Comparisons · Two ways of cooking

Reverse searing or Skewer grilling

A technique for thick single pieces against one for small ones, which makes this a question about what is on the grill rather than about method.

What each one is

Reverse searing

Bring the food up slowly on indirect heat, then finish it hot and fast over direct. One method, two heat configurations, in that order — which is exactly why the technique and the fire arrangement are described separately here.

Skewer grilling

Small pieces threaded onto skewers and cooked close over an open fire. Included because three separately sourced traditions turn out to share it, and because the skewer material — iron, bamboo, lemongrass, bicycle spoke — is a real variable that the sources themselves distinguish.

Where they overlap

Both use direct heat.

What actually differs

Differences between Reverse searing and Skewer grilling
Aspect	Reverse searing	Skewer grilling
The fire it needs This is the difference. Everything else about the two techniques follows from where the fire is relative to the food.	Indirect heat, Direct heat	Direct heat
What it suits	Thick steaks, roughly 3 cm and up; Anything where an even interior matters more than speed	Small pieces that would fall through a grate; Cooking where the eater is served continuously rather than at one sitting
What it does not suit The more useful half of the comparison, and the half most published guidance leaves out.	Thin steaks, which have no interior to protect	Anything thick enough to need indirect heat
Cookers that can do it	11 of the 11 modelled	7 of the 11 modelled

Which one, for what

Conditions rather than a verdict. Each line below is a thing one of them can do that the other cannot, or does without arrangement where the other needs it — taken from the what each cooker is documented as doing, rather than from a preference.