Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

In the world of steaks, the tomahawk is the showiest steak of them all. For folks that find that a regular bone-in ribeye just isn’t impressive enough and want their steak to come with a handle attached, here’s an extra-long, frenched, Fred Flintstone-specced, bone-in beef hammer. Necessary? Debatable. A flex? Absolutely. If you’re going through the trouble of procuring a showboat steak, we think you should pull out all the stops and cook it with care—and flair! You can go the live-fire route and <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/wood-fire-basted-tomahawk-steak">roast a tomahawk in a DIY wood-burning pizza oven</a>, or you can get even showier with this modernist approach: the reverse cryo-sear. This method takes everything you know and love from the reverse-sear—a precise low-temp cook to bring the steak up to your preferred doneness, followed by a high-heat finish to get an epic Maillard-y crust on the exterior—but turns the dials up to 11. Instead of just finishing the steak on a hot grill, we give it alternating dips in screaming-hot oil and super-cold liquid nitrogen to build a crust while preventing the steak from developing an unwanted gray band of overcooked meat beneath the crust. Over the top? Yes. Insane results? You know it. A cooking method that matches the vibe of the main ingredient? We love that.

Reverse Cryo-Seared Tomahawk Steak