If you enjoy grilling steaks, burgers, chops, seafood or vegetables, you have probably heard the term “sear burner.” But what exactly is a sear burner, and what makes it different from the standard burners on a gas grill?
A sear burner is designed to produce extremely intense, concentrated heat so you can quickly brown the outside of food while helping preserve a tender, juicy interior. On an outdoor grill, an infrared sear burner can reach temperatures far higher than a conventional burner, making it particularly useful for creating the browned crust and caramelized exterior associated with steakhouse-style grilling.
That does not mean a sear burner replaces the rest of your grill. Instead, it gives you another cooking zone with a specific purpose. You can use it for high-heat searing and then move food to a lower-temperature area to finish cooking. This combination gives you more control over how your food cooks from the surface to the center.
For outdoor cooks who frequently prepare steaks or other foods that benefit from intense direct heat, an infrared sear burner can be a useful addition to a gas grill.
What Is a Sear Burner?
A sear burner is a high-output grill burner designed to produce intense heat over a relatively concentrated cooking area. Many modern sear burners use infrared technology rather than relying primarily on heated air to cook food.
Traditional gas grill burners heat the air inside the grill and transfer that heat to the food. An infrared burner instead produces radiant heat that transfers energy directly to the food and cooking surface. RCS infrared burners are designed specifically to provide this type of intense, direct heat for high-temperature grilling.
That intense heat makes an infrared sear burner especially useful when you want to develop browning quickly. The goal is not necessarily to cook the entire piece of meat at maximum temperature. Rather, the sear burner can be used to create the exterior crust before the food is moved to a more moderate cooking zone.
How Does an Infrared Sear Burner Work?
Infrared burners use burner elements with numerous small openings that generate intense radiant heat. According to RCS, its infrared burner technology can reach temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Because the heat is so intense, food can brown and sear quickly. This can help create the Maillard browning that gives grilled meats their deep color, savory flavor and appealing crust.
The result is different from simply turning a conventional gas burner to high. A standard burner is useful for a broad range of cooking temperatures, while an infrared sear burner is specifically designed to deliver concentrated, high-temperature heat.
What Does a Sear Burner Do?
The primary purpose of a sear burner is to create a deeply browned exterior on food without requiring a long period of high-temperature cooking.
For example, consider a thick steak. Cooking the entire steak over extremely high heat can cause the exterior to become overdone before the center reaches the desired temperature. Instead, you can use the sear burner to brown the outside quickly and then move the steak to a lower-temperature area of the grill to finish.
This makes a sear burner particularly useful for foods where you want two different cooking conditions: intense heat for the exterior and moderate heat for the interior.
Common uses include:
- Creating a browned crust on steaks
- Searing pork chops and other cuts of meat
- Quickly browning chicken before finishing at a lower temperature
- Grilling fajita meat
- Developing char on vegetables
- Getting a crisp, browned exterior on certain seafood
- Adding strong grill marks and surface browning
Why Use a Sear Burner for Steak?
Steak is one of the most obvious applications for an infrared sear burner. A properly seared steak has a browned exterior while the inside remains cooked to the desired level of doneness.
The intense heat of an infrared burner allows you to build that exterior crust quickly. Instead of keeping a steak over extremely high heat for the entire cooking process, you can use the sear burner for the portion of the cook where high heat matters most.
For a thick steak, one approach is to cook it over a moderate or indirect zone until it is close to the desired internal temperature, then move it to the infrared burner for a brief, high-heat sear. This is commonly called a reverse sear.
Another approach is to sear the steak first and then move it to a lower-temperature portion of the grill to finish. RCS recommends this general high-heat-then-lower-heat approach for many beef, chicken and pork products.
What Is the Reverse-Sear Method?
Reverse searing simply changes the order of the cooking process. Instead of starting with an intense sear, you first bring the food close to its desired internal temperature using lower or indirect heat. You then finish it over the infrared sear burner.
This method can be especially useful for thicker cuts because it gives you greater control over the interior temperature before applying the intense heat needed for browning.
A basic reverse-sear process looks like this:
- Preheat the grill and establish a lower-temperature or indirect cooking zone.
- Cook the steak slowly until it approaches the desired internal temperature.
- Preheat the infrared sear burner.
- Move the steak over the sear burner for a short period on each side.
- Remove the steak and allow it to rest before serving.
The exact timing depends on the thickness of the steak, starting temperature, grill configuration and desired doneness. The most reliable way to judge doneness is with an instant-read thermometer rather than relying exclusively on cooking time.
When Should You Use a Sear Burner?
A sear burner is most useful when you want high heat quickly. It does not have to be used every time you fire up the grill, but there are several cooking situations where it can make a noticeable difference.
Steaks and Thick Cuts of Beef
Steaks are a natural match for infrared searing. The intense heat can quickly brown the surface while allowing you to finish the steak at a more manageable temperature.
This is particularly useful for thicker steaks, where cooking the entire piece over maximum heat may make it more difficult to achieve the desired balance between a browned exterior and properly cooked center.
Fajitas and Thin Cuts of Meat
Thin cuts of beef and fajita meat can also benefit from intense direct heat. The goal is often to develop substantial browning without spending a long time cooking the meat.
An infrared sear burner can provide the heat necessary to quickly develop that exterior char, making it useful for fajita-style cooking and other thin cuts.
Pork Chops and Chicken
A sear burner can also be useful for pork chops and certain chicken preparations. The high heat can brown the outside before the food is moved to a lower-temperature zone to finish cooking.
With chicken in particular, however, it is important to distinguish between browning the exterior and cooking the meat through. The sear burner should not be treated as a substitute for monitoring internal temperature.
Vegetables
Infrared heat is not limited to meat. Vegetables can also benefit from short periods of intense heat, particularly when you want browned edges or charred surfaces.
Peppers, onions, asparagus, zucchini and other vegetables can develop attractive browning quickly over high heat. Just be aware that the intense temperature of an infrared burner means vegetables can go from nicely charred to overcooked quickly.
Sear Burner vs. Standard Grill Burner
The main difference between an infrared sear burner and a conventional gas grill burner is the way each produces and transfers heat.
A standard gas burner is designed to provide versatile heat across a broader range of cooking applications. It can be adjusted for lower-temperature cooking, moderate grilling and higher-temperature direct heat.
An infrared sear burner is more specialized. Its strength is extremely high, direct radiant heat that can quickly brown the surface of food.
That means the two types of burners can complement each other rather than compete with one another.
- Standard burner: versatile heat for everyday grilling and longer cooking.
- Infrared sear burner: concentrated, intense heat for rapid surface browning.
- Combination: use the sear burner for browning and standard burners for finishing.
This type of multi-zone cooking is one reason a sear burner can be more useful than simply choosing a grill with the highest possible overall BTU rating. Different cooking zones let you control the cooking process instead of applying the same amount of heat everywhere.
Can You Use a Sear Burner for Everything?
Technically, an infrared burner can cook many different foods, but that does not mean it is the ideal heat source for every dish.
Its extremely high temperatures are excellent for searing, but delicate foods or foods that require longer, gentler cooking can be difficult to manage directly over an intense infrared burner.
Fish fillets, thick bone-in chicken and foods that need indirect cooking may be better suited to conventional grill burners or a combination of direct and indirect heat. RCS similarly notes that the extremely high temperatures of infrared burners can be a disadvantage for delicate foods and longer, lower-temperature cooking.
The advantage of having a sear burner is therefore flexibility. You can use the burner when you need intense heat and rely on the rest of the grill when you need something different.
How to Use a Sear Burner Effectively
Because infrared burners produce such intense heat, a little preparation goes a long way. Start with clean cooking grates and give the burner enough time to preheat before placing food on it.
Start With Clean Grates
Clean grates help food make better contact with the cooking surface and reduce the chance of old residue interfering with the searing process. RCS recommends starting with clean cooking grates when using its infrared sear burner.
Preheat Before Cooking
Do not treat an infrared sear burner like a burner that you turn on immediately before placing food on the grill. Allow it to become fully heated so the cooking surface is ready to sear when the food goes down.
Preheating is also important for conventional gas grilling. RCS recommends preheating a gas grill for approximately 10 to 15 minutes before cooking.
Do Not Walk Away From the Grill
High heat means food can brown very quickly. Keep an eye on anything placed over the infrared burner and be prepared to move it to a cooler part of the grill when the desired level of browning has been reached.
This is especially important with thin steaks, vegetables and other foods that can go from browned to burned in a short amount of time.
Do You Need an Infrared Sear Burner?
Whether you need a sear burner depends primarily on how you cook. If your grilling routine consists mostly of burgers, hot dogs, vegetables and other foods that do not require extremely high searing temperatures, a conventional gas grill may provide everything you need.
A sear burner becomes more appealing if you regularly cook steaks, chops, fajitas or other foods where a powerful sear is an important part of the cooking process.
It can also make sense if you enjoy experimenting with different grilling techniques. Reverse searing, high-heat vegetable grilling and multi-zone cooking all become easier when you have a dedicated high-temperature zone.
RCS offers infrared burner upgrades for several of its grill lines, including the Premier, Cutlass Elite and ARG series. The available burner should match the specific grill model, so check compatibility before purchasing an infrared burner upgrade.
Adding an Infrared Sear Burner to an RCS Grill
For some RCS grills, an infrared sear burner can replace one of the standard main burners, creating a dedicated high-heat cooking zone without replacing the entire grill. For example, the RCS Premier Series IR2632 is designed to replace one standard main burner on compatible Premier Series grills. RCS specifies that only one infrared burner should be installed per RCS grill.
This configuration provides a useful combination of cooking capabilities. The infrared burner can handle the high-heat searing while the remaining conventional burners provide the lower or moderate temperatures needed to finish food.
If you are building a new outdoor kitchen, you can also consider the overall grill layout and how the cooking zones will work together. RCS offers a range of infrared sear burners along with built-in grills and other outdoor kitchen components.
Sear Burners and Multi-Zone Grilling
One of the biggest benefits of a sear burner is that it adds another option to your cooking setup. Instead of thinking of your grill as one large surface with one temperature, you can divide it into different heat zones.
For example, a large grill might allow you to:
- Sear steaks over the infrared burner.
- Move finished steaks to a moderate-temperature zone.
- Cook vegetables over a conventional burner.
- Use an indirect zone for thicker foods that need more time.
This approach gives you more control over an entire meal. RCS also emphasizes the value of multiple burner zones for moving food between higher and lower heat during the cooking process.
For larger outdoor kitchens, that flexibility can become especially valuable. You may be grilling the main course while simultaneously cooking sides on an outdoor kitchen side burner.
Sear Burner FAQs
What is the purpose of a sear burner?
The purpose of a sear burner is to provide extremely high, concentrated heat for quickly browning and searing food. It is particularly useful for steaks, chops, fajitas and vegetables that benefit from intense surface heat.
Is an infrared burner the same as a sear burner?
Not every burner described as a sear burner uses the same technology, but infrared burners are commonly used as dedicated searing burners because they can produce very high radiant heat. RCS uses infrared technology in its dedicated sear burner products.
Can you cook a steak entirely on a sear burner?
You can, but a sear burner is often most useful as part of a two-zone cooking strategy. Sear the outside over intense heat, then move the steak to a lower-temperature area to finish, or use a reverse-sear method and apply the infrared heat at the end.
What temperature does an infrared sear burner reach?
Infrared sear burners can reach extremely high temperatures. RCS states that its infrared burner technology can reach more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, although actual cooking temperatures will vary based on the grill, burner, food and environmental conditions.
Can you use an infrared burner for vegetables?
Yes. Vegetables can be cooked over an infrared burner when you want intense browning or char. Because the heat is so strong, monitor vegetables closely and move them to a lower-temperature area when they have reached the desired level of browning.
Can an infrared sear burner replace a regular grill burner?
Some RCS infrared burners are specifically designed to replace one standard main burner on compatible grills. However, compatibility depends on the grill model. Check the specifications for the particular infrared burner before installation.
Getting More From Your Outdoor Grill
A sear burner is best thought of as a specialized tool that expands what your gas grill can do. Its intense heat is ideal for developing the browned crust that makes a steak or other grilled food especially appealing, while your conventional burners remain available for moderate-temperature and indirect cooking.
For cooks who regularly prepare steaks, chops, fajitas or other foods that benefit from intense surface heat, an infrared sear burner can add another level of control to an outdoor cooking setup. Used alongside conventional burners, it allows you to sear quickly, move food to a cooler zone and finish cooking without sacrificing the flexibility of the rest of the grill.
If you are considering an infrared upgrade for your grill, explore the RCS infrared sear burner collection to see the available options and verify compatibility with your grill model.