GoKawiilConsider your full kitchen arsenal before defaulting to the grill for your next steak dinner. The Palmer/Getty Images
Steak is simple enough, right? A hot cooking surface to sear the outside and some care taken not to overcook it. This formula works well enough for most cuts, but steak has more nuance than it seems. Various cuts with their specific fat content, marbling structure and thickness means there isn’t a one-size-fits-all method if you want professional-level results.
Will cooking your fat filet mignon on the grill render it inedible? No, but there are ideal processes for cook every type of steak. If you’ve spent good money on a pricey selection, you might want to consider learning them.
I turned to experts in the field for some advice on cooking steak. It turns out your grill, while good for some cuts, shouldn’t be the default for every piece of beef.
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Cooking steak well involves nuance — and plenty of pitfalls, depending on the cut, says Christopher Robert, executive chef at Queen Miami Beach. “Cooking the steak straight from the fridge and failing to let it rest afterward are the most common mistakes, and both stem from the same fundamental error: not respecting temperature.”
If you’d rather skip the fine print, a few basics will get you most of the way there for most cuts: start with clean grill grates, pat the meat dry, season generously, sear over high heat, and let it rest before cutting in.
But “most cuts” isn’t really the point here. What follows is a deeper dive into how chefs actually approach each type of steak — the small distinctions that separate a ribeye from a round, and that separate grill mastery from a solid effort.
Here is the best way to cook nine popular cuts of beef.
Ribeye: Wood fire
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