Special Labor Day Edition: 11 Tips for Grilling the Perfect Steak

Heat is the key to cooking your steak right. A hot grill will char the meat and seal in the flavor. It will also enable you to cook your meat quickly and properly.

You also want to avoid flipping meat over and over again.

Top quality, well-marbled meat needs no additions.

Oil can cause fire flare ups and change flavor. If the cooking surface is hot, the steak should have enough fat in it to do the rest and won’t stick.

Just before cooking, thoroughly season your meat with coarse or kosher salt. That’s it!

Pepper can be a nice addition, but add it after cooking. The taste of pepper can turn bitter if placed on high heat so add to taste after the meat is cooked.

Most grills have different heat levels at different spots and depending on the cut of steak different parts might cook differently. So it is important to rotate the meat to ensure that every part gets cooked evenly.

This is particularly true for bone-in steaks, because the meat near the bone takes longer to cook than the meat in the middle or at the edges. Chef Lomonaco explains, “the rarest part of a steak is always along the bone.”

Chef Lomonaco, along with just about every other chef we’ve spoken to, recommends that you eat a good cut of prime meat at “medium-rare” doneness. This means it is warm but pink or red in the center so it is cooked all the way through but retains the ideal level of tenderness.

But don’t worry you can cook your meat to whatever doneness you desire.

The meat will get tougher as you cook it longer.

Touching the meat regularly will help you feel how the tenderness changes over time and eventually you will learn what rare, medium-rare, medium, etc feel like.

For a simple way to tell, make a fist and feel the skin between your thumb and your forefinger. When the fist is clenched tight, this is like medium-well or well-done. Half-clenched will feel closer to medium-rare.

If you’ve followed the advice provided you now have a perfectly cooked, tender, and moist steak coming off the grill. The last thing you want to do is let that juice out. So don’t.

Let your steak sit for about 5-10 minutes after it comes off the grill and before you cut into it. This will allow the juices to settle and the meat to reach its final tenderness as the temperature evens.

A clean grill is another key to success according to Chef Lomonaco.

He even recommends cleaning the grill while you are grilling.

In addition to just being good general practice, a clean grill will heat better and therefore cook better, it will prevent the meat from sticking to the grill, and it will ensure a clean and fresh taste (unaffected by residue).