Back in December, I bought a pellet grill. It was money well spent. My friends, family and I have enjoyed delicious ribs, roasts or, my favorite, brisket almost every Sunday.

I have always enjoyed outdoor cooking. Barbecue, Dutch oven, and now a smoker. These new self fed pellet grills make it easy. Set the temperature, make sure it doesn’t run out of pellets and all you need is a good cut of meat and a decent recipe and you will be eating well before you know it.

We have also been using our pellet grill to cook our steaks. They have been good. Juicy, flavorful and tender. But they were missing something. The pellet grill just doesn’t get hot enough for a good sear. The slightly crispy edges of fat and the charbroiled flavor was missed.

I’ wanted the best of both worlds. So today I purchased a new gas infrared grill. The infrared grill panels get hotter than a conventional grill and prevent flame up. I felt it would be the perfect tool to sear my steaks.

I’ve always grilled a pretty good steak, if I can say so myself. Like with all my cooking, I’ve found that simple is best. One of my life’s rules is if you are going to grill a steak, buy the best cut of meat you can afford and be sure to season it That’s how I started today.

I got some ribeyes from Costco. Most people know this, but the few of you who don’t should know that Costco’s meat is very good.

For seasoning, I like to keep things simple. You don’t want to hide the flavor of your meat. When I have a good cut, I usually just use fresh ground pepper and garlic salt. I love garlic and tend to use it a lot. If you are not a big garlic fan, you can substitute seasoning salt.

I like to put a generous coating of butter or bacon grease on the steak before I season it. It keeps the seasoning on the meat and adds flavor. There’s nothing quite as flavorful as garlic and butter.

Let your meat get close to room temperature before cooking it. I usually take it out of the fridge and season it about an hour before I need to cook it, cover it and leave it out to warm up.

Before today, when using the smoker to grill steaks, I would turn up the smoker as high as possible as I would on a normal gas grill. But today t tried something different.

I set the temperature to 185 degrees. I put a temperature probe in one of the steaks so the end was right in the center middle and smoked them until the internal temperature was 105 degrees. The time will depend on the thickness of the steak and the starting eternal temperature.

When the temperature reached 105 degrees, I transfer them to my grill preheated to 650 degrees. I seared them on each side for about 90 seconds with the lid closed. The result was two perfect medium rare steaks.

They were evenly cooked throughout. The very thin sear was just enough to add that crispy charbroiled flavor.

There was a very slight smoke ring that was full of the garlic, pepper, smoke and butter flavor. It just exploded in our mouths.

They were so moist and tender you could literally cut it with a fork. It was hands down the beat steak I have ever had.