When it comes to direct, searing heat, you want to mitigate fatty cuts prone to flareups. Here are the best cuts of steak to grill.
Grilling season is here, and with it, the chance to go beyond burgers and brats to upgrade your grilling game. While we love beef patties, biting into a hamburger is not nearly as satisfying as cutting into a rosy-pink steak with a seared crust. We'd argue learning how to grill a steak, understanding what the best cuts of steak are (spoiler: you want a sweet spot between the leanest cuts of steak and fattiest since fatty ones drip more, causing flareups), and where to get them à la the best mail-order butchers are all essential knowledge to a home chef.
But as anyone who's stood in front of the refrigerated section at the supermarket or behind the display case at a butcher shop knows, picking the right steak isn't cut and dry. Even if you know your porterhouses from your T-bones, a cow’s eight major primal cuts yield more than 30 different ones, depending on the butcher’s fancy.
To make matters worse, there's no standard naming convention. What you call a bone-in ribeye might be called a cowboy steak, which, if the bone’s long enough, can also be labeled a tomahawk. Some of the best cuts of steak to grill take to grilling hot and fast, while using the same technique for others can make it feel like chewing shoe leather.
We rounded up the best cuts of steak to grill with the help of James Peisker, chef and co-founder of Nashville-based Porter Road, which happens to be our top pick.
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Porter Road
Sal Vaglica
“We refer to the ribeye as king of the grill,” says Peisker. It’s a choice cut because of its fat content and where it’s located on the animal. "It comes from that loin muscle that runs from the neck all the way to the tail, which is more tender on a four-legged animal because they’re not standing upright all day.”
Ribeye steaks come from ribs six, closer to the head, through 12, which is near where the loin primal section begins. There are a pair of muscles that make up the ribeye. The eye, the round section in the middle, and wrapped around it is the crescent-shaped spinalis dorsi, often called the ribeye cap (this delicious and tender cut is great on its own, but a bit harder to find).
Cuts from the ribs are tender, flavorful, juicy, and rich with fat marbling, which make them ideal for hot-and-fast cooking methods like a grill, or seared in a hot cast-iron pan. Despite the myth, a bone does not provide any flavor benefits—but it does act as a heat shield to protect the meat.
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The rib primal section, between the chuck, which is behind the head and the loin, so roughly the upper back of the animal.
Sometimes the name “ribeye” is in the steak’s name, even if it goes by something slightly different, like ribeye roll steak. Ribeyes are available bone-in or boneless. Bone-in versions might be called cowboy cut if they’re unusually thick, and when the bone is left very long, it can go by tomahawk.
Sal Vaglica
The filet cut is an example of extremes. The two, long loins on each cow do very little work and the pointy muscle, which spans the short loin and sirloin, is typically cut into round steaks that are usually one- or two-inches thick. The texture is buttery and tender, but it lacks the meaty flavor and fat that other cuts pack.
That lack of fat is one reason the filet isn’t Peisker’s go-to for the grill. “What really gives us that meaty flavor is when the fat drips onto the coals, evaporates and floats up, and the filet doesn’t have that fat,” he says. “It’s the steak that benefits from something like a Montreal season and a bit of oil or beef tallow.”
Serving filet with a compound butter can help add extra flavor. As this steak is mostly about texture, and since it's on the expensive end, take extra care not to overcook it.
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The loin primal below the backbone. This section starts where the rib section ends and the sirloin section begins. The loin primal houses the short loin, which in addition to the filet, is where some of the other well-known grilling steaks come from like strip steaks, T-bones, and porterhouses.
Beef loin, tenderloin steak, and Chateaubriand.
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Sal Vaglica
“This is one of the most crowd-pleasing steaks out there because it’s one solid muscle, not like a ribeye, and it’s perfect for easy slicing and sharing,” Peisker says. The New York strip comes from the back of the animal, where a lot of the parts don’t do much work, so the beef is tender. You can get strip steak with a healthy fat cap on it, which, if you treat it correctly with a hard sear, transforms the unappealing texture into something that’s crunchy and crispy.
Use tongs to hold the steak on its narrow edge, fat cap down, so the dripping can vaporize on the coals or metal covering gas burners—a technique that’s easier if you gang a few steaks together (just pay attention to flareups).
The strip steak rarely disappoints because it’s well marbled, has a good, beefy flavor, and a tight grain for a pleasing mouthfeel.
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The short loin section of the larger loin primal, near the top of the animal under the spin where it’s protected by the ribcage.
Ambassador steak, shell steak, and top loin steak. When served with the rib bone attached, it’s often called a Kansas City strip steak.
Sal Vaglica
T-bones and porterhouse are cut from similar sections on the cow, though from different ends of the loin. Both have the same key parts: a strip steak on one side and a section of tenderloin on the other, separated by a T-shaped bone. And while every T-bone is a porterhouse, the opposite is not true, per the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which mandates that if the tenderloin portion of the steak is less than 1 1/4-inches wide, it’s a T-bone and not a porterhouse.
“Because you have the two different muscles that cook differently, this isn’t my favorite cut if you’re new to grilling,” says Peisker. Employing a two-level fire, where one side is cooler, can help prevent the smaller tenderloin from drying out while the strip steak hits the target internal temperature.
Most of this cut eats like a strip steak but there is a nice diversion from that chewy texture with the softer tenderloin portion.
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The loin primal, though a bit closer to the middle of the animal so the steaks have a smaller portion of tenderloin (filet mignon) where that muscle tapers towards.
Can be called a porterhouse if it’s mislabeled.
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Sal Vaglica
Butchers can cut four to six porterhouse steaks from an animal, assuming the entire tenderloin was not removed first. Peisker has the same reservations about this cut as he does the smaller T-bone: It can be tricky to get both muscles done to the correct temperature without drying out the leaner tenderloin.
A porterhouse is one of the more expensive steak cuts, but when you cook it properly, you have the contrast of the chew and beefy flavor of the strip stake with the fine grain and easy slicing tenderloin, so there is something there for everyone. And this steak can feed a few people considering it tends to be thicker.
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The loin primal, but a bit closer to the back of the animal before the sirloin section where the tenderloin portion is largest.
King steak
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For his money Peisker thinks the chuck eye steak, sometimes called the Denver steak, is the “prince of the grill,” so called because it’s related to the rib-eye. The chuck shares a lot of the same muscles and marbling, with more chew and more intense beefy flavor.
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Cut from the chuck primal, the boneless section between the neck and the rib primal, the chuck eye steaks are separated from the better-known neighbors, the rib-eyes, but a single rib. While it’s not very well known, and also not all that plentiful—there are only about six chuck eye steaks on an average cow—it’s an economical cut with big flavor.
Denver steak
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As a journalist, I've been covering and testing outdoor cooking equipment for about 20 years. My yard is filled with just about every style of cooker you can imagine, including a classic Weber Kettle I’ll never part with. Oh, and don't ever ask me to cook you one inside.
