The Perfect Steak

These are ribeyes, with perfect grill marks, cooking away over a properly heated grill.

This summer there seems to me to be an inordinate number of “how to make the perfect steak” sort of articles floating around the internet. This would be fine if most of them didn’t have some utterly terrible and fucked up advice that, if followed, will only eventuate in some mediocre to terrible steaks.

So here’s the deal: this is how you make steak. I learned this through many, many valiant attempts at making steak which met with different degrees of success. What I am presenting to you is truth. Both practically and metaphysically, this is how you need to go about making steak if you want it done good.

1. Have a clean, oiled, and extremely hot grill. The grill should be super hot. One of the hardest parts of grilling a good steak is getting a proper sear on both sides of the meat. Never ever ever cook steak of medium or even medium-high heat. A propane grill should be at least 450 degrees before you put steak on it. If you don’t have a thermometer on your grill, you can figure it out by eyeballing it. The grill should be smoking and too hot to have you hand near it.

2. Make absolutely sure to let the steaks come to room temperature before putting them on the grill. This is absolutely and utterly crucial. There is a lot of stuff flying around the internet right now about how you shouldn’t do this, it isn’t safe, it doesn’t help, etc. These are all lies from the pit of hell. You absolutely have to let the meat come to room temperature. It should sit out at least 2 hours and as many as 12 hours. It will be fine. You will not get sick. You will, however get good, perfectly cooked steak, which is not what you will get if you slap an ice-cold steak from the fridge right onto the grill.

3. If you are defrosting previously frozen steaks, listen well to what I am about to tell you, for it is utterly vital. You must take absolute and utter care to let your meat defrost as slowly as possible. That means taking it out of the freezer a few days ahead of time and putting it in the fridge to slowly thaw. The reason for this is that when steaks are frozen all the moisture in the meat turns into ice crystals, expanding, which tear at the fibers of the muscle. If you defrost the meat to quickly you will lose that moisture because the tissue, now having expanded and then quickly had the ice crystals turn back into water will lose that moisture. The result will be a steak that tastes alarmingly tough even if it is cooked correctly in every other way. Trust me on this, I know from experience. If you wind up forgetting and don’t have time to let it defrost in the refrigerator, ok. Leave it on the counter and let it defrost in the open, and leave it out till it’s at room temp. But for the love of God, do not stick the damn thing in a sink full of warm water to speed the process along. You might as well just throw it away.

4. You can season and/or marinate steak however you like, but you must make sure that when you put the meat on the grill it is thoroughly dry on the outside. That means mopping off any juices or marinade you may have used. This is vital to the steak being able to sear and caramelize properly on the outside. See, if you have all this moisture on the outside of a steak, guess what has to happen to it? It has to evaporate and cook off. Thus, by the time your steak is cooked to desired doneness, there will be no sear, no caramelized crust on the outside because all the heat has been working to steam off that liquid. So, no matter what you marinate your steaks in, mop it off, and then rub it down with some olive oil and hit it with some salt and pepper (Unless you had it in some ridiculously salty marinade or something, but trust me, its hard to over-salt steak on the grill. The far more pressing problem is under-seasoning your meat).

Just so you know, I typically don’t marinate my steaks unless I’m doing a Teriyaki or a Thai type of meal. For traditional steak steak. I usually just dry off my room-temperature steak thoroughly, rub them on all sides with extra-virgin olive oil, and then generously sprinkle a simple rub consisting of equal parts kosher salt, black pepper, minced garlic, and minced onion. That’s it. And it works deliciously.

5. Ok, we’re getting close now. The next thing to remember is to put your steaks on the grill and leave them be. Keep the lid of the grill open, but don’t move the steaks all over the place, and if possible, only flip once (this is different for other types of beef like tri-tip, but I won’t go into that here). If you want to try to get the nice sexy grill marks on the steak that crisscross, go ahead and rotate the steak by either 45 or 90 degrees after its been on the grill for 2-3 minutes. Now as far as total time on the grill goes, you have to kind of go by feel, but for a steak that is 1 inch thick, on a nice hot grill I typically go 3-5 minutes per side for medium rare (and do not have nor will I give advice to anyone who wants a steak more well done than that). A steak that is done to medium-rare should feel to the touch about like how the flesh between your lowest thumb knuckle and your lowest index finger knuckle when you make your hand into a loose, unclenched fist. But ultimately you just have to get the hang of doneness because every steak is a little different, every grill has its own idiosyncrasies, etc.

6. Alright, now we’re done. Steak was properly brought to room temp, it was properly dried off, oiled, seasoned, seared on both sides on a properly heated grill, and bam! Here we are. Ready to eat, right? NO! No, you stupid bastard it is not time to eat! Now is the time where you remove your steaks from the heat, place them on a platter and loosely tent them with foil and allow them to sit for at least 5-10 minutes and up to 15-20 minutes. Don’t worry, they’ll stay warm. This last phase is crucial because it allows all the juices to redistribute evenly throughout the meat. If you just cut into it hot off the grill you’ll lose all the juices and have a steak that is dry, frustrating, and seems raw instead of rare. The time spent under the foil finishes the cooking process, renders a perfectly juicy steak, and gives it that perfect medium-rare redness that we all so thoroughly crave.

That’s it. If you do these things, as described, you will make excellent steak. These are facts.

Now, one last comment. The big question that may be looming in your mind at this point is “What kind of steak should I get?” Well, there are many wonderful steaks. The first thing that I should say is to be careful of bone-in steaks. The bone takes longer to cook and will increase grilling time. It thus makes perfect, uniform medium-rare doneness more difficult to achieve. Secondly, the key to a good steak is marbling, that is, the fat which is distributed throughout the meat (i.e. not just the ribbon of fat on the edge). Thus ribeyes are really the best grilling steaks due to their generous marbling. Chuckeye steaks are a close second that sometimes surpass some ribeyes. New York strip steaks can be delicious when done right, but have less marbling to work with. Tenderloins are wonderfully tender but fall a ways short in terms of marbling, and as such are, in my opinion, better cooked as whole roasts than as individual steaks. Regular chuck steaks can be just great if you’re grilling on a budget.

The bottom line, however, is that whatever you grill you want it to be about an inch thick, and have plenty of marbling. If you follow that basic criterion, and always keep your eyes open for sales on ribeye and chuckeye, you’ll find yourself some great steaks.

Go forth and do all of these things.

Advertisement