For our close family friend Dr. Ruby, cooking steak was a meditative and ritualistic act. As a child visiting the Ruby family’s country house, about an hour north of Manhattan, I’d watch him stand over an enormous porterhouse on the charcoal grill, icy martini in one hand, tongs in the other, staring at his watch.

Every 60 seconds, he’d sip his cocktail, then flip his steak. Sip, flip. Sip, flip. On and on until the glass was empty and the meat cooked to perfection: rare in the center, charred on the outside and dripping with salty, smoky, brawny juices.

When I grew up and started grilling in my own backyard, I tried this frequent-flipping method. But whereas Dr. Ruby was placid, I am antsy. I’m not of the nature to stand in one place for upward of 10 minutes while my thick bone-in steak sears, especially when there’s corn to shuck, tomatoes to slice, tables to set.

So I’ve adopted another technique that I think works just as well but unchains me from the grill: using indirect heat.

The idea is to build a fire on only one side of the grill, leaving the other side bare. I sear the meat on both sides over the hot fire, then move it over to the unlit side to finish cooking more leisurely. This method is suited to thick bone-in steaks, at least an inch and a half thick, which can sometimes burn before they’re completely done next to the bone. The indirect heat helps cook things move evenly and gently but without sacrificing the char.

Dr. Ruby was a steak purist who eschewed anything on his steak but salt and pepper (and maybe some melted butter à la Peter Luger). It’s a stance that deserves the utmost respect, one that I adhere to when I’ve sourced the finest dry-aged beef.

But for less distinguished hunks of meat, or when I just want to mix things up a bit, I’ll take advantage of the steak’s stint on the unlit side of the grill to throw on some crumbled blue cheese, letting it melt while the beef finishes cooking.

Dr. Ruby would not approve of the blue cheese (and if you don’t, either, you can skip it). But he’d probably be pretty happy with the cooking method, at least — with an icy martini in one hand and a forkful of juicy rare meat in the other.

Recipes: Grilled Bone-In Rib-Eye Steaks With Blue Cheese | More Dishes for the Grill