Omaha Steaks iPad or iPhone STEAK TIME app

[MadMedik]

Have you ever wondered just how long to cook a steak....you must factor in the thickness of the meat and the desired "doneness" of the meat.....as well as how hot your fire is. Also, consider the fact that you may have several steaks that all have different "degrees of doneness". Some want it medium, medium rare, well done...etc. How do you go about cooking the steaks so they all come off the same time and be what your guest wants it to be.

I found this app on the Omaha Steaks website and the app can of course be downloaded from the App Store. it is a free app. It is also an android app

It works quite well.

Basically, you add as many steaks as you want to the "program" and tell it the thickness and doneness of the steak. you can even name the steaks Dennis, Doc, Slu, Loquitor or whatever..... Then press GO, and it will tell you which steak to put on first...the one that will take the longest....then it will prompt you to add the 2nd, 3rd, and fourth steak. The end effect is you have all steaks finish at the same time with Custom Doneness for each guest.

It sort of takes the guessing out of it all. I have tried this once, with 5 steaks, 3 degrees of doneness, and they all finished at same time and were all perfect.

they also suggest cooking a steak 60% of the total time on first side, then 40% of the time on the second side. It will prompt you when to flip the steaks based on the 60/40% rule.

The only missing factor in the whole equation is "how hot is your fire"...that can make a big difference of course. Since i was doing steaks, i tried to keep my fire between 500 and 520. Doing this, at the end, i "felt" like the steaks should cook just a bit longer...so i waited another minute then removed them.

It has a "calibration" feature also....so that if you think the steaks need to cook a bit longer or less than what it suggests, you can can 'calibrate' by adding or subtracting more time.... I have not played with this.

If you have the ipad, iphone, or android and are interested, please check it out. I would be curious to see what you all think the pit temperature should be to make the Omaha formula work correctly....too low of a pit temp, then it will cook a lot longer....too high a pit temp, then you will cook faster than the Timer suggests. Again, i tried to keep my pit temp around 510 or so, and I ended up cooking a bit longer than suggested time....maybe next time i will shoot for 520 to 540 temps...and see if this makes the timing correct....or keep at 510 and "calibrate" it ???

I did send an email to Omaha Steaks, mentioned this app, and asked them what the Pit Temperature should be to make this all work according to the timer....They declined to answer what the pit temp should be. this is what they said:

"Unfortunately we do not have a specific grill temperature listed. We

recommend internal temperatures of the products, but do not have listings

for what temperature the grill needs to be to achieve that temperature."

Here is link to Omaha steaks and it will link you to App page...or just go to app store and type in Omaha Steaks...

http://www.omahasteaks.com/servlet/Onli ... ing?Dsp=64

Sorry for long post. I am bored, haven't cooked in 2 weeks...and need to do something related to the KK

MadMedik

[Tigeranteater]

Re: Omaha Steaks iPad or iPhone STEAK TIME app

I know the director of consumer affairs at Omaha Steaks. She told me about that app a couple of weeks ago when we were at a conference.

[Firemonkey]

Re: Omaha Steaks iPad or iPhone STEAK TIME app

That sounds like an interesting app, and I will download and it just for the curiosity factor if nothing else.

But the reply from Omaha steaks is simply absurd! Sure, there are lots of grills and lots of moving parts to the equation, but the very fact that the app provides timing information assumes that it was built around SOME sort of temperature constant. Why not just provide the temperature used to set the initial time, with a disclaimer the YMMV and all grills have unique traits?

[MadMedik]

Re: Omaha Steaks iPad or iPhone STEAK TIME app

Exactly what i thought.

also, what i failed to mention is the Steak Time app does integrate with the remote iGrill Thermometer system. It uses Blue Tooth and they boast 200 feet reception. Using the App with iGrill, you can have it alert your iPhone or iPad when the meat is done to what you set it for. I already have 2 remote monitoring systems, so i likely wont do the iGrill one...but it may be good for others???

[Firemonkey]

Re: Omaha Steaks iPad or iPhone STEAK TIME app

igrill has rather disappointing reviews on amazon.

It's also rather expensive for a remote thermometer, especially considering you only get half the system. I would rather spend that money on a stoker or guru.