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How To Grill Great Steakhouse Steaks
Step by step summary for Meathead's idea of the perfect steak using the reverse sear
The goal is to get a really dark crispy exterior without burning anything, and an even color pink-red inside without color banding. Here is a short summary of the article at left.
1) Buy the best grade of steak. You want something that has filigrees of fat woven through the meat called marbling. The top grade in most groceries is USDA Choice or Certified Angus which is USDA Choice or above. If you can special order it, and if you can afford it, get USDA Prime or Wagyu beef.
2) Buy the best cut. 1.5" thick bone-in grade ribeye is my fave.
2) Dry brine. About two hours in advance, liberally salt both sides. Let the salt melt and be pulled into the meat. Salt tenderizes and amps up the flavor. No pepper yet.
3) Warm. Just before cooking, let the meat sit at room temp for about 60 minutes.
4) Preheat. Setup a grill for 2-zone cooking with one side scorching hot and the other about 225 to 275°F. If you are not familiar with the concept of 2-zone cooking, now is the time to learn this crucial technique.
5) Cook the interior. Place the meat on the indirect side. This allows the meat's interior to slowly warm up evenly and prevents the banding of colors with dark outer layers. This also speeds the action of the tenderizer enzymes.
6) Flip. Stand by your grill and check the meat temp every 5 minutes or so with very thin probe very fast thermocouple thermometer. Flip it when it get to about 95°F. You don't have to be precise on this. DO NOT rely on touch until you are very experienced.
7) Prepare to sear. When it hits 115 to 120°F interior, get the hot side as hot as you can. Take the meat off and add more lit coals if you need to. Or raise the coals closer to the cooking grate. Or fire up the sear burners. Now pat the exterior dry with paper towels. Don't worry that you are wasting juice. A few drops lost will not hurt anything. We need the surface dry for the next step otherwise we will be steaming the surface, not searing it. Now paint the meat with rendered beef fat, clarified butter (whole butter has too much water), or vegetable oil. This prevents it from sticking to the grate, fries the surface, and enhances flavor.
8) Sear. Now move it to the hottest part of the grill and leave the lid open. We want the lid off so heat is concentrated on the exterior of one side at a time. We are working on the outside now, not the inside. Sear the exterior on one side for 3 to 5 minutes checking frequently and moving it a bit to prevent grill marks from burning the meat. This should get you a dark flavorful exterior. When you have the right color, paint the top with oil and flip the meat. Hit the dark side with oil and a few grinds of black pepper. We pepper it late in the game so the pepper doesn't burn, but hot oils will extract its flavor.
9) Remove and rest. The inside will rise during the searing process, so remove the meat at about 125 to 130°F for medium rare, and let it rest for at least 5 minutes before serving. Resting allows the pressurized interior to cool a bit and the juices won't come gushing out when you cut, and the temp will rise a few degrees.
10) Serve simple. No sauces. My favorite sides are Warm French Potato Salad and Crunchy French Green Beans with a big red wine.
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For skinny steaks
The reverse sear works only on thicker cuts. For steaks thinner than 1", you should still setup for 2-zone cooking so you have a safe zone for steaks that finish quickly, and skip steps (5) and (6) above.
Make sure you pat the meat dry before you put it on. Moisture creates steam and prevents browning.
Then coat the meat with a thin layer of beef love, clarified butter, or vegetable oil. Oiling the meat is better than oiling the grates. When you oil grates it vaporizes almost instantly and can create an acrid smell. When oiled meat hits the grill, the oil will heat up quickly and transmit that heat. It will slightly fry the surface and help create crust. Don't use unclarified butter. It contains too much water.
One method that works fairly well for skinny steaks is watching for juices pooling on the surface as in the picture below. That seems to happen at about 135°F, but it is not a perfectly reliable gauge. Rely on a high quality instant read digital thermometer with a thin probe.
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Dry brining
Unless your doctor forbids you from using salt, use it. It really brings out the flavors. Salt is an amplifier. It is also an annihilator. Adding the right amount will amplify meat's flavor. Add too much and it will make it inedible. It also holds in the moisture and denatures the proteins making the meat more tender and juicy.
Brining is a method of adding moisture and salt by soaking meat in salty water. But too much water can bloat a steak and dilute its beefiness. So here's a technique popularized by Chef Judy Rodgers of San Francisco's famous Zuni Cafe. It is illustrated in the photos of a boneless ribeye, above. Click here to read more about dry brining.
1) Take the meat out of the fridge about an hour before cooking and pat it thoroughly dry with a paper towel. Sprinkle salt on the meat and let it come to room temp.
2) The salt draws out moisture which dissolves the salt. See how the meat has become shiny with moisture in the middle picture?
3) The meat reabsorbs the moisture (and much of the juices that have leaked out) bringing the salt in with it. Notice how the color of the fat at right has changed where the salt has soaked in.
4) Enzymes in the meat kick in at room temp and helps tenderize. The method is safe because if there is any contamination, it is on the surface, not in the muscle or fat. As soon as it hits the heat the steak is pasteurized.
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Charcoal or gas? It's the heat that matters most, not the fuel
Most prime steakhouses broil their meat with open flames from above, not below, fueled by gas, not charcoal or wood, and they can hit temps from 800 to 1000°F. To the right, you'll see the broiler at David Burke's Primehouse in Chicago. They have a talented team of chefs, a purebred Angus bull in Kentucky who sires all their meat, and a impressive aging locker lined with what they say are 800 year old salt blocks from the Himalayas.
At prime steakhouses like Primehouse, meat sits on grates that allow cooks to raise and lower them if they want the meat closer or further from the flame. There are a few that use grills with flames from below, and still even fewer that use charcoal. Most don't like fire from below because flareups from dripping fat that can burn the meat. Yes, the vaporization of the drippings can contribute to the flavor, but their impact is minor especially when you consider the short time it takes to cook most steaks.
I want all of you charcoal diehards who swear that you cannot grill with gas to note that almost all prime steakhouses broil from above at very high temps with gas, so clearly the secret of searing great steaks is the temp not the tool. The lesson is, if you can get a gas grill hot enough, you can sear steaks just as well with charcoal. Problem is, most gas grills cannot reach charcoal temps. And that's why I cook all my steaks over charcoal. Read my article on charcoal vs. gas.
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If you like them medium to medium well
Not everyone likes their steaks on the red side. Edward, a reader from Chapel Hill, NC, who writes a blog called Food Garden Kitchen, says his wife is among them. "The two things I adhere to: Use thinner steaks, and never never skip resting them under a tent of aluminum foil. For example, I might cut her rib-eye laterally in half. It cuts cooking time down to the same as a regular steak, but it gets more done."
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Make your own "Beef Love"
 At David Burke's Primehouse in Chicago, Chef Rick Gresh (right) keeps a cup next to his grill with what he calls "beef love", melted beef fat trimmed from his aged steaks. Gersh paints the steaks with it before they go into the dining room. I have taken his method one step farther. I paint the meat with beef love before it goes on the direct heat as well as before I serve. It enhances browning and brings great flavor to the party.
To make your own beef love, just ask your butcher for a pound of suet, the term they use for beef fat. Butchers trim pounds of it every day and throw it away. It won't cost you anything. Take it home, chop it into cubes about 1/2" and put them in a pot over medium heat to medium low. Put on the lid. After a few minutes you should see tallow (liquid suet) in the pot. If not, raise the heat slightly. After about 30 minutes most of the fat will have melted. There will be some fibrous matter that doesn't melt, just throw it away. Pour the tallow into a heavy bottle, let it cool, and store it in the fridge. It will keep for months.
When it is time to cook your steaks, scoop off an ounce or two and melt it in a small pan. You can even melt it on the grill.
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Small grills
You can accomplish the same thing on a small single burner gas grill, on a portable charcoal grill, or on an indirect pellet grill. Start cooking the interior by cooking at a low temp with the lid down. Then heat the grill as hot as possible and cook the exterior with the lid up.
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"When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions." - Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
Ever wonder what makes those pricey steakhouse steaks so special? How do they get them perfect every time, with a sizzling dark flavorful crust, perfectly cooked edge to edge on the inside, tender and juicy with big bold beefy flavor?
There are some basic concepts and techniques that can raise your game to steakhouse level. When you master them, you will have your guests reeling in deliria whether you serve grocery store cuts, prime cuts from a restaurant supplier, or rare Wagyu beef.
The cuts
The prime steakhouses, like my fave, David Burke's Primehouse in Chicago, serve in the best cuts, most of which which come from the rib and loin area, along the back of the cow, the most tender, most flavorful steaks on the steer. They are also the most expensive: Ribeyes, porterhouses, T-bones, strip steaks, and cuts from the tenderloin. You can make darn tasty meals from the sirloin, round, flank, and chuck, but they are not as tender.
Most serious steak students agree that the ribeye is the best cut for flavor and tenderness combined. A lot of folks like meat from the tenderloin like chateaubriand and filet mignon because they are the more tender, but, because they are also leaner than ribeyes, filets don't have the flavor fat brings to the party. Click this to learn more about the Zen of Beef Cuts.
The grades of beef and aging beef
Notice I refer to the best steakhouses as prime steakhouses. Prime is the grade of meat served in the best steakhouses and you won't find it in discount steakhouses in mall parking lots or in your grocery. Prime beef is selected because it has a lot of marbling, thin hairline grains of fat that weave weblike through the fibers of protein. You can see it. Most of it goes to restaurants.
Some steakhouses also serve aged meat, another commodity that is not readily available to we peons. For info that a good backyard cook needs to know about the grades of beef and aging, read my article on the Zen of Beef Grades & Labels.
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If you can't get prime, the next grade down is choice, and choice is common in grocery stores. But not all choice is the same. Don't just grab any old steak from the meat counter. Ask you butcher for help. Many supermarkets have a butcher in the back. Go in early on a weekday, and ask for the head butcher. Get to know him or her (many of them are women nowadays). Explain you have a special dinner and you want the best looking cuts they can find. They will often be pleased to look in the back room for a particularly nice piece of meat and custom cut exactly what you want. If you can give them a week advanced warning they have more meat to choose from. Tell them you want "bone-in ribeyes, from the center of the roast, with the most marbling they can find, 1.5" thick, and please try to make all steaks about the same thickness." This is the ideal thickness for this method. You'll be pleased with what you get, even if it is not prime. I've made some killer steaks from choice beef.
Plan on 3/4 pound per adult for bone-in steak and 1/2 pound per adult for boneless steak. If there are leftovers they can go home with guests or make an appearance on a sandwich or salad the next night.
Don't be swayed by the ads for Certified Angus Beef (CAB). I am not convinced it is worth the extra price. There is no doubt that Angus breeds produce superior meat, but the regulations of the CAB association allow the Angus breed to be so genetically diluted beef that it is meaningless in my mind. To me, this label is mostly a marketing ploy and not a brand of quality.
Do, however, be swayed by the words Kobe and wagyu. Wagyu is a special breed of beef that produces highly marbled and flavorful beef. The world's best Wagyu comes from Kobe in Japan, where the animals get special food and handling. When grown in Australia or the US it is simply called Wagyu. Wagyu is more expensive than prime, and Kobe more expensive still. For more about cattle breeds, read my article the Zen of Beef Grades & Labels.
You can buy prime beef, aged beef, or Wagyu beef, but only specialty butchers have it. If you can't find it in stores, order it online. I'm a fan of the prime steaks sold by AllenBrothers.com in Chicago. For aged beef, I order from PastaCheese.com in NYC. For Wagyu beef, I get Strube Ranch in TX from BigPoppaSmokers.com in CA. Wagyu beef costs as much as a small car, but for special occasions, it is worth it.
The thickness
The cuts they sell at prime steakhouses are usually 1" to 2" thick, but most grocery stores don't sell steaks that thick. You have to get them custom cut, which is easily done. Just ask. But that's also a lot of meat. When I get 1.5" ribeyes, I split one with my wife.
Thickness is important when it comes to cooking steaks. Skinny steaks are a problem. They tend to be well done inside by the time the exterior is browned properly. But there are ways to get thin steaks cooked properly.
Prep
Trim off excess hunks of fat down to 1/8" thick max. Too much fat can melt and cause flareups. Those flames can deposit soot on the meat and char the surface. Research has indicated that charred black carbonized meat can be a carcinogen. Besides, it tastes bad.
Some prime steakhouses have a secret mix of herbs and spices they season the meat with, the most famous being Lawry's Seasoned Salt. But most primehouses use only salt and pepper, and some use only salt. Few of them marinate their meat. Why? Seasonings sit on the surface and the scorching heat they cook with incinerates expensive seasonings, even pepper. The remnants can have more bitterness than flavor. Marinades mask the steak's natural flavors, they don't penetrate very far, they don't tenderize much, and if the meat's surface is wet they form steam and prevents crust formation. Click here to read more about how marinades do, and don't work.
At home, salt the steaks liberally about an hour before cooking and leave them sit at room temp. Salting will pull liquid to the surface. That will dissolve the salt and then the steak will pull it back in. This is a sort of brining. I call it dry brining. See the pictures elsewhere on this page. The salt denatures the protein, tenderizes, and helps keep in moisture as well as enhance flavor.
Letting the meat sit at room temp for an hour allows enzymes to activate that don't work at refrigerator temps. They tenderize the meat. Don't worry, this process is safe. Any microbes on the surface of the steak will be killed within 10 seconds of hitting the grill.
The problem: Two distinct sectors of meat
When approaching steaks the most important concept to understand is that you are faced with two distinct problems. The interior and the exterior. To produce the perfect steak, you need to attack each sector with different strategies.
Sector 1: The Interior. Everyone has a preference for color of the center of their steaks. Science has shown that beef is at its juiciest and tenderest and most flavorful when in the 130 to 135°F range, medium rare, when it is a nice red between bright red and pink. More on that below, under the heading "Doneness".
The problem is getting both to the optimal color/temp/flavor/texture on the interior from edge to edge. Most grilled steaks, if you slice them in half, progress from dark on the surface, to brown just below the surface, to tan, to pink, and possibly on to red. If you want your steak medium rare, the sad fact is that it is usually only properly cooked in a small band of the interior by the time you get the exterior to the right color brown. That means that as much as 1/2 of the interior is overcooked. The challenge is to get the interior the same color bumper to bumper.
Sector 2: The Exterior. The surface tastes best when high heat instigates several important chemical reactions. The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between amino acids and sugars created by heat. It is responsible for the brown crust on breads, for dark beer, for transforming boring beans into coffee and chocolate, and for turning the surface of a steak into something rich and complex. The chemical reaction really starts to kick in at about 300°F.
Caramelization is the browning of sugar by oxidation under heat and there are small amounts of sugars in meat. It gives it a rich, complex, caramel or butterscotch flavor. Caramelization begins at about 310°F.
There are also fats on the surface, and they contribute a lot to the flavor of the meat. When heat melts the fat and chemically alters it, the flavor is drastically altered. Fat reaches its most rich and succulent zenith when golden brown, just before it blackens. Blackening or charring is carbonization, and the taste is not much better than eating charcoal, so you want to stop the process just short of blackening. That's why I never eat at places named "Char House". They tell you on the marquee they plan to ruin my steak!
It is important to note that searing is the treatment of the surface. It has nothing to do with sealing the meat and preventing moisture loss. This is a common misunderstanding. Searing does not weld shut the muscle fibers or do anything to keep in moisture.
Now a word about grill marks. Grill marks are caused by the metal grill grates darkening the meat where they contact the surface. The metal heats rapidly and conducts heat to the surface more rapidly than the rest of the surface which cooks by radiant heat (see my article on the thermodynamics of cooking). Grill marks are flavorful and crunchy, and they look great (grate?). But the goal is to get the entire surface as dark as the grill marks. If the grill marks taste wonderful, why not give the same treatment to the whole surface?
So the goal is to give everything an even deep mahogany brown hue, as dark as possible without charring. For more, read my article on meat science.
The solution: Two distinct cooking temperatures and sear in the rear
The solution is to use two cooking temps, one for the interior and one for the exterior. We will begin by slow and low roasting the meat at about 225°F and bring the meat up to about 115°F gently so the meat remains uniform in heat and color throughout. Then we will move it over high heat and darken the exterior quickly so it doesn't overcook the interior. This method is called the "reverse sear" or "Sear in the rear".
This method has some real advantages. There are enzymes in meat that tenderize it, but they are only activated as the flesh warms up. Reverse sear gives them more time to do their thing as the meat slowly rises to temp. It can also deliver a crispier surface because the meat is served after coming off the high heat. But this method is a little tricky because you absolutely must have a precise thermometer and you really need to practice to get the timing right. Click here to read more about the concept and watch a fun video of Chef Jamie Purviance and Meathead cook dueling steaks seared both ways.
On a charcoal grill set up your grill for 2-zone cooking. You want one side scorching hot and the other side at about 225F. This is tricky and you will have to experiment to get it set up right, so do a dry run or two until you get it down.
On my Weber Kettle, I get a chimney full of charcoal, about 100 briquets, fully hot and covered in white ash, and push them all to one side. Get them close to the cooking surface, as close as 1" below the meat. I have been known to put bricks in the bottom of the kettle and raise the lower grate to about 2 to 3" below the top grate. I sometimes use the Hovergrill that I got when I bought my Smokenator for my kettle to lift the coals to just below the cooking surface.
For the first phase, cooking indirect, I leave the lid off and put an aluminum pan over just the meat so just a little heat from the other side of the grill will travel across and slowly roast the steaks under the pan. With the lid on the steaks get too hot too quickly and they get tough.
Experiment.
On a gas grill use your sear burner (a.k.a. infrared burner) for the exterior if you have one. If not, you should consider buying GrillGrates. They replace your factory grates and amplify the heat just like the "infrared" or sear burners. Get your grill as hot as possible by preheating it longer than usual with all burners on high and the lid down. You might even be able to remove your grates and lower them to sit right on top of the flavor bars or deflectors that protect your burners. Remember, the closer you get to the heat source, the better. Gas grill owners may want to consider a cheap charcoal grill like a hibachi just for searing steaks.
On a pellet grill you should definitely buy a cheap hibachi or even a disposable charcoal grill. You pellet burner just can't generate the heat needed for a uniform nutty brown sear. It might give you good grill marks, but that's not good enough. I can cook better steaks on a $30 hibachi than I do on my $2,500 pellet grill.
Clean the grates. Once the grill is as hot as it can get, scrub the carbon and grease from the grates. Dirty grates can give the meat a funny flavor, and clean grates will transmit more heat to the meat. Use a good wire brush or grate cleaner. In a pinch, a wad of crinkled aluminum foil will do a good job.
Sector 1: Cooking the interior over low heat. The first goal is to get the interior to the desired temp, and have it as even in color as possible from edge to edge. To do that, we cook low and slow with indirect convection heat, at about 225°F. If you haven't already done so, read my article on calibrating your system.
On a charcoal grill, move the meat to the cool side of the grill, the indirect side, where it should be about 225°F with the lid down. Depending on how thick the steak is, and what temp you want the meat, it could take 30 minutes to get it up to about 110 to 115°F.
On a gas grill, turn all the burners off but one or two, close the lid, and adjust the remaining burner so the indirect side, the side with the burners off, stabilizes at about 225°F. Experiment with the settings without food to learn what sttings work best.
If you wish, you can add just a little bit of wood to the fire when you put the meat on. Taste is a matter of taste, but too much smoke on beef can mask the natural flavor and I just don't like it. But a tiny hint in the backgound adds intrigue and complexity. How much is a little bit? Start with half a handful of dry chips or pellets.
After about 15 minutes start checking the interior temp with a very thin probe on a very fast thermocouple thermometer. Push it most of the way through and slowly back it out and note the lowest temp. Check every 5 minutes in more than one location. Don't worry about poking the meat. Steak is 70% liquid, so if you poke a hole in a 16 ouncer and it loses 1/4 ounce of juice, you'll still have 9.35 ounces of fluid left. And that juice is not blood, by the way. It is a protein laden liquid called myoglobin. Blood is dark, almost black, thick, and it clots. The blood was drained in the slaughterhouse.
Why should you keep the probe away from the bone? Muscle and bone are very different composition. Muscle is mostly water. Bone has a hard, dense, outer shell, and the center, can be gelatinous or a honeycomb of mostly air. When you begin to cook meat with bone, the muscle and bone heat at different rates. At first the bone does not heat up as rapidly as the meat, but then, when the bone gets hot, it can get hotter than the muscle. So if you take the temp close to the bone or touching the bone at the beginning of a cook, the temp will be lower than the center of the muscle mass because the bone is acting like an insulator. If you take the temp near or touching the bone, the reading will be higher.
Flip the meat occasionally so it heats evenly on both sides. At this low temp, the exterior color should not go much beyond tan. When the temp in the deepest part of the meat hits 110 to 115°F, open the lid and leave it open. Paint the meat with beef love (rendered beef fat, clarified butter, or vegetable oil), and move it to the hot side of the grill, as hot as possible, as close to the heat source as possible. The oil helps conduct heat to the meat and assists with browning. It also adds flavor.
Sector 2: Cooking the exterior over high heat. You now want to cook the exterior with the hottest heat possible with the lid open so all the heat is concentrated on one surface. If you need to take the meat off for a few minutes while you get a really high heat zone. On a charcoal grill bunch the coals all together if necessary or add new hot coals. On a gas grill, crank up the burners.
When the meat is on the hot side, stand by your grill! Do not wander off and chat up your guests or check your email. Things will move quickly and you need to be ready to react. If you have charcoal about 1" below the meat, each side can be ready in as little as 3 minutes!
You want the surface to get scorching hot so it will brown quickly. By cooking hot and fast, the heat works mostly on the surface and doesn't have time to migrate deep into the meat. If you cooked cooler, the surface will brown eventually, but the water in the meat will transmit the heat by conduction towards the center, in a sort of bucket brigade, and that is what causes the bands of color on the interior.
Keeping the lid open when searing the exterior is essential. This prevents heat buildup from cooking the center of the meat. With the lid closed, the air all around the steak warms and it starts to cook from all sides. In this step we are working only on one surface at a time, nothing else. Check the color of that surface every minute or so and make sure you put the meat back down so the grates touch different parts of the surface. We do not want grill marks. We want everything evenly dark. If a little of the edge fat blackens, that's OK, but don't blacken the musle fibers.
Wait about 3 minutes. The meat may stick at first, but it will release as it browns. Do not flip the steak until the color is perfect, a dark brown, as dark as possible without going black. Then flip. Tongs are best, but don't worry about poking holes in the meat with a fork.
Try to place the meat on a virgin section of the grate that has not been cooled by contact with steak. After you flip, hit the top side with beef love and freshly ground black pepper. There's enough heat there to extract flavor.
The procedure is identical for the second side. Wait til the color is perfect, flip, beef love, black pepper and then move it to a warm plate to rest for 5 minutes.
Doneness
 When you have both exteriors perfect, the interior should be in the medium rare range, 125 to 135°F. Check with a thermometer if you wish. But don't try to gauge doneness by cutting into the meat. The color can get significantly redder after a minute or so as oxygen hits the myoglobin. And don't try to test doneness by poking the meat with a finger and comparing it to the flesh of your hand or nose as so many books tell you to do. This is just absurd. Everyone's hands and noses are different. A professional chef at a steakhouse may be able to gauge doneness by feel, but they cook scores of steaks a night.
Prime steakhouses know that beef is most tender, flavorful, and juicy when cooked to rare or medium rare, from red to pink, from 125 to 135°F. Click here for a chart of steak doneness. Any lower and it is almost raw. It is chewy, stringy, the fats and collagens haven't melted yet, and the flavors haven't begun to develop. Any warmer and the proteins begin to knot up, the juices are squeezed out and evaporate, and things get tough and stringy.
A prime steakhouse will serve you a well-done steak if you order it, but they'll think you're a rube. One chef I know in NY confessed to me that when people order well-done meat, they get the choice cuts, not prime. Illegal, he knew, but justified, he believed. He considered it a bigger crime to cook aged prime beef to well done.
Err on the side of undercooking, you can always put a steak back on the grill, but if it is overcooked, you cannot bring it back to life.
Resting
When steaks cook, the heat inside builds and pressure plumps the meat. Juices move away from the hot side and try to escape. If you cut into a steak right off the grill, juices will come gushing out. Prime steakhouses let the meat rest at least 5 minutes to allow pressure to go down and for the juices to distribute themselves.
Serve simple
Prime steakhouses like to let the meat speak for itself. You don't see prime steakhouses putting A1 on the table, and if you ask for it, listen for cursing in the kitchen.
Some steakhouses like to place a daub of butter on the surface to add unctuousness, sometimes it is even an herbed butter or butter with shallots or mushrooms.
If you absolutely have to dress up your steaks, try to keep it simple. Rich red wine sauce is a classic, as is horseradish cream sauce, but I prefer to save them for leaner cuts like flank steak or sirloin. I have a Japanese friend who once presented me with a great steak with tangy green wasabi paste, the horseradish-like root. I liked it a lot, but it seriously masked the natural goodness of the meat. In Argentina, herbaceous chimichurri sauce is everywhere. Caramelized onions, grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, grilled red peppers, are also popular garnishes.
Some prime steakhouses, like my NY fave, Peter Luger in Brooklyn, cuts the meat off the porterhouse, slices the strip thin across the grain, and then reassembles the whole thing on the platter. This is also a nice approach if you have huge steaks and one person cannot eat a whole steak.
As you eat the first steak you cook with this method, you might discover that it is a little over or under cooked for your taste. Don't be discouraged. Adjust the procedure to accomodate your tastes.
Accompaniments
Let the steak be the center of the show. Meat and potatoes are an unbeatable combo, although rice is nice and couscous is cool. Try my really simple Warm French Potato Salad. Keep the veggies simple, like my Crunchy French Green Beans, or, since the grill is primed and ready, go for Grilled Asparagus.
Two things I insist on with my steaks: A big red wine and good friends.
This page was revised 12/14/2010
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1) If you are looking for info, please use the table of contents or the search box, at the top of every page.
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Our philosophy about food is simple. First of all it must taste great. It must be easy to make and emphasize fresh seasonal products with a minimum of processed ingredients. We think that people need to know why as well as how, so we spend a lot of time explaining things, and we believe that there are no rules in the bedroom or dining room.
 About Product Reviews and Best in BBQ Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals are highly recommended products. Awards are based on features, quality, and value. Rest assured that when we recommend a product, it is really because we like it, not because someone has paid us to say so or because the company is an advertiser or sponsor. We purchase most products we review although occasionally suppliers send us samples. We have always been transparent about when we are reviewing a product sample, even before the Federal Trade Commission Required it in 2009.
About links on this site. Other than clearly marked ads, links and recommendations on this site are all products, services, and websites we truly admire, and are never paid endorsements. Your suggestions are always welcome. If you would like us to link to your website, click here to read our links policy first.
Advertising on this site. AmazingRibs.com is one of the 100 most popular food websites in the US according to comScore, Alexa, and Quantcast. It is by far the most popular barbecue website in the world and pageviews double every year. Advertising on AmazingRibs.com is a great way to build your brand or make direct sales. I keep a strict wall between editorial and advertising, so, for current pricing and availability of prime space, contact my agency, Federated Media, by clicking the logo at right. Click here for analytics, stats, demographics, and advertising options.
Our Privacy Promise. AmazingRibs, Inc. promises to never sell or distribute any info about you individually without your express permission, and we promise not to, ahem, pepper you with email or make you eat spam. Click here for more details of my privacy promise.
Disclaimer. The information on this website is for educational purposes only. All material within comes without warranties of any kind. The authors are human and capable of mistakes, omissions, or errors, so we make no guarantees as to the accuracy, completeness, or safety of the information. Under no circumstances are we liable for any damages that result from use of the site (so you can't sue us if you don't like a recipe or if you burn your tongue on hot ribs, OK?).
Copyright © 2011 by AmazingRibs, Inc. Unless otherwise noted, all text, recipes, photos, and code are owned by AmazingRibs, Inc and fully protected by US copyright law. This means you need written permission to republish or distribute anything on this website. But we're easy. To get reprint rights, click here. Note: Some photos of commercial products such as grills were provided by the manufacturers and under their copyright.
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Save this link to
keep this site free!
http://tinyurl.com/3usxwaj
This link takes you to Amazon and tags anything you buy with a code so I get a referral fee. It works on anything from grills to diapers and it has zero impact on the price you pay. The best reasons to buy from Amazon are low prices, fast often free delivery, fair return policies, and often there is no sales tax. But clicking on that link before you shop helps me devote more time and money to you. Thanks!
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Donate to keep this site free!
 With a $30 donation you'll get a 100% cotton brushed twill adjustable low profile cap with the AmazingRibs patch sewn on. I'll even toss in a small bag of BBQ'rs Delight wood smoke pellets. Click here for more info.
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AmazingRibs.com Best in BBQ Gold Medal Winners
Here are three great products that have earned The AmazingRibs.com Best in BBQ Gold Medals. These are not ads!
GrillGrates Take You To The Infrared Zone
GrillGrates are the best new product I have tested in years and the best thing to happen to beef since salt and pepper. The base superheats, eliminates hot spots, and blocks flareups. This is the concept behind the expensive new infrared grills. A must for gas grills. Click here for more about GrillGrates.
The Smokenator: A Necessity For Weber Kettles
If you have a Weber Kettle, you need the amazing Smokenator and Hovergrill. The Smokenator turns your grill into a first class smoker, and the Hovergrill can add capacity or be used to create steakhouse steaks. Click here to read more.
ThermoWorks Pocket Thermometer - No More Guessing
A good thermometer is why I never serve overcooked or undercooked food. This one has a very thin tip with a tiny thermocouple so it gives an accurate reading in just six seconds. I cannot recommend it more highly. It will improve your cooking overnight and pay for itself in a hurry. And it is inexpensive. Click here for more about thermometers.
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