chimney of charcoal) for this type of cook. 

I sure feel that a fellow could do quite well with either of these setups and method for cooking a competitive steak in a SCA contest with the Weber Kettle and the Slow ‘N Sear accessory.