How to Grill Great Steakhouse Steaks

Unless your doctor forbids you from using salt, use it. It really brings out the flavors. Salt is an amplifier. It is also an annihilator. Adding the right amount will amplify the meats flavor. Add too much and it will make it inedible. It also holds in the moisture and denatures the proteins making the meat more tender and juicy.

Brining is a method of adding moisture and salt by soaking meat in salty water. But too much water can bloat a steak and dilute its beefiness. So here’s a technique popularized by Chef Judy Rodgers of San Francisco’s famous Zuni Cafe. It is illustrated in the photos of a boneless ribeye, above.

1) Take the meat out of the fridge about an hour before cooking and pat it thoroughly dry with a paper towel. Sprinkle salt on the meat and let it come to room temp.

2) The salt draws out moisture which dissolves the salt. See how the meat has become shiny with moisture in the middle picture?

3) The meat reabsorbs the moisture bringing the salt in with it. Notice how the color of the fat at right has changed where the salt has soaked in.

4) Enzymes in the meat kick in with the warmer temps and help tenderize.
broiler at Primehouse

Charcoal or gas? It’s the heat that matters most, not the fuel

Most prime steakhouses broil their meat with open flames from above, not below, fueled by gas, not charcoal or wood, and they can hit temps from 800 to 1000°F. To the right, you’ll see the broiler at David Burke’s Primehouse in Chicago. They have a talented team of chefs, a purebred Angus bull in Kentucky who sires all their meat, and a impressive aging locker lined with what they say are 800 year old salt blocks from the Himalayas.

At prime steakhouses like Primehouse, meat sits on grates that allow cooks to raise and lower them if they want the meat closer or further from the flame. There are a few that use grills with flames from below, and still even fewer that use charcoal. Most don’t like fire from below because flareups from dripping fat that can burn the meat. Yes, the vaporization of the drippings can contribute to the flavor, but their impact is minor especially when you consider the short time it takes to cook most steaks.

I want all of you charcoal diehards who swear that you cannot grill with gas to note that almost all prime steakhouses broil from above at very high temps with gas, so clearly the secret of searing great steaks is the temp not the tool. The lesson is, if you can get a gas grill hot enough, you can sear steaks just as well with charcoal. Problem is, most gas grills cannot reach charcoal temps. And that’s why I cook all my steaks over charcoal. Read my article on charcoal vs. gas.

The vineyard method

When visiting wineries in Bordeaux, the French region that makes wine perfectly designed for steaks, I saw a cooking method that blew me away.

Every winter vineyard owners prune most of the new branches, called canes, off the vines. They then have huge piles of grapevine wood, rarely thicker than a pencil.

During the fall harvest season they will take a big stack of dried canes, and set them on fire. They quickly burn down to a glowing mound, and the workers will grill meats over the embers. The flavor is exquisite. The French call this method sarment (pronounced sar-MO), and the Spanish call it sarmiento.

Here in Illinois grapevines abound wild in the woods and grow on fences along the roadside. I even planted a Himrod few table grapes (the best I have ever tasted) and I save the prunings. Each year I get enough wood for four to five cooks.

I crumple two sheets of newspaper and put it in the bottom of my Weber Kettle. Then I stuff as many dried vine prunings as I can fit on top of the paper, all the way to the top of the kettle. On goes the top grate. I light the paper from below, and the whole thing goes poof in a few minutes with 5′ flames. VERY impressive. Within a few minutes I have glowing white hot embers. I wait until I can no longer see yellow flame. For some reason this makes the meat slightly bitter. Then I scrape the top grate, on goes the meat, usually about 3/4″ thick, lid is off, turn in 3 to 4 minutes, and it’s done in another 3 to 4 minutes. The burning fruitwood creates temps in the 1000°F range and gives it a fine flavor. I’ve also done this successfully with cherry tree twigs.
ribeye grilled on a charcoal chimney
The afterburner method

So I was doing some 1.5″ ribeyes the other night. I started some charcoal in a chimney to toss on my trusty Weber Kettle because I wanted max heat for that great dark whiskey colored exterior. So I looked at the chimney and noticed it looked like the afterburner of a fighter jet. Big blue and red flames, hardly visible. So I put a cast iron frying pan on top and read the temp. Almost 800°F! So I took the pan off, put a wire rack right on top of the chimney, painted both sides of the steak with some rendered beef fat, and tossed the meat on the rack.

Perfect dead on sear, deep mahogany brown, in less than three minutes per side. Checked the interior temp: 60°F. Still cool. Hardly any heat transmitted to the center.

Then I dumped the coals onto my grill, pushed them to one side. And put the meat on the far side at about 250°F with the lid closed. After 25 minutes of slow roasting, the center of the meat was 127°F, just the way I like it. Took it off, let it rest five minutes, cut it in half, one half for my wife, one half for me, and the color was perfectly even top to bottom. A thin dark crust, and uniform color throughout. None of that progression of color from brown to tan to pink that is typical!

This method also works for thin steaks. Just sear them on the chimney and they may not need any further cooking.

Caveman method

There is another method that can get the surface cooked dark and fast. It has a lot of appeal among men for its machismo.

You get your charcoal scorching hot, pat the meat really dry, and lay the meat right on the coals. You heard me. Right on the coals.

Surprisingly, there will be little ash stuck to the meat when you turn it and when you remove it, and it produces a very dark sear in a hurry. But the operative words are very little ash. Every time I’ve tried it, small amounts of ash and even whole coals have stuck to the surface. They are easily brushed off, but I still can’t recommend this method.

It is much better to place a wire rack on top of the coals or very close to them. Then you can check the meat, and there is less scorching and no ash. Be a caveman if you wish, but know there are better ways.
If you like them medium to medium well

Not everyone likes their steaks on the red side. Edward, a reader from Chapel Hill, NC, who writes a blog called Food Garden Kitchen, says his wife is among them. “The two things I adhere to: Use thinner steaks, and never never skip resting them under a tent of aluminum foil. For example, I might cut her rib-eye laterally in half. It cuts cooking time down to the same as a regular steak, but it gets more done.”
Step by step summary for Meathead’s idea of the perfect steak

1) Buy the best grade of steak, 1.5″ thick bone-in prime grade ribeye is my fave. I am in love with Allen Brothers’ prime grade ribeyes. They cost as much as a small car, but for special occasions, they are worth it.

2) Dry brine. About two hours in advance, liberally salt both sides. Let the salt melt and be pulled into the meat.

3) Let the meat sit at room temp for 30 to 60 minutes. This speeds cooking and helps make the interior more uniform in color.

4) Setup a charcoal grill with 2 zones and get the hot zone screaming hot by raising the coals to within 1″ of the cooking surface.

5) Paint the meat with rendered beef fat to help speed searing, prevent sticking, and enhance flavor.

6) Sear the exterior with the lid open for 3 to 5 minutes checking frequently and moving it a bit to prevent grill marks.

7) Move the meat to the indirect side, at about 225°F and grind fresh pepper on both sides. Paint with rendered beef fat (not butter). Close the lid.

8) Check the meat temp every 5 minutes or so with very thin probe very fast thermocouple thermometer and flip it.

9) Remove the meat at about 125°F, paint with beef love, and let it rest for at least 5 minutes before cutting.

10) Serve simple. No sauces. For me it is Warm French Potato Salad and Crunchy French Green Beans with a big red wine.

Ever wonder what makes those pricey steakhouse steaks so special? How do they get them perfect every time, with a sizzling dark and flavorful crust that is never black, perfectly cooked edge to edge on the inside, tender and juicy with big bold beefy flavor?

There are some basic concepts and techniques that can raise your game to steakhouse level. When you master them, you will have your guests reeling in deliria whether you serve grocery store cuts, prime cuts from a restaurant supplier, or rare wagyu beef.

The cuts

The prime steakhouses, like my fave, David Burke’s Primehouse in Chicago, serve in the best cuts most of which which come from the rib and loin area, along the back of the cow, the most tender, most flavorful steaks on the steer. They are also the most expensive: Ribeyes, porterhouses, T-bones, strip steaks, and cuts from the tenderloin. You can make darn tasty meals from the sirloin, round, flank, and chuck, but they are not as tender.

Most serious steak students agree that the ribeye is the best cut for flavor and tenderness combined. A lot of folks like meat from the tenderloin like chateaubriand and filet mignon because they are the more tender, but, because they are also leaner than ribeyes, filets don’t have the flavor fat brings to the party. Click this to learn more about the Zen of Beef Cuts.
The grades of beef and aging beef

Notice I refer to the best steakhouses as prime steakhouses. Prime is the grade of meat served in the best steakhouses and you won’t find it in discount steakhouses in mall parking lots or in your grocery. Prime beef is selected because it has a lot of marbling, thin hairline grains of fat that weave weblike through the fibers of protein. You can see it. Most of it goes to restaurants.

Some steakhouses also serve aged meat, another commodity that is not readily available to we peons. For info that a good backyard cook needs to know about the grades of beef and aging, read my article on the Zen of Beef Grades & Labels.

allen brothers catalogYou can buy prime beef, or aged beef but only specialty butchers have it. If you can’t find it in stores, order it online. I’m a fan of the meats sold by Allen Brothers in Chicago. I’ve toured their plant and it is very very impressive. The suppliers are top notch, the meat is fresh, beautiful, it is stored properly, the plant is highly organized and clean, and the trimmers are very skilled. Their packing and shipping operation is impressive. This is an unsolicited and unpaid endorsement. I love their meats. But they are expensive.

If you can’t get prime, the next grade down is choice, and choice is common in grocery stores. But not all choice is the same. Don’t just grab any old steak from the meat counter. Ask you butcher for help. Many supermarkets have a butcher in the back. Go in early on a weekday, and ask for the head butcher. Get to know him or her (many of them are women nowadays). Explain you have a special dinner and you want the best looking cuts they can find. They will often be pleased to look in the back room for a particularly nice piece of meat and custom cut exactly what you want. If you can give them a week advanced warning they have more meat to choose from. Tell them you want “bone-in ribeyes, from the center of the roast, with the most marbling they can find, 1.5″ thick, and please try to make all steaks about the same thickness.” You’ll be pleased with what you get, even if it is not prime. I’ve made some killer steaks from choice beef.

Plan on 3/4 pound per adult for bone-in steak and 1/2 pound per adult for boneless steak. If there are leftovers they can go home with guests or make an appearance on a sandwich or salad the next night.

Don’t be swayed by the ads for Certified Angus Beef (CAB). I am not convinced it is worth the extra price. There is no doubt that Angus breeds produce superior meat, but the regulations of the CAB association allow the Angus breed to be so genetically diluted beef that it is meaningless in my mind. To me, this label is mostly a marketing ploy and not a brand of quality.

Do, however, be swayed by the words Kobe and wagyu. Wagyu is a special breed of beef that produces highly marbled and flavorful beef. The world’s best Wagyu comes from Kobe in Japan, where the animals get special food and handling. When grown in Australia or the US it is simply called Wagyu. Wagyu is more expensive than prime, and Kobe more expensive still. For more about cattle breeds, read my article the Zen of Beef Grades & Labels.

The thickness

The cuts they sell at prime steakhouses are usually 1″ to 2″ thick. This allows them to sear the exterior as dark as possible, a chemical transformation that develops complex flavors and makes steaks crisp while leaving the interior red to pink.

But most grocery stores don’t sell steaks that thick. You have to get them custom cut, which is easily done. Just ask. But that’s also a lot of meat. When I get 1.5″ ribeyes, I split one with my wife.

Thickness is important when it comes to cooking steaks. Skinny steaks are a problem. They tend to be well done inside by the time the exterior is browned properly. But there are ways to get thin steaks cooked properly.

Prep

Trim off excess hunks of fat down to about 1/8″ thick. Too much fat can melt and cause flareups. Those flames can deposit soot on the meat and char the surface. Research has indicated that charred black carbonized meat can be a carcinogen. Besides, it tastes bad.

Some prime steakhouses have a secret mix of herbs and spices they season the meat with, the most famous being Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. But most primehouses use only salt and pepper, and some use only salt. Few of them marinate. Why? Seasonings sit on the surface and the scorching heat they cook with incinerates expensive seasonings, even pepper. The remnants can have more bitterness than flavor. Marinades mask the steak’s natural flavors, they don’t penetrate very far, they don’t tenderize much, and if the meat’s surface is wet they form steam and prevents crust formation. Click here to read more about how marinades do, and don’t work.

At home, salt the steaks liberally about an hour before cooking and leave them sit at room temp. Salting will pull liquid to the surface. That will dissolve the salt and then the steak will pull it back in. This is a sort of brining. I call it dry brining. See the pictures elsewhere on this page. The salt denatures the protein, tenderizes, and helps keep in moisture as well as enhance flavor.

Letting the meat sit at room temp allows certain enzymes to activate that don’t work at refrigerator temps. They tenderize the meat. Don’t worry, this is safe at room temp. Any microbes on the surface of the steak will be killed within 10 seconds of hitting the grill.

Just before cooking, pat the meat dry with a paper towel. Moisture on the surface just cools the meat, creates steam, and slows searing. Coat it with a thin layer of rendered beef fat or vegetable oil. Oiling the meat is better than oiling the grates. When you oil grates it vaporizes almost instantly and can create an acrid smell. When oiled meat hits the grill, the oil will heat up quickly and transmit that heat. It will slightly fry the surface and help create crust. Don’t use butter. It contains too much water.

Chef Rick Gresh of PrimehouseAt David Burke’s Primehouse, Chef Rick Gresh (right) keeps a cup next to his grill with what he calls “beef love”, melted beef fat trimmed from his aged steaks. He paints the steaks with it before they go into the dining room. I have taken his method one step farther. I paint the meat with beef love before it goes on the heat as well as before I serve. It brings great flavor to the party.
The problem: Two distinct sectors

When approaching steaks the most important concept is to understand that you are faced with two distinct problems. The exterior and the interior. To produce the perfect steak, you need to attack each sector with two different strategies.

Sector 1: The exterior. The surface tastes best when high heat instigates several important chemical reactions. The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between amino acids and sugars created by heat. It is responsible for the brown crust on breads, for dark beer, for transforming boring beans into coffee and chocolate, and for turning the surface of a steak into something rich and complex. The chemical reaction really starts to kick in at about 300°F.

Caramelization is the browning of sugar by oxidation under heat and there are small amounts of sugars in meat. It gives it a rich, complex, caramel or butterscotch flavor. Caramelization begins at about 310°F.

There are also fats on the surface, and they contribute a lot to the flavor of the meat. When heat melts the fat and chemically alters it, the flavor is drastically altered. Fat reaches its most rich and succulent zenith when golden brown, just before it blackens. Blackening or charring is carbonization, and the taste is not much better than eating charcoal, so you want to stop the process just short of blackening. That’s why I never eat at places named “Char House”. They tell you on the marquee they plan to ruin my steak!

It is important to note that searing is the treatment of the surface. It has nothing to do with sealing the meat and preventing moisture loss. This is a common misunderstanding. Searing does not weld shut the muscle fibers or do anything to keep in moisture.

Now a word about grill marks. Grill marks are cause by the metal grill grates darkening the meat where they contact the surface. The metal heats rapidly and conducts heat to the surface more rapidly than the rest of the surface which cooks by radiant heat (see my article on the thermodynamics of cooking). Grill marks are flavorful and crunchy, and they look great (grate?). But the goal is to get the entire surface as dark as the grill marks. If the grill marks taste wonderful, why not give the same treatment to the whole surface?

So the goal is to give everything an even deep mahogany brown hue, as dark as possible without charring. For more, read my article on meat science.

Sector 2: The Interior. Everybody has their own preference for color of the center of their steaks. Science has shown that beef is at its juiciest and tenderest and most flavorful when in the 125 to 135°F range, from rare to medium rare, a nice red between bright red and pink. More on that below, under the heading “Doneness”.

The problem is getting both to the optimal color/temp/flavor/texture on the interior from edge to edge. Most grilled steaks, if you slice them in half, progress from dark on the surface, to brown just below the surface, to tan, to pink, and possibly on to red. If you want your steak medium rare, the sad fact is that it is usually only properly cooked in a small band of the interior by the time you get the exterior to the right color brown. That means that as much as 1/2 of the interior is overcooked. The challenge is to get the interior the same color bumper to bumper.
The solution: Two cooking temperatures

The solution is to use two cooking temps, one for the exterior and one for the interior.

Sector 1: The exterior. On a charcoal grill, set up your grill for 2-zone cooking. On a charcoal grill, get a whole chimney, about 100 briquets, fully hot, covered in white ash, and push them all to one side. Get them close to the cooking surface, as close as 1″ below the meat. On my Weber Kettle I have even been known to put bricks in the bottom of thekettle and raise the lower grate to within an inch or two of the top grate. I also use the Hovergrill that I got when I bought my Smokenator for my kettle to lift the coals to just below the meat. Some grills like the Hasty-Bake, my favorite charcoal burner, have a crank for raising and lowering the coals. If you can’t raise the coals, use more coals than you usually use. In other words, get ‘er rip snortin’ hot.

We want the coals right under the meat because heat dissipates according to the inverse square law which states that the energy delivered to the meat is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of the energy. In plain English, this means that means that if the charcoal is 2″ from the meat there is 4 times as much energy delivered to the meat than when the coals are 4″ away. Not double.

On a gas grill, use your sear burner (a.k.a. infrared burner) for the exterior if you have one. If not, you should consider buying GrillGrates. They replace your factory grates and amplify the heat. Get your grill as hot as possible by preheating it longer than usual with all burners on high with the lid down. You might even be able to remove your grates and lower them to sit right on top of the flavor bars or deflectors that protect your burners. Remember, the closer you get to the heat source, the better. Gas grill owners may want to consider a cheap charcoal grill like a hibachi just for searing steaks.

If you have a pellet grill, you should definately buy a cheap hibachi or even a disposable charcoal grill. You pellet burner just can’t generate the heat needed for a uniform nutty brown sear. It might give you good grill marks, but that’s not good enough. I can cook better steaks on a $30 hibachi than I do on my $2,500 pellet grill.

Once the grill is as hot as it can get, scrub the carbon and grease from the grates. Dirty grates can give the meat a funny flavor, and clean grates will transmit more heat to the meat. Use a good wire brush or grate cleaner. In a pinch, a wad of crinkled aluminum foil will do a good job. Place the steaks over the hottest part of your grill, leave the lid open, and stand by your grill! Do not wander off and chat up your guests or check your email. Things will move quickly and you need to be ready to react. If you have charcoal about 1″ below the meat, each side might be ready in as little as 3 minutes!

You want the surface to get scorching hot so it will brown quickly. By cooking hot and fast, the heat works mostly on the surface and doesn’t have time to migrate deep into the meat. If you cooked cooler, the surface will brown eventually, but the water in the meat will transmit the heat by conduction, in a sort of bucket brigade, towards the center, and that is what causes the bands of doneness on the interior.

Keeping the lid open when searing is essential. This prevents heat buildup from cooking the center of the meat. With the lid closed, the air all around the steak warms and it starts to cook from all sides. In this first step we are working only on one surface, nothing else. Check the color every minute or so and make sure you put the meat back down so the grates touch different parts of the surface. We do not want grill marks. We want everything evenly dark. If a little of the edge fat blackens, that’s OK, but don’t blacken the musle fibers.

Wait about three minutes. The meat may stick at first, but it will release as it browns. Do not flip the steak until the color is perfect. Then flip with tongs, not a fork. Don’t poke any holes in your steaks and lose valuable juices. By the way, those juices are myoglobin, a protein liquid found in the muscles, and they are not blood. Blood is drained during slaughter. Tell that to your squeamish teenage daughter.

The procedure is identical for the second side. Try to place the meat on a section of the grate tha has not been cooled by contact with steak.

When you have both exteriors perfect, thin steaks, under 1/2″ may be done. But thick steaks will still be way to cold to serve. On a 1.5″ steak the center should be well under 100°F. Now we move to gooking the interior.

Sector 2: The interior. The goal now is to get the interior to the desired temp, and have it as even in color as possible from edge to edge. To do that, we cook low and slow with indirect convection heat. On a charcoal grill, move the meat to the cool side of the grill, the indirect side, where it should be about 225°F, and close the lid so the heat comes from all sides. Depending on how thick the steak is, and what temp you want, it could take 20 to 30 more minutes! I like 1.5″ ribeyes, and it takes me about 20 minutes to get them to 125°F my favorite temp. This step brings the interior temp up slowly and evenly so you don’t have color banding.

On a gas grill, take the steak off the grill altogether, turn all the burners off but one, and leave the lid open to dissipate the heat. Then close the lid and adjust the remaining burner so the indirect side, the side with the burners off, stabilizes at about 225°F. You can even experiment with the settings the day before with no food to learn what works.

Now put the meat on the indirect side and grind fresh pepper on the surface. This is the best time for pepper. Put it on when you are searing and you will just incinerate it and create bitterness. But at this stage you can warm it in the meat’s juices.

After about 5 minutes I start checking the interior temp with a very thin probe on a very fast thermocouple thermometer. Push it most of the way through and slowly back it out and note the lowest temp.

Why should you keep the probe away from the bone? Muscle and bone are very different composition. Muscle is mostly water. Bone has a hard, dense, outer shell, and the center, can be gelatinous or a honeycomb of mostly air. When you begin to cook meat with bone, the muscle and bone heat at different rates. At first the bone does not heat up as rapidly as the meat, but then, when the bone gets hot, it can get hotter than the muscle. So if you take the temp close to the bone or touching the bone at the beginning of a cook, the temp will be lower than the center of the muscle mass because the bone is acting like an insulator. If you take the temp near or touching the bone, the reading will be higher.

Flip the meat occasionally so it does not burn. At this low temp, the exterior color should not change. I remove the meat when the lowest temp is about 125°F even if the other side is not perfectly seared. The temp will rise a few degrees after you remove it, a process called carryover.
The reverse sear

Here’s a trick you may want to try when you have mastered these methods. Reverse the process. Instead of searing first, then slow roasting, slow roast first and then sear in the rear. This method has some real advantages. There are enzymes in meat that tenderize, but they are only activated as the flesh warms up. Sear in the rear gives them more time to do their thing as the meat slowly rises to themp. It can also deliver a crispier surface because the meat is served after coming off the high heat. But this method is a little tricky because you absolutely must have a precise thermometer and you really need to practice to get the timing right. Click here to read more about the concept and watch a fun video of Chef Jamie Purviance and Meathead cook dueling steaks seared both ways.

Prime steakhouses know that beef is most tender, flavorful, and juicy when cooked to rare or medium rare, from red to pink, from 125 to 135°F. Click here for a chart of steak doneness. Any lower and it is almost raw. It is chewy, stringy, the fats and collagens haven’t melted yet, and the flavors haven’t begun to develop. Any warmer and the proteins begin to knot up, the juices are squeezed out and evaporate, and things get tough and stringy.

A prime steakhouse will serve you a well-done steak if you order it, but they’ll think you’re a rube. One chef I know in NY confessed to me that when people order well-done meat, they get the choice cuts, not prime. Illegal, he knew, but justified, he believed. He considered it a bigger crime to cook aged prime beef to well done.

The pros who cook hundreds of identical steaks a day can tell the center temp by look and feel. I cannot. Some books tell you you can compare the springiness of the meat to the flesh in your palm, or the flesh between your thumb and forefinger, or the tip of your nose. This is absurd. Every hand, nose, and steak is different.

One method that works fairly well is watching for juices pooling on the surface as in the picture at right. That seems to happen at about 125°F, but it is not a perfectly reliable gauge. Rely on a high quality instant read digital thermometer with a thin probe. Yes, I know that’s not macho, but I hate serving expensive meat that is overcooked. I just do not trust my sense of sight and touch. If you don’t have a good thermometer, you can make a small cut in the meat to see the color, but beware, the color will be a bit lighter than after it has been exposed to air for a few minutes, so it will look more cooked.

Err on the side of undercooking, you can always put a steak back on the grill, but if it is overcooked, you cannot bring it back to life.

Resting

When steaks cook, the heat inside builds and pressure plumps the meat. Juices move away from the hot side and try to escape. If you cut into a steak right off the grill, juices will come gushing out. Prime steakhouses let the meat rest at least 5 minutes to allow pressure to go down and for the juices to distribute themselves.

Serve simple

Prime steakhouses like to let the meat speak for itself. You don’t see prime steakhouses putting A1 on the table, and if you ask for it, listen for cursing in the kitchen.

Some steakhouses like to place a daub of butter on the surface to add unctuousness, sometimes it is even an herbed butter or butter with shallots or mushrooms. Chef Gresh at Primehouse paints his steaks with melted aged beef fat before they go into the dining room.

If you absolutely have to dress up your steaks, try to keep it simple. Rich red wine sauce is a classic, as is horseradish cream sauce, but I prefer to save them for leaner cuts like flank steak or sirloin. I have a Japanese friend who served me a great steak with tangy green wasabi paste, the horseradish-like root. I liked it a lot, but it seriously masked the natural goodness of the meat. In Argentina, herbaceous chimichurri sauce is everywhere. Caramelized onions, grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, grilled red peppers, are also popular garnishes.

Some prime steakhouses, like my NY fave, Peter Luger in Brooklyn, cuts the meat off the porterhouse, slices the strip thin across the grain, and then reassembles the whole thing on the platter. This is also a nice approach if you have huge steaks and one person cannot eat a whole steak.
Accompaniments

Let the steak be the center of the show. Meat and potatoes are an unbeatable combo, although rice is nice and couscous is cool. Try my really simple Warm French Potato Salad. Keep the veggies simple, like my Crunchy French Green Beans, or, since the grill is primed and ready, go for Grilled Asparagus.

Two things I insist on with my steaks: A big red wine and good friends.