Smokehouse Porterhouse

The other night I sent Adam to the grocery for some steaks.  We generally purchase flat iron steak.  They grill up nicely, with great flavor, and are very budget friendly.  He instead walked in with two porterhouses.  "They were on manager special" he tells me as I give him "the look".  I rolled my eyes and left him to his own devices for preparing dinner.

We have been needing a new grill for several months now.  I do believe this is the reason it has been so long since we have grilled steaks at home.  We had just forgotten the severity of the situation until he went out to fire it up.  The grill plates are disintegrated and the burner tray in the bottom had split in half.  No go on the steaks.

Super!  $23 of steaks that are already on borrowed time, since they were purchased from the quick sale bin and no grill.  Cooking them on the Foreman just seemed like blasphemy for such a cut of meat.  Disheartened, we decided to wrap them back up for a later day and eat a bowl of cereal instead.

We watch a lot of Food Network and the next day I recalled an episode where Alex Guarnaschelli cooked a porterhouse in an iron skillet.  She even said that's her preferred method.  We love her and trust her, so today I tackled it.  It involves super heating an iron skillet to get a good sear on one side of the steak, lower the heat to cook that side, then repeat the process with the other side.

I heated the skillet up, seasoned the steak, and slapped it in there.  Within seconds, tons of smoke was coming off the pan.  I immediately turned on the ventahood.  However, it could not keep up.  Within minutes, the house was filled with smoke.  The kids were in the living room watching the whole thing transpire.  Elbows deep in a quickly searing burning steak, I rushed to fling open the front and back doors and create a draft.  The smoke was visibly billowing out the front door.  It helped, but there was quite a heavy layer of smoke still to dissipate.  Tending to the porterhouse once again, I glanced over to my hallway beside the kitchen.  Houston had rallied Hayes away from the television and they both had engaged in emergency procedures.

He had moved Holt into his room and shut the door in efforts to protect him from the smoke.  And apparently left Hawkins for dead.