James Kenji Lopez-Alt
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How to Cook a Well-Marbled Ribeye Steak in a Pizza Oven
🕑 Added 2023-09-15 21:03:05 +0000 UTCThe high heat of an outdoor pizza oven makes it a wonderful tool for cooking steak. You'll need an outdoor pizza oven, as well as a cast iron, carbon steel, or stainless steel pan large enough to fit the steak in the oven. Salting the steak and letting it rest uncovered in the fridge will dry out the exterior, making it easier to sear and form a dark crust. It also delivers a steak that is juicier, more evenly seasoned, and more tender as the salt works its way into the meat and breaks down some of its protein structure.
I like cooking very fatty steaks to medium so that the fat softens and delivers its flavor. If you are cooking a steak that is not quite as well marbled as mine, I'd suggest cooking it 5 to 10 degrees less in step 3 and 4.
Serves 1 to 4, depending on how hungry they are
Ingredients:
1 bone-in rib steak, about 2 pounds (900g)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
A few sprigs of thyme
A few cloves of garlic
Procedure
1. Season the steak generously on all sides with salt. Place on a rack set in a rimmed baking sheet and refrigerate, uncovered, at least overnight and up to two nights. It should look dark and be dry to the touch when you are done.
2. Preheat a heavy oven-safe pan in an outdoor pizza oven set to the highest heat. Reduce the heat to low, then place the steak in the pan and return it to the oven. Cook until the bottom side has a deep, dark crust, a few minutes.
3. Flip steak and continue cooking until it hits 115°F in the very center, about 10 minutes total.
4. Increase the oven temperature to its highest setting. Add the thyme sprigs and garlic cloves to the pan and return it to the oven. Let the steak sear, pausing occasionally and using a spoon to baste the pan drippings over it until it hits 125°F on the thermometer, about 2 minutes longer.
5. Transfer the steak to a cutting board and let it rest for five minutes. Carve and serve.
Comments
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
It's basically the rich chicken jus (you can find a video I made for that on Youtube) with a red wine reduction (reduce a few cups of a dry red wine with some thyme sprigs and shallots until it is reduced to a few tablespoons). Combine and simmer the two reductions.
Cookin' With Squirrl
Oh, I missed this because you didn't reply to me directly. I just happened to wander back to this post and noticed the response. Thanks for the update!
Tommy F.
Would you be willing to share more details on that chicken stock sauce if you aren't planning to make it in a future video? It sounds delicious.
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
Oh yeah - the thermometer is technically not supposed to go there. I know Chris, the guy who makes it though and I've specifically asked him about putting it in some extreme environments (I tested cooking with it inside a pressure cooker, as well as a pizza oven). He predicted that the signal would get lost after it hit a certain temperature threshold (I cannot remember the reason), but that it should still work. Which is not to say that you should beat yours up like I do to mine!
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
I've had mine a few months and use it about once a week, maybe a little less. Only when we cook meat, really. If you cook meat more regularly, you will find more frequent usefulness out of it.
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
Which is not to say that you should beat yours up like I do to mine!
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
Peter S
Just got one of those combustion thermometers and the docs warn against exposing it to a direct flame. Watching the video made me a little nervous having it all the way in the ooni like that. I have a roccbox and based on where the flame goes up the dome I would be skittish about putting the combustion thermometer in there - but your video makes me think maybe it’d be ok…
Laura Tsuk
Hmmm, that Combustion Inc thermometer keeps showing up in my social media. Wondering how much you have used it. The concept feels like just what I want when I'm roasting a chicken with the sensors all along the probe.
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
Honestly I’ve never seen a store brand that is any good at all. I believe most have thickeners added to them to cut costs. Maybe if you have a very good local butcher that makes stock in house that may work. But veal stock is really one of those things that I’ve never had a half decent version of outside a restaurant (or the rare occasions I buy bones and make it at home).
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
For a fatty cut like this Sous vide does not render it very well. Some people don’t mind but I personally don’t like the way fat ends up kinda jello-y after cooking Sous vide on a cut like this. You can do a regular reverse seat though. That works better.
Samuel Beard
Thanks for the video. For the sauce - what do you think about the super concentrated veal demi glace containers (for example the more than gourmet brand). Is that any better than the boxed stock you can buy?
Wei-Wei Cheng
Do you see any issues with doing the overnight refrigeration and instead of going into an oven, you instead put it into a sous-vide bath and reverse sear?
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
It shouldn’t get hot enough to do that, no. At least I’ve never had an issue!
Cookin' With Squirrl
Is there any danger of overheating your cast iron in a pizza oven? At some temperature, the polymer will burn off and I'm just curious if that's possible in something like an Ooni.
