Cooking Steak On Your Gas Grill – How To Choose A Great Steak

The saying goes “rubbish in equals rubbish out”. This applies to grilling a great steak. If it’s not great to start with then you will have an almost impossible task trying to make it better during the grilling process.

You start with the quality of the meat. How do you decide how good the meat is and which is best for grilling. It can be very confusing, as a nation of meat eaters, there are so many varieties out there.

If you are lucky enough to have a butcher in your area, then I would always suggest getting your steaks there, especially if you like medium or rare. It tends to be fresher and the butcher can give you some great advice. Or even in your supermarket they often have a fresh butcher section. Try there for your steak. Here are some tips on getting through the jargon.

The cut of Steak, what does that mean?

Without going through all the steak cuts, from experience the best for grilling are rib Eye, T bone, Porterhouse, Strips Steak and Sirloin. They have more fat, which is what you need for grilling. Fat gives flavor and keeps the steak moist. Lower fat steaks, like fillet and tenderloin, dry out and can look shrivelled. My favorite for the barbecue is rib eye. But try them all out.

What Is Marbling?

The marbling is the fat in the steak. This is important because it is the marbling that gives the flavor. The marbling should be thin lines, and should be even throughout the steak if possible. Avoid thick marbling, because this will mean that your steak will turn out tough. But nice thin marbling is good.

About Grading.

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 what I would suggest is that you check out choice and select cuts of T-bone, Porterhouse and Strip on your grill and you will eventually get to the one that works best for you.