So, the NY's were cooked on the Traeger and the wife love her's. It could be fresh vs frozen especially if the frozen was not vac pak'd first. For a bit more definitive test I'd cook two and have her do a taste test. One fresh and one that had been frozen for 24 hours in a vacuumed bag then thawed (in the bag) on a rack on the counter. I find the grates on our gas stove an excellent place to thaw meat.
Next time i buy more steaks, I'll give that a spin. I do vac pack them so that shouldn't be it, but i also vac pack pre seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic. I don't think that should matter, but you never know. I may have to do a Guga- style experiment. 4 vac pack frozen, 1 thawed via cold water bath, 1 in fridge, 1 counter, 1 cooked straight from freezer and a control of fresh. I'll have a lot of steak leftovers which is never a bad thing :)
I normally thaw in the fridge. But, Al has a lot of us experimenting with cooking it frozen lately! I think a key is making sure they are near room temp when putting them on and making sure the meat surface is dry.
Yep, i definitely pat dry before cooking
Well yeah that’s strange. “Texture” difference…hmm. Well my wife is very particular about how done a steak is and if it’s another right, she wont touch it (it can’t bleed out any juice-not well done just no juice). (Facepalm)
for consistency and to avoid her not eating, I started to SV the steaks before searing. I have seen better luck with this method.
I just like a very medium rare steak. Why can’t the wife just be like that. Bahahahaha
I have done SV a few times. Not bad, but i need a torch to get the sear on a little better. While my traeger goes up to 500 degrees, it still doesn't sear the best unless i use the "hot spot" at the very front of the grill. Ive also pan seared SV seared with butter and herbs of choice which is a nice change.
My wife and I like our steaks rare. Almost to the point where you can still see the nerve ends twitching. I use my kettle with as high a heat as I can get and place the meat over the hot coals. Once the meat releases itself from the grate I turn it 45* and repeat. Then I'll do the same on the other side. That's about all the cooking a normal sized super market steak gets. If it's a little thicker then I'll finish it with indirect heat using my insta-read therm.
Chris
I like either medium rare to medium. The mrs can take medium to charcoal(well done) . She used to be a charcoal only, but I think I finally got her to medium :) For temp read, i use the
Meater probes. They work great.
My oven has a warming drawer which i used this last cook to keep the steaks from getting too cold while resting. Worked great.
The texture thing is throwing me a bit. One would think if you are cooking at those high temps whether it’s pellet or gas as heat it would have similar texture. Perhaps you get flare ups on the gas that help better char the outside? Seems as the thread progresses you perhaps identified a textural difference before the meat was grilled?
Haha indeed. Im literally sitting in my car about to go grocery shopping and keep seeing more messages posted so keep adding quotes. Well im still a bit new to the traeger so i was trying different temps e.t.c. but also the meat is a huge variable. I try to buy from Costco as i find them quite good. But I'll toggle between choice if i find some with pretty good marbling still or prime. The ones last night were prime and crazy marbled almost approaching wagu level imo. As i said earlier, I'll have to do an experiment with thawing and sticking with the cook method of 475 the whole way through to see how they fare.
But it does sound like something my wife would say! 
she still wont toe the line 
. Good luck and keep her happy 
