Cooking Peak Wagyu

Stainless steel or cast iron, and properly hot — 450–500ºF. No oil: a Wagyu steak greases its own pan within seconds of landing. Then sear for the times below, by thickness.

• 1½″ thick

  ~2 minutes per side

  Rest 4—5 minutes

  Our thickest steak. Drop the heat a little after the first side so the center catches up before the crust goes too far.

  Filet mignon

• 1″ thick

  ~90 seconds per side

  Rest 2—3 minutes

  The default steak in every box. Salt just before, or an hour before.

  Ribeye, NY strip, zabuton, chuck eye, sankaku-bara, misuji, tri-tip

• ¾″ thick

  45—75 seconds per side

  Rest 1—2 minutes

  Give the second side less than the first — the steak keeps cooking once it flips.

  Top round, bottom round, sirloin tip

• ¼″ thick

  2—5 seconds per side

  No rest — eat immediately

  KBBQ style: cook a couple of pieces at a time and eat them straight off the heat. Salt after, or at the table.

  Every yakiniku slice, karubi, tenderloin tips

It's faster than you think, and the deliciousness comes from the intramuscular fat warming until it renders — going molten and juicy for that perfect bite — not from cooking the meat to a set doneness as in a traditional steak. So err on the side of 'rarer than you think': you're aiming for the fat to just turn buttery, not for a well-done center. You can always put a steak back in the pan for a bit if you cut into it and don't think it's far enough.

The only real risk is going too long and rendering all of that fat out into the pan, but that won't happen if you start with the timings above.

Whatever ends up in the pan afterwards is a bonus, not a mess — keep the tallow.

Grilling over coals or a flame follows the same rules as a pan sear, with one difference: the fat is going to fall into your fire and flare. Build the fire so you have somewhere to move the meat when that happens and it's not a problem.

1. Bank the coals to one side. Hot zone over the fire, empty zone beside it. On gas: everything on to preheat, then kill the burners on one half.
2. Get the grate hot and clean. No need to oil the grate or the meat, Japanese Wagyu brings more than enough of its own fat.
3. Sear over the coals, then rest on the cooler side. Follow the searing timings but pull the meat a little earlier: a bed of coals radiates more heat than a pan.
4. When it flares, move it. Slide the steak to the empty side, let the flame die, slide it back.

To sidestep the whole flare-up business, set a carbon steel griddle, plancha, or cast iron pan over the coals and cook on the plate instead of the grate. Drips and a little soot aren't a problem in themselves (they're half the fun of cooking outside!) but using a griddle gets you the heat of a live fire with the manners of a pan: no flare-ups, no ash on the meat, and the rendered fat pools where you can keep it . For the ¼″ yakiniku slices it's the better surface regardless: they could slip through a grate, depending on your spacing.

Japanese Wagyu follows the same rules as any braise, with the bonus gift of all that extra fat. The gist is that Peak Wagyu wants about half as much time on the heat as you're used to, so expect to add the meat later than what a traditional recipe calls for.

1. Brown in a dry pan. Start by browning your Wagyu in a dry pan, making sure to avoid crowding by working in batches as necessary.
2. Barely a simmer. A hard boil would tighten the meat, so aim for a light simmer. To check, press a cube against the side of the pot with the back of a spoon — it's done when it collapses instead of holding its shape.
3. Skim the fat. A layer of clear rendered fat will rise as it cooks. You should keep it as tallow for cooking with later!

Japanese curry (カレー) is the classic home for these cubes, but you can work Peak Wagyu into any beef stew recipe you want, Japanese or otherwise.

When roasting thick Japanese Wagyu cuts like our Chateaubriand, tomosankaku, top round, and picanha, cook to a temperature, not to a clock. The cut's thickness decides the time, not the weight, so a temperature probe in the middle is the right way to roast.

Regardless of your roasting method here's the gist of your operation:

1. Low and steady, 250ºF. Salted, patted dry, on a rack, fat side up, with the heat coming from around it rather than under it. No oil, no liquid, nothing covering it.
2. Pull at internal 115—120ºF. This is much lower than you'd pull a conventional roast: the marbling is already molten at this temperature, and carryover plus the final sear will take it the rest of the way.
3. Rest 15—20 minutes. Rest, loosely tented, as the temperature continues rising for the first few minutes before falling again.
4. Then sear it, hard and fast. 60—90 seconds a face in a dry, ripping pan, or straight over live coals. The inside is done, so the sear is just for some beautiful color and texture on the surface.

What the method changes:

• Oven — Oven is the simplest, since it holds 250ºF for you. Place a sheet pan under the rack to catch the tallow. In a convection oven, drop to 225ºF and start probing early; the moving air runs the roast faster and drier than the dial might suggest.
• Smoker — In a smoker, aim for the same 250ºF as the oven, but use less wood than you might normally: Wagyu fat takes on smoke readily and the roast won't be in there as long as a traditional cut. The brisket is the one cut that wants the full low-and-slow treatment.
• Covered grill — After pre-heating, bank the coals to one side and place the roast on the other. Dial the vents to hold 250ºF and place a drip pan under the meat to catch the tallowand keep the fat out of the fire. To sear, just use the hot side with all the coals.

What the cut changes:

• Chateaubriand — If you choose to roast the Chateaubriand whole, expect roughly 45—60 minutes to 115ºF, and watch it carefully, since this tender cut can overcook quickly. You can also cut the Chateaubriand into Filet mignon-like steaks and pan sear them individually.
• Tomosankaku (tri-tip) — The tri-tip is near 6 lb, so figure 1.5—2 hours of roasting. The grain pivots partway along the roast; find the corner where it turns, cut the roast in two there, then slice each half against its own grain.
• Picanha — If you choose to roast the Picanha whole, score the cap in a crosshatch, cook it cap-up so it bastes the meat, and finish fat side down. You can also cut it into 1½″ steaks with the cap attached and pan sear them individually.
• Brisket — The brisket is the exception to everything above: it's the one cut you cook well past doneness, so don't pull it at 115ºF. You don't need a smoker, though. Run the same low-and-slow cook in the oven at 250ºF, on a rack over a pan, wrapped once it stalls around 165ºF, and pull it at probe-tender — usually 195—205ºF — then rest it wrapped for an hour. That's three to five hours for our 3 lb flat. It's the smoking method minus the wood: you give up the bark and the smoke, and keep everything else.

A roast this marbled leaves a pan or a pouch of pure rendered fat behind — keep it.

Any of the roasts can go in a smoker (that's just roasting with wood in the fire), and you still pull them early. The brisket is the one cut in the box that wants to be deliberately cooked past doneness and held there for hours, until the connective tissue gives up.

Our Peak Wagyu Smoking Brisket is just the flat not the 14 lb whole primal every guide online is written around. Wagyu fat also renders sooner than the fat on a commodity brisket, so figure an hour to an hour and a half per pound at 250ºF: expect 3—5 hours total, not fourteen, and start probing early. No smoker? Every step below works in a 250ºF oven as well, just without the bark and the smoke.

Being the flat makes it easier, not harder. The flat is an even thickness end-to-end, so the whole piece finishes at once instead of the thin end drying out while the thick end catches up, and the grain runs one direction the whole way. There's no point on top either, so there are no burnt ends to make and nothing shielding the meat from the heat.

That last part is why we wrap ours on time. In barbecue you'll often see a brisket left unwrapped long past the stall to build a thicker, darker bark — on a whole primal that's a fair trade, because the fatty point rides on top taking the heat and there's plenty of mass to spare. A bare flat has neither, so every extra hour in the open air comes out of the part you're going to eat. Wrap it when the stall arrives and take the bark you've got.

1. Trim light, season light. Take the fat cap down to about ¼″ and pull off any hard, waxy fat that won't render — with this much marbling inside, the cap isn't doing protective work like normal. Then coarse salt and coarse black pepper, roughly 50/50, and nothing else; sugary rubs bury the flavor inherent in Japanese Wagyu. Salt it the night before, uncovered in the fridge, if you can.
2. 250ºF, over a drip pan. Far more fat renders out of this than out of a commodity brisket, so catch it: a pan keeps it off the coals and hands you a jar of tallow at the end. Go light on the wood.
3. Wrap in butcher paper at 165—170ºF. Somewhere around 165—170ºF the temperature parks and the bark sets. Wrap the brisket in pink butcher paper which breathes; if you use foil the rendered fat will get trapped, braising the piece, and turning the bark you just built to mush.
4. Pull when the probe slides in clean. Usually 195—205ºF, and a Wagyu flat often gets there at the low end of that.
5. Rest wrapped, for at least an hour. Resting for two hours is better: leave it in the paper, wrap that whole bundle in a towel, and put it in a dry cooler without ice.
6. Slice ¼″ thick, across the grain. You're aiming for pencil-width slices (any thinner would fall apart on the way to the board); enjoy!

After you cook Peak Wagyu, you'll almost certainly have some fat left over, either in the pan or in a drip tray; keep it! Wagyu tallow is an excellent fat to use in the kitchen for frying, roasting,

Let the fat cool for a minute (it's likely quite hot after cooking), then pour it through a fine metal strainer and/or coffee filter into a small jar. It keeps for weeks in the fridge and months in the freezer, and sets creamy-white (or creamy-gold) and solid.

Then, use it for fried rice, eggs, roast potatoes, biscuits, or popcorn. Or add some to any stew or curry for some delicious beefy savoryness.