Smoking Your Steak Makes It Even More Delicious
by Nicola Lando
How do I prepare my steak for smoking?
Steaks always taste best seasoned with a little salt, anywhere from 30 minutes to 24 hours before cooking. Pat dry before smoking. A fattier cut like sirloin or ribeye is the most delicious for this.
What do I need?
The smoker
We use a Cameron Gourmet Smoker or Cameron Mini Smoker - both of which let you hot smoke food indoors, on any type of hob.
The wood chips
You don’t want to smoke the steak for very long as it shouldn’t cook through in the hot smoker. Therefore you want the most intense hit of flavour in the shortest time. That’s why we’ve chosen hickory wood chips (which the Cameron Smokers come with a pot of).
How do I smoke infuse my steak?
Just place your steaks in your stovetop smoker on the hob, and cook on a very low heat. You want just enough heat to start the wood chips smouldering, but not so high that the steak cooks through.
Smoke the steaks for 10 to 15 minutes over a very low heat.
The image below is the steak after it's been seared! When it comes out of the smoker, it should look pretty similar to when it went in...
What size smoker should I use?
You can fit one large 250g steak at a time in the Cameron Mini Smoker. If you want to smoke two or three large steaks at once, I’d recommended using the Cameron Gourmet Smoker.
What next?
Once your steaks are infused with smoke, heat a little oil in a frying pan over high heat. Sear the steaks quickly on both sides. Remember the steaks will have started cooking whilst in the hot smoker, so don’t cook them for as long as you usually would.
Leave to rest for a few minutes and enjoy. We like them topped with a little garlic butter. Though too much will mask the smoke flavour, so go easy with the quantities!
For the garlic butter (serves 6)
- 60g butter, at room temperature
- 2 garlic cloves
- 2 tbsp chives
- 1/4 tsp fine salt
Mix together the butter, garlic, chives and salt. Spoon over the steak to serve.
About the author
Nicola Lando is the co-founder and CEO of Sous Chef, where she has spent more than a decade sourcing, tasting and selecting specialist ingredients, cookware and tableware from producers around the world.
She trained at Leiths and later completed a stage at a Michelin-starred London restaurant, experiences that helped shape Sous Chef’s original mission: to give home cooks access to the same exceptional ingredients used by professional chefs.
Today, Nicola leads much of Sous Chef’s product sourcing and ingredient selection, working directly with producers and travelling internationally to food fairs, farms, mills and manufacturers. She tastes thousands of products each year and has built deep expertise across storecupboard ingredients, olive oil, condiments, spices, preserved foods and specialist cooking ingredients.
She holds an olive oil sommelier certification from ESAO in Spain, Imperial Executive Education’s Certificate in Nutrition for Health: Evidence-Based Tools and Strategies certificate; as well as studying Food Safety and Control at University of Greenwich.
Nicola also writes recipes and ingredient guides for Sous Chef, combining practical cooking experience with first-hand knowledge from producers, suppliers and specialist food makers. Her work focuses on helping cooks understand how to choose better ingredients, use them well, and get more flavour from their cooking.
