Infrared is the heat you feel from the sun on your face, or from a campfire across the yard. It travels like light, in straight lines, and warms whatever it lands on. It doesn’t need to heat the air in between.

That’s why a Schwank cooks differently from a conventional gas grill. A gas grill heats the air first and waits for that air to heat the food, and a lot of the heat drifts away around the steak. Our tiles sit right above the grate and send their heat straight down onto the meat, so the surface gets hot fast and the perfect crust forms.

Günther Schwank patented the first gas infrared burner in 1939, and we still make it in Cologne, Germany. At its heart is a ceramic tile full of tiny holes. Gas and air mix behind the tile and burn right at its face, so there’s no open flame reaching for the food. The ceramic soaks up that heat, glows at about 1,500°F and gives it off as infrared heat.

This grill has four of those tiles, side by side across the top of the opening, all aimed at the grate.

That glow carries a lot of power. Radiant heat climbs steeply as a surface gets hotter. At 1,500°F, the tiles give off about 11.7 times the infrared energy of a 600°F surface, about as hot as a gas grill gets.

On a gas grill, the burners sit under the food. Heat rises as hot air, and it’s strongest right above each burner, so the grate has hot spots and cool spots. Then fat drips onto the flame. It flares, the heat jumps, and you end up moving steaks around to dodge it.

Move the burner above the grate and those problems go away. There’s nothing underneath for fat to land on, just a tray, so there are no flare-ups to manage and no grease baking onto the burner. Anything under the burner gets the same constant heat, with no sweet spot to fight over.

And because that heat travels as infrared rather than hot air, it stays on the food, even on a windy day or when you slide the grate out to flip. Light it, wait for the glow, and the tenth steak gets the same heat as the first.

That’s why steakhouses put the fire on top. It’s why we did too.

On a conventional grill, the food stays at one height and you turn the flame up or down to change the heat. A Schwank flips that around. The tiles run at one setting, full power, a constant 1,500°F. To change the heat, you move the food instead: slide the lever and the grate rises toward the tiles or drops away from them, through seven levels.

And full power is a lot of power. Radiant heat climbs steeply as a surface gets hotter. At 1,500°F, the tiles give off about 11.7 times the infrared energy of a 600°F surface, about as hot as a gas grill gets.

That’s where Schwank stands apart from the competition. We go the distance.

Infrared travels in straight lines, like light. Far from the tiles, a steak “sees” mostly cooler surroundings and only a slice of glow. Move it closer and the tiles fill its view. From 6 inches to 2, the share of glowing tile the steak sees roughly doubles.

Think of a campfire. Step closer and your face goes from warm to too hot. The fire didn’t change. You did.

So the lever is the whole control panel. Here’s where to set it.

When a steak’s surface passes about 285°F, natural sugars and amino acids start to react. French chemist Louis-Camille Maillard described it in 1912. The reaction builds hundreds of flavor and aroma compounds, the roasted, nutty and savory notes, along with the brown pigments that give crust its color.

Until then the surface is wet, and wet meat can’t climb past 212°F, the boiling point of water. Every grill has to boil that water off first.

Think of toast. Wet bread steams before it browns. Dry bread under high heat browns in seconds.

The reaction speeds up sharply as the surface gets hotter. Between 300°F and 380°F is ideal for browning. Above that, and you risk char and bitterness. The goal is to get into that window quickly, stay just long enough, and get out before the inside overcooks.

A conventional grill heats the air, and the air heats the steak, so the surface sits at 212°F for minutes while the water slowly evaporates.

Schwank outputs 1,500°F infrared energy straight into the meat, vaporizing the water. The steak’s surface climbs into the browning window and holds there while the crust builds.

Those extra minutes go somewhere. While the surface is still drying, the heat keeps moving inward.

Slice a steak and you’ll see layers: the crust, a ring of gray, then the pink you wanted. That gray ring is meat that overcooked while the crust was forming.

Heat penetration depth is calculated as √(αt), where α is how fast heat spreads through beef (about 1.3 × 10⁻⁷ m²/s) and t is time.

90 seconds a side → 0.1 inch or 3mm of gray. 5 minutes a side → 0.2 inch or 6mm of gray.

On a 1.5-inch steak, a 0.2 inch band on each side means a total of 0.4 inches, or close to a third of every slice, is overcooked. Halve the band and you get that steak back.

On a 16 oz ribeye, that’s about 2 oz more steak cooked the way you wanted it.

Steak is about 70–75% water. Once the meat passes about 140–150°F, its muscle proteins tighten and squeeze juice out. This is lost in two ways: moisture evaporates, and rendered fats drip down for as long as the steak sits on the heat.

A shorter cook limits both. Tests have shown infrared cooking cuts cooking loss by up to 30% compared with a conventional grill.

On most grills fat drips onto flame and causes flare-ups that leave soot and bitter char. With the burner overhead, drippings fall into the tray below. Add some butter and herbs to dial up the flavor and spoon the juices back over the steak for that steakhouse finish.

A steak keeps cooking after it comes off the grill. Heat from the outer layers keeps moving toward the center, the juices thicken slightly and the muscle fibers relax. Slice it too soon and the juice ends up on the cutting board. Wrap it in foil and the steam softens the crust you just built.

Think of fresh bread. On a cooling rack the crust stays crisp. In a plastic bag while it’s still warm, it goes soft.

Carryover heat raises the center about 5°F on a thin steak, and 10–15°F on a thick steak seared hard. Pull it a few degrees before your target and let the rest finish the job. For medium-rare, that target is 131°F (55°C).

The rest also keeps the juice in the meat. In an America’s Test Kitchen test on roast pork loin, a 10-minute rest cut the juice lost on the cutting board by about 60% compared with slicing right away. Longer rests helped less and less.

Where it rests matters too. Under foil, the steam condenses back onto the crust. On a flat plate, the bottom sits in its own juice and goes soft. On a rack, the steam escapes and the crust stays crisp.

Then slice it. Whatever’s still pink and juicy in the middle is exactly what you were after.