Good morning. This might be the day to make Kay Chun’s recipe for vegetable paella with chorizo (above), but I’ve been cooking on a pellet grill recently, essentially a souped-up electric smoker that burns hardwood sawdust kibble, and it’s occupying all my thoughts. At low temperatures, it’s pretty cool, a machine that cooks ribs the way wave machines deliver three-footers to bodysurfing vacationers in Vegas: so reliably as to be kind of strange.

Crank the heat to high, though, and the smoke goes clear and almost undetectable. The machine becomes a huge outdoor toaster oven, consistent and not particularly connected to cooking over live fire or even flickering propane. There’s no open flame.

Which is great in high August when you want to roast some chickens and can’t bear turning on the oven in the kitchen. It’s an odd business, though, when it comes to the actual business of grilling. Really you can only roast.

But gee whillikers can you use one of these things — or your regular grill or even your oven — to make a great steak in a way you may not have cooked before. You use the principle of what’s called a “reverse sear.” It’s simple: Cook your steak for 20 minutes or so at a low temperature in the smoker or oven, then finish it in a screaming hot pan, basting it furiously in butter for around 90 seconds or so, or over a blazing charcoal fire (put a pat of butter on the steak when you’ve finished cooking). In the smoker, in particular, you end up with marvelously flavored beef, perfectly medium-rare, with a fantastic crust from the pan or grill.