Best/easiest way would be to sous vide like Troy said.
If you don't do sous vide and just want to grill, there's a number of ways to do it. One is to set the 22 up for 2 zone cooking (chimney over half the coal grate) and that will be your warming/holding box. Set the 26er up for a total direct cook. 1 1/2 to 2 chimneys to fill the entire grate. Cook 7 or 8 steaks at a time. Seems intimidating if you've never done it, but its really not any harder than cooking 3 at a time. Just remember that putting the lid back on puts flames out. Only have the lid off a short time to check steaks and flip them. If need be, flip 4 steaks, put lid back on for 30 seconds or so, then lift and flip the other 4. Take the first set of steaks to about 2 temps less than you want the finished/plated product to be. I.e. if you want Medium, cook the first set to rare. If MidRare is desired, cook to just under rare. Take the first 8 off the 26'er and move them over to the indirect side of the warm/hot 22. Stack them up if you need to. Then throw the next set on the 26'er. Take them to just under the desired finish temp. Pull the 2nd batch of steaks and put them in the final service container/tray or whatever. Go back to the 22 and check those steaks. If they appear to be fine, serve them. If they need to be reheated a bit or cooked a bit more, put them back on the 26er to finish.
Again, this might look and sound intimidating, but it really isn't. I use a similar method when grilling 24 or so ribeyes at a time on one of my Ranch Kettles.
BTW, when you go to load the grill, have a pattern in mind. I like to start at the top, 12 o'clock and work my way counter clock wise. Don't know why, that's just the way I do it. In prep, have the steaks all laid out on 1/2 sheet pans the same way. Put all the steaks down the same way. I put each steak on kind of diagonally, from 10 to 4. After a few minutes, I rotate each steak 90 degrees clockwise, so they now go 2 to 8ish. This gives nice diamond marks, but more importantly, it helps you keep track of the cook as you can look at the bottom of a couple of them to try and gauge how much more time they need on that side. After a little while longer, I flip the steaks, again with the first orientation. Once last rotation to get diamonds on that side as well and then bring them off.
And yes, diamond grill marks are over rated, there's better ways to cook the steak from a taste perspective, but people are impressed by them and this process actually makes the cook go easier as it helps you to keep track of things.
Topic: Steaks for a group (Read 1228 times)
