Steak! A five-letter word that spells a mountain of pleasure. For some of us, it’s the ultimate luxury; for others, a weeknight dinner. It’s so easy to grill, even a first-timer can earn bragging rights, yet you can spend a lifetime perfecting the fine points. Steak is the one dish everyone should know how to grill.

Too often, people make simple, avoidable mistakes: Undercooking. Overcooking. Flipping too seldom or too often. Leaving the beef out to warm to room temperature (especially dangerous in summertime heat). Serving it hot off the grill or resting it so long, the steak is cold by the time you cut into it.

Here’s the ultimate guide to achieving the perfect steak every time.

Steak Cooking at a Glance

• Best Steaks: Ribeye, NY Strip, Porterhouse, Filet Mignon, Skirt, Flank, Hanger
• Seasoning: Coarse salt and freshly cracked black pepper
• Doneness (Med-Rare): 130^°F to 135^°∘F
• Resting: 1 to 2 minutes on a wire rack
• Best Method: Direct grilling for steaks up to 1-1/2 inches thick; reverse searing link for 3- to 4-inch thick monsters

Step 1: Start with the Right Steak

Five factors determine the excellence of your steak: cattle breed, feed, aging, grade, and cut.

• Prime vs. Choice: The USDA grades beef on marbling (intramuscular fat). Only 2% of beef qualifies as Prime—highly flavorful, tender, and luscious. Choice is what you find at most supermarkets—less rich, but still very tasty.
• Wagyu vs. Angus: Wagyu is renowned for its hyper-generous marbling; an A-5 Japanese Wagyu looks like white lace on red cloth. Angus delivers a bold, robust, classic beefy flavor enjoyed across North America.

  

• Grain-Fed vs. Grass-Fed: Corn-fed beef produces rich, buttery, meaty steaks. Grass-fed beef is leaner with a distinctive, almost herbaceous flavor. The ideal compromise is beef raised on grass, then finished with grain.
• Dry-Aged vs. Wet: Dry-aged beef, hung unwrapped in climate-controlled rooms for 28 to 36 days, loses moisture, concentrating the beefy flavor and creating rich umami notes. Wet-aged beef matures in vacuum-sealed plastic; it is faster, cheaper, and tasty enough, but lacks the rich, concentrated flavor of dry-aged beef.

  

The Four Steak Categories

1. The Noble Steaks: Upper steer cuts (filet mignon, ribeye, strip, porterhouse) that are intrinsically tender and rich.

   

2. The Belly Steaks: Undercarriage cuts (skirt, flank, hanger). Intensely flavorful but stringy; slice thinly against the grain to ensure tenderness.
3. The Tough Steaks: Round and chuck. Slice paper-thin for cheesesteaks or chop fine for carne asada.

   

4. The Cult Steaks: Unique cuts like tri-tip, picanha (featuring a luscious fat cap), and flatiron.

Step 2: Keep Seasoning Simple and Strategic

For premium beef, skip heavy, muddying marinades. Stick to coarse sea salt or kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Season your steak early—about 45 to 60 minutes before grilling. This allows the salt to draw out moisture, dissolve, and reabsorb back into the fibers, seasoning the meat deeply. If you’re short on time, season immediately before the steak hits the grates.

Do not let steaks warm to room temperature beforehand. The difference in cooking time is negligible, and it is simply not worth the food safety risk. Keep them cold until they go on the grill.

Step 3: Set Up Your Grill for Two-Zone Cooking (Wood Smoke Optional, But Desired)

Arrange your coals or burners so you have a screaming-hot direct zone for searing and a cooler, zone for cooking. Control the cooking by moving the steak back and forth between the hot and less hot zone. Add wood chunks or chips (like oak, hickory, or pecan) directly to your coals or place in your gas grill’s smoker box. A quick blast of wood smoke during grilling makes a good steak great and a great steak unforgettable.

Step 4: Sear Hot and Flip Frequently

Forget the old myth of flipping your steak only once to get crosshatch grill marks. (Mea culpa—I used to recommend this in my earlier books.) I’ve come to see that flipping your steak often—every 20 to 30 seconds—cooks the meat more evenly and helps build a darker, richer crust. Focus on the crust and flip often.

Step 5: Master the Reverse Sear

1. Place your seasoned steak on the cooler, indirect side of your grill (225^°F to 250^°F).
2. Indirect grill (with grill lid down) to heat the meat to an internal temperature about 20^°F below your target doneness (for example, to 110^°F for a medium-rare steak)
3. Move the steak directly over the high-heat, searing for 1 to 2 minutes per side to build a sizzling dark crust and internal temperature of 130^°F.

Note: Measure internal temperature using an instant-read thermometer inserted horizontally through the side of the steak. For the poke test, press the top of the steak with your forefinger. The amount of resistance will tell you the doneness. Use a thermometer for thicker steaks; the poke test for thin steaks like skirt.

Step 6: Give It a Rest

A steak served “hot off the grill” sounds romantic, but resting your steak on a wire rack over a sheet pan for a minute or two will give you a tenderer, juicier steak. (Resting relaxes the meat, allowing the juices to redistribute. The wire rack keep the bottom from getting soggy.) But over-resting results in a lukewarm or even cold steak, which does the meat an injustice.

Step 7: Carve It Right

It has become fashionable, if not de rigueur, for steakhouses to pre-slice your steak before serving. Don’t. This may look dramatic, but a pre-sliced steak gets cold and dry very quickly. Serve your steak whole and let the diner slice it him- or herself.

Note: the one exception here are belly steaks, like skirt and flank, which should be thinly sliced across the grain to shorten the tough meat fibers.

Finally, don’t forget to anoint

A great steak needs little more than salt and pepper by way of a seasoning, but a pat of compound butter link or drizzle of melted butter or extra virgin olive oil makes a great steak even better

Great Steak Recipes to Try Next

• Smoked-Grilled Rib-Eye Steaks with Jalapeño-Horseradish Butter: Ribeyes get a blast of wood smoke and a rich, spicy compound butter.
• Classic Tuscan Bistecca alla Fiorentina: A thick Porterhouse finished with extra virgin olive oil and sea salt.
• Reverse-Seared Tomahawk Steaks with Blue Cheese Butter: Thick tomahawk steaks are reverse-seared, then finished with a bold blue cheese butter.
• Churrasco-Style Skirt Steak: Searing hot skirt steak served with bright chimichurri.

More Steak Recipes »

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best way to cook steak on the grill?

For thick cuts, use the reverse sear method. For thinner cuts, cook directly over high heat, flipping frequently.

How long should you grill steak?

Figure on 2 to 2-1/2 minutes per side for thin steaks, about 1/2 inch thick; 3 to 4 minutes per side for 1-inch steaks; and about 5 minutes per side for 1-1/2-inch steaks. When using the reverse sear method for a really thick steak, figure on 40 to 60 minutes for the low-heat indirect grilling, followed by 2 to 3 minutes per side for the high-heat sear.

What temperature should steak be cooked to?

Medium-rare, 130^°F to 135^°F, is ideal for many steaks. Use an instant-read thermometer inserted into the side of the steak to verify doneness. For thinner steaks, like skirt and flank, use the poke test: press the meat with your forefinger to feel the resistance. Pull the steak a few degrees early, as carryover cooking will raise the temperature during resting.

How do you make steak tender on the grill?

Select well-marbled cuts, season like you mean it, do not overcook, and rest the meat for a minute or two before serving.

Should you grill steak with the lid open or closed?

Keep the lid open when searing thin steaks over high heat. Keep the lid closed during indirect cooking or when finishing thick steaks.

The post How to Grill the Perfect Steak: 7 Steps to Tender, Juicy, Smoky Beefy Nirvana appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

Two hundred and fifty years already?

It seems like just yesterday that a band of colonists dressed in waistcoats and knee breeches assembled in Philadelphia to sign a document that would set the 13 colonies free from England.

Of course, it would take another 7 years—and 30,000 Colonial deaths—for the Continental Army to vanquish the British at Yorktown, ushering in the country we now hail as the United States of America.

And with that victory at Yorktown, we Americans celebrated the way we still do today: by smoking and grilling meat over fire. In other words: an Independence barbecue!

Barbecue: An American Tradition

Barbecue. It’s a uniquely American institution and a culinary tradition we can truly call our own. It began long before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It began in the Caribbean centuries earlier, when the Taino Indians on the island of Hispaniola erected a sort of wooden gridiron high above a smoky wood fire, using it to cook fish, game, and even iguana.

To the ear of the early Spanish explorers, the name for this singular cooking device sounded like barbacoa. Thus was born the institution we know and love today: barbecue.

One of the first laws enacted in the Colony of Virginia forbade the discharge of firearms at a barbecue. (Even back then we Americans were obsessed with smoked meat and guns.)

A pre-presidential George Washington—then a surveyor and plantation owner—loved barbecue so much, he wrote about it in his journals. (One such barbecue in Alexandria, Virginia, went on for three days!)

When stone masons laid the cornerstone for the Capitol building in a fledgling city on the Potomac—Washington—we celebrated with a barbecue.

When Abraham Lincoln’s parents were married, the wedding feast was—you guessed it—a barbecue. And a century later, another American president, Lyndon B. Johnson, conducted global diplomacy from the “Texas White House,” his ranch in Stonewall, Texas.

Which is to say, barbecue has been a foundational part of the American experience for as long as America has existed.

The Regional Roots of American Barbecue

But which barbecue is truly American? Because in our homogenized society—where you find Starbucks and McDonald’s in virtually every city and neighborhood—barbecue remains some of the last truly regional food in our country.

When I started writing about barbecue, the big four—the Carolinas, Kansas City, Memphis, and Texas—served distinct styles of barbecue that could only be found in those regions. In the Carolinas, that meant pork—smoked and shredded, doused with vinegar sauce (in North Carolina) or mustard sauce (in South Carolina and Georgia)—both served with pickles on a bun.

In Memphis, Tennessee, barbecue meant baby back ribs served “dry” (dusted with spice rub, but without sauce)—the invention of a Greek immigrant named Charlie Vergos, whose restaurant—the Rendezvous—still serves thousands of customers each week. They also had barbecued game hens, barbecued pizza, and even barbecued spaghetti.

In Texas—especially the Hill Country—barbecue meant brisket, slow-smoked over smoldering oak—pioneered by German butchers like Charles Kreuz, who in 1900 founded the Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Texas.

As for Kansas City, once America’s meatpacking capital, it became famous for an ecumenical menu of ribs, chicken, pork shoulder, and beef—all heavily smoked and slathered with a sweet, smoky barbecue sauce epitomized by the creation of another Kansas citizen: Dr. Rich Davis, creator of KC Masterpiece.

Why Regional Barbecue Still Matters

Of course, today, excellent versions of these once truly regional specialties turn up across America, in cities as far-flung as Boston, Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and my hometown, Miami. There’s even a passionate barbecue culture in our overseas territory, Guam.

But some regional barbecue remains truly regional—make that micro-regional. To sample barbecue mutton (not lamb, but mutton) served with black dip (a savory condiment made with Worcestershire sauce, melted butter, and lemon juice), you must travel to Owensboro, Kentucky.

To savor pork chops grilled over hickory embers and dipped in a fiery amalgam of hot sauce, cayenne, and melted lard, you must go to another Kentucky barbecue hotspot: Monroe County.

Far from deploring the obscurity of these micro-regions of barbecue, I celebrate them, because barbecue should be regional. And while some micro-regional barbecue will go national or even international (consider the smoked chicken with a unique mayonnaise- and vinegar-based white barbecue sauce born at Big Bob Gibson’s in Decatur, Alabama), other barbecue remains stubbornly regional.

You must travel there to try it—a fact that I love.

Barbecue Brings Us Together

It’s no news that we live in an age of fierce partisanship and polarization—perhaps the most polarized in our nation’s history. But polarization isn’t new either. In the 1850s, our nation—not even 100 years old—was so polarized over the issue of slavery that we descended into Civil War. It took four years of brutal fighting and more than 600,000 deaths to bring our country back together again. Prohibition, the Civil Rights movement, and the Vietnam War all brought more strife and internal fighting.

The sad truth is we Americans have always fought with one another over what we believe. Debate—sometimes peaceful, sometimes not—seems to be part of our DNA.

But as July 4th approaches, let’s celebrate what brings us together, not the differences that drive us apart. Let’s celebrate not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans. I’m sure it’s what the Founding Fathers would have wanted.

I recently saw a t-shirt at a barbecue festival that read: “Blood makes you relatives; barbecue makes you family.”

From our barbecue family to yours: Happy birthday, America! Here’s to another 250 years!!

Recipes

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