Harvey’s Tomahawk Steak
Our go-to splurge for Saturday Steak Night. Can be grilled or cooked indoors using your oven and a hot cast iron.
Grillmaster Harvey and I started having Steak Night Saturday during Covid when we couldn’t dine out but wanted to create a sense of normalcy at home. For us, that was feeling like we were back at our favorite steakhouse restaurant, Gibsons, in Chicago, where we had our wedding reception. Even when we were all allowed back into restaurants, we had moved to the suburbs at that point and were straight up house-poor. So the steakhouse tradition at home continued!
That equates to six years of trial and error - grilling on direct heat, on indirect heat, on the gas grill, on the charcoal grill and searing inside. Harvey’s definitely had time to figure things out.
Six years of working with smaller, bone-in steaks, boneless steaks and big steaks like this here tomahawk. We got into the tomahawk because it was more economical, we could grill up a big one, slice it up and share it and use leftovers for tacos. Plus, the thickness of the tomahawk steak prevents overcooking: we’re medium-rare people. Once you go juicy, you can’t go back.
Harvey’s even taken things a step further by air-chilling his steaks on the bottom shelf of the fridge with a mini fan blowing air on it. Yes, he’s taken this to a whole, new professional level and we’re not expecting you to do that, but just offering the instructions in case you want to try it!
It’s so important to use a thermometer when cooking meat, especially steak—for accuracy and to know when exactly to pull the steak off the heat (temperature will continue to go up as the steak rests). Here’s a cheat sheet for knowing when to pull certain proteins off the heat. We like this probe-style thermometer that stays in the meat when grilling and smoking meats outside and this everyday one for taking temp indoors. ThermoWorks also makes a nice one. Here’s my conversation with ThermoWorks Chef Martin Earl about the importance of taking temperaures! On a reverse sear method, when there’s going to be some searing after the initial roasting or indirect grilling, we pull the steak at 120°F because it will go up another five
degrees when searing and then another five degrees when resting for a final internal temp of 130°F. Otherwise, if you’re just direct searing or grilling steak, pull it at 125°F and it will get to 130°F when resting.
Harvey likes to use a leave-in meat-probe like this one for accuracy.
For steak seasoning blends, we like Spice House’s Back of the Yards butcher’s rub and Gibsons steak seasoning (to literally recreate our favorite restaurant)
Like I mentioned, Harvey literally bought this little fan to speed up his refrigerator dry-aging method (see Step 2).
It’s critical to let your meat rest properly to draw the juices back into the steak.