Chefs are taught a lot about how to cook steaks, but you can still go to a restaurant and have an impressive experience.
At home, the game of serving a consistently tender and flavorful steak becomes even more difficult.
I’ll follow up with an article on how to cook the perfect steak, but before I get to that, I’ll address the most critical factor in choosing the right cut.
Here are some tips for selecting the right steak. The choice of meat grade will follow in a future article.
Choose a great cut
The steak varies a lot in quality.
First of all, you need to select the right cut for your needs, budget, and appetite. Here’s a quick list of cuts of meat that we can definitely classify as ‘steak’, as well as a few other common names.
Sirloin (fillet, tournedos, eye fillet)
This is the ‘premium’ cut and the most tender and with less fat.
A good quality Wagyu or grain-fed tenderloin will have a lot of fat marbling through the meat, but this cut should be trimmed of all tendons and have no fat on the outside. This is the most expensive cut and the most tender, but the rib eye steaks have more flavor.
Tenderloins are usually smaller fillets as well. Probably the smallest of all cuts.
Restaurant servings average 180-250g and are bone-free and fat-free.
A double cut from the head of the loin is called a Chateaubriand.
Sealed sirloin steak can be baked in puff pastry, either whole or in individual portions, with mushroom duxelles or pâté. This is called “Beef Wellington”.
Rib Eye, Scotch Fillet and Prime Rib
Rib eye steaks are extremely flavorful and can be very tender.
The rib has a large chunk of moist fat running through the center. This is normal. Leave it there as it flavors the meat and keeps it moist.
A rib is a rib eye steak: cut off the bone. This is also known as a scotch steak or ‘cube roll’
Prime rib or “OP Rib” is a rib with the bone still in it. Like a huge lamb chop, but veal.
Cooking with the bone always gives much more flavor, but it takes a little longer to cook.
A rib is a premium cut. The Prime rib ranks right up there with the Porterhouse as one of the largest cuts of steak, and it’s definitely the tastiest.
Expect a prime rib to be 450g to 550g.
An entrecote will be between 250 grams for a tin plate, up to 300 grams medium or 400 grams for a thick one.
Sirloin, Entrecote, Loin, Strip New York
This is the ‘third best’ cut and the best value.
It is normally between a tenderloin and a rib eye steak in size as well.
Striploin has a thick fat on top that needs to be trimmed to around 1cm thick. It should not be trimmed all the way down, as it bastes the meat as it cooks and keeps it moist.
Tenderloin is very flavorful and a great cut, but it can be tough if you aren’t very careful when choosing the brand or grade of meat. A ‘standard’ portion is 250 grams, with a large fillet being 350-400 grams.
T-Bone and Porterhouse
These are a bone-in ‘combination’ steak.
The bone is shaped like a “T”. One side of the “T” is a fillet or loin, the other side is a sirloin. Both are attached to the bone.
these are the same steak except the Porterhouse is cut from the back of the short loin where the steak is large and meaty.
the front of the tenderloin is where the steak starts to get smaller, which is why these steaks with smaller tenderloin pieces are known as “T-Bone”
These are excellent steaks, usually large. A thick cut steak is probably the largest steak of the batch. Expect around 550 grams
rump steak
This is the ‘bum’ of the animal. A plump buttock with an outer layer of fat that can be trimmed to an acceptable level.
Rump is probably the ‘driest’ steak, with less marbling through the meat compared to the other premium cuts above.
The rump can have great texture and flavor.
Often the rump is simply cut across the grain for a large chunk of flavorful meat.
This can be a disadvantage because done this way the grain will run in different directions through the different muscles of the tailbone.
This means that some parts will be harder than others.
The steak should be cut across the grain of the meat for best results.
One solution to this is to ‘cut the seam’ or split an entire rump into different muscles and then cut each one across the grain into smaller steaks.
A rump will be around 250 grams if the seam is cut, up to 400 or 500 grams if all the muscles are cut.
minor cuts
Flank steak and skirt steak
These are cut from the abdomen or belly of the beef and have a very specific texture. They’re nicely seasoned and seared over high heat, but don’t have the typical ‘steak’ appeal of earlier main cuts.
bad steaks
Any other cut is not a steak.
Supermarkets and ‘creative’ butchers pass off a lot of leg meat or shoulder cuts as “steak”.
Are not.
Round ‘steak’, for example, is a dry, tougher piece of meat that is not suitable for grilling or pan-frying. You can mechanically break it or soften it, but it is not as suitable for grilling and will always be more resistant.
Steak is not steak. It’s beef stew.
Choosing a high grade of meat may give you a tender enough eating experience from an inferior cut, but steak cuts from the same animal will always be more flavorful and much more tender.
A cut of steak won’t always guarantee tender meat either. Some animals only have tough meat. Even the steak.
A steak is the most tender part of beef, which we call a ‘first class cut’ because it is suitable for quick cooking methods such as grilling, barbecuing or pan frying.
“Barbecue Steak”, “Cheap Steak” and the like are gimmicks. They are based on price, not taste or tenderness.
If that’s okay with you, go ahead. But for the best flavor and a tender piece of meat, choose the earlier cuts.
My next article will be about choosing the right grade of beef to ensure your steak is consistently tender and flavorful.
