Steaks on the Santa Maria

 It’s almost an unwritten law in the central coast that your Santa Maria grills are for Tri Tip only. But because red oak is so flavorful on meats we needed to do more. So we chose New York Steaks, and boy were we glad that we did!

Nothing beats the taste of a steak cooked over an open fire.  So to begin we headed to Costco to pick up some steaks. We narrowed our choice down to either NY or Rib Eye. Now if I were only doing a couple of steaks the choice is simple, Rib Eye all the way. A good Rib Eye is probably my favorite cut, I could eat it everyday, except then my cardiologist would probably string me up by my thumbs! 

The first rule in picking steaks is to always get the best cut that you can afford. Fortunately Costco carries both Choice and Prime Cuts of beef. We ended up with the Prime Cuts of both New York and Rib Eye steaks were (like I said I love Rib Eye!). Now this is where I should be explaining about the importance of and how to pick a well marbled steak, except for me it just boiled down to picking steaks with a flecks of fat throughout the steak and just overall looked the best to me.  They were between an 1-1/2” - 2” thick, which is perfect for the Santa Maria. We brought them home and seasoned them with just Salt, Pepper, and Garlic Powder. We then set them a side a let them sit for an hour to absorb the salt and reach room temperature while we prepped the grill.

Next up was starting the fire, set aside a good hour to burn the wood down to coals, you’ll have to keep adding wood in order to create a sufficiently decent base for cooking the steaks.

Then it was time to load the grill with the steaks. Needed to be a little careful as the Santa Maria Grill does a great job of directing all that heat. I am ashamed to admit that my reach and my belly were not sufficiently different, causing me to toast myself as I worked the grill.

I definitely recommend flipping the steaks often. This avoids one side becoming just a little to well done.

The steaks were on for about 20 minutes until the reached an internal temperature of 130-135 degrees. At which time we pulled them from the grill and let it rest for about 5 minutes, This resulted in our steaks looking like this: 

After doing the steaks on the Santa Maria, I can safely say that I will never grill a steak again on the gas grill. The flavor of the red oak and the prime steak is outstanding and I highly recommend it for those that like a delicious and juicy piece of meet.