Use BBQ for both searing and slow-roasting beef

I found these slides that may help. The information is a difficult to interpret, but the page with conclusions says that the optimal roast uses the lowest possible temperature for 20 to 30 minutes. This however is information for the food industry and it is clearly geared towards increasing shelf-life which you are probably not too concerned about.

If you look for the slide with the title 'Generation of flavor compounds during roasting', you will get another perspective. As I understand the graph, a roast at 200ºC (400ºF) for around 25 minutes gives maximum flavour.

This article, although about roasting walnuts, gives clearer information. It states that walnuts are typically roasted at 100-180ºC (212-356ºF) from 5 to 60 minutes. You could infer from this that roasting at 100ºC for an hour is as low and slow as you can go. The conclusion to this article is that the "best sensory properties" are exhibited after roasting at temperatures between 130-150ºC (266-300ºF) for 15 to 20 minutes.

I think that gives you at least four worthwhile experiments to try:

• 120ºC for 25 minutes (recommendation from the slides)
• 200ºC for 25 minutes (the time/temperature profile that appears to give maximum flavour)
• 100ºC for 60 minutes (the apparent limit of low/slow roasting walnuts)
• 140ºC for 17 minutes (the recommendation for roasting walnuts)

Update: I remembered a fact about the Maillard reaction that could point in another direction of experimentation. Although the reaction needs relatively high heat to get going, once browning has started, the reaction will continue at lower temperatures (as low as 60ºC is what I remember reading). So perhaps you could kick start the reaction by initially roasting at 150ºC (300ºF) or above and then dropping the temperature right down to around 75ºC (170ºF) as soon as browning starts.

While you could do this. A better method(Provided you have an enclosed grill) would be to set your grill up for indirect heat and slow cook them on your grill. This is how I do ribs and it works amazingly.

You'll have to do things slightly differently if you have a square or round grill. For a round grill try the following:

• Place unlit briquettes around the outside of the grill about 3/4 of the way around.
• Start about 12 briquettes until they have ashed over, place them at one end of the circle, put a few (2-3) pieces of smoking wood chunks on top of your coals.
• Get your grill temp to about 225-275 degrees F and adjust your vents to keep it there (Start adjusting before you get to your desired temp, it's easy to shoot past it).
• Put your dry rubbed meat on the grill opposite your set of lit coals (do not sauce, if you want sauce put some on at the end).
• Cook 4-6 hours until the meat bends easily at about the third bone when picked up from the end.
• If your coals burn too far under your meat, rotate your rack to keep the meat opposite the lit coals.

If you've got a square grill than you probably cannot do the ring method I've described above, instead you will have to figure out how to do indirect heat a different way. A set of banked coals on each side with the meat in the middle or some lit coals placed in the center of some unlit ones on just one side. You need something that can keep a constant low temperature and burn for 4-6 hours. Experiment and see what works for you.