Cooking a Tomahawk on a Green Egg

I'm no professional when it comes to cooking on a Green Egg, but I was gifted a large Tomahawk steak and it was time to cook it. Reading up on plenty of guides the plan was going to be slow indirect heat in order to bring up the internal temperature to around 110F which would probably require a standing temperature of ~300. Once that marker was hit - we'd remove the steak and attempt to bring the Egg up to ~600 for a reverse sear.

I struggle in general to keep the temperature high so this was going to be a challenge regardless. So I started off with cleaning up the Green Egg to ensure there was no large collection of ash at the bottom. With good open air passages its way easier to regulate the temperature in terms of getting real hot or keeping it at a preferred area.

So I busted out my chimney starter and filled it up with 3 of those little twisted wood starters and filled to the brim with charcoal.

Outside was looking bleak and dead, but a couple weeks of weather dropping into the 30s in Florida is not good for our nature here. The lawn looked bad and most of the pots or trees were not a perfect shade of green. Regardless, the chimney was started and 15 minutes later I dumped the coals into the basin of the egg and was preparing for phase 1.

The guide mentioned no direct heat and I didn't really have a mechanism to prevent direct heat so I built a layer of tin foil to lay on top of the grate. I quickly realized that the bone of the tomahawk meant the steak & bone itself would barely fit in the egg in the first place. The video I was watching was with a large (18.25in) Green Egg and this was a medium (15in) one which made the position of steak a bit difficult.

I pushed through and laid a steak heavily covered in salt & pepper onto a piece of foil and closed the lid and waited. We topped out at 220, so clearly I messed up. I opened up the lid again and let it breath and gain some heat and re-closed the lid with a bit more air opened up. This time we hovered around 350 which was easy enough to slowly close the top grate until we hovered right around 300.

I'd go inside and start preparing the rest of dinner checking on the temperature every 10 minutes or so and it was holding great. As we got to the halfway point I went out there to flip it and it seemed like it was cooking faster than I expected, so I busted out the thermometer and took a look. The middle was still floating around 90F so we weren't ready yet, but closer to the outside was 120F so I was already in a pickle.

I guess my indirect heat setup wasn't as indirect as the official adapter you can get as an accessory. So we decided to shorten the time and only do about 10 more minutes on the other side before ramping up the temperature. I took the steak off to remove the tin foil and ramp up the temperature while quickly wrapping the bone in foil to prevent damage to it. This time with an extra starter thrown in there with some new coals we were cooking with some high heat.

This meant we were doing a quick reverse sear for a minute or two per side to really develop a good crust on the outside. With a foil covered bone it was pretty easy to maneuver the steak around to sear each side & corner. With that done the process was finally over and we brought in the steak to rest inside.

This was about as good as it looked as the inside ranged from well done (on the outer parts) to a solid medium in the middle of the steak. As both Alyson and I lean to the rare/medium-rare cooking level I surely messed up the cooking process for such an uneven cook.

I don't even want to attach the photo of the cross section due to the slight embarrassment of the cooking, but never cooked a tomahawk before so I guess I need to learn and iterate. When I started this blog I thought the outcome would be different, but instead it ends with an unevenly slightly overcooked steak. In good news - with a bit of horseradish sauce it was fine to eat, just not my preference.