To cook a great steak, you have to have a good steak to start with and not all steaks are great for grilling. So it all starts with your choice of steak. Get this wrong and you’re off to a bad start.
A great steak starts with a quality piece of meat. But how do you know a good piece of meat from a not so good? How do you get through all that jargon? The variety of steaks to choose from can be very confusing.
If you have a butcher shop nearby, you should definitely buy your meat there, often it is a lot fresher and you can get some good advice from your butcher who will be a specialist. In any event, here are some tips to help you pick that great steak for grilling on your barbecue or gas grill.
The cut of Steak, what does that mean?
There are lots of different cuts available. The best cuts for grilling are the Rib Eye, T-bone, Porterhouse, Strip Steak and Sirloin. There are of course the Tenderloin cuts that give you your fillet and Chateaubriand. These cuts are very tender but contain very little fat and are not very flavorful, so not good for grilling. The rib eye probably contains the most fat out of the bunch, and is definitely one of the more flavorful cuts.
All About Marbling.
Marbling is the name given to the lines of fat running through the steak. It’s a good thing. Marbling means flavor. The marbling should be thin and evenly spread throughout the steak. If the marbling is thick then avoid, as this will make your steak tough.
What Does The Grade Mean?
There are only three different grades of steak. Prime, Choice and Select. You will mostly be grilling with choice or select. The prime cuts are mainly found in restaurants and are expensive. I have always found choice and select great for my grill. Test them out and see, you can get great select rib eye at a reasonable price for your grill.
So for starters test out a rib-eye, T-bone, Porterhouse and Strip to see which one you like the best on your grill.