I am going to venture a guess here and say that more steaks are grilled on Father’s Day than any other day throughout the year. More people probably fire up their grills on 4th of July or Labor Day but my guess is those grills are filled with hot dogs and burgers. Not to knock hot dogs and burgers but Father’s Day is a time for a nice, thick, juicy steak.
I am also going to guess that most of those steaks are cooked by dads. Mother’s Day is all about pampering your wives, cooking them a nice dinner, or eating out at a nice restaurant. For Father’s Day though dad is fully expected to be out manning the grill. Sure, some ladies will fire up the grill and cook a great steak as a treat for their husbands or dads but in most cases the man will be in charge of the meal that day.
If you are cooking for someone or if you are the dad that will be firing up the grill here are 3 tips to help you grill the best steak you have ever eaten on Father’s Day:
1. Start with a high quality piece of meat
Disclosure: This post is monetized with affiliate links. If you buy something through them I earn a commission which helps support this site and lets me buy more meat so I can write about it.
Sure, you can go to the grocery store and pick up an OK steak. But if you really want to make this Father’s Day steak special you will need to look beyond your grocery store meat case. If you want a good finished product you need to start with a quality steak.
Generally speaking, the more marbling a steak has the better it is. There are some huge exceptions to that rule but fat = flavor and texture. Most of what you will find at your grocery store will be choice grade beef. It is fine but if you really want a good steak you need to look for prime grade beef.
Snake River Farms is an excellent source of prime beef. I have eaten a lot of their steaks and if you have never tried them you are missing out. The quality of their meat will blow you away. For Father’s Day you also want a nice big steak so I would look for a nice prime ribeye, prime NY strip, or a prime t-bone or porterhouse. Here are my top 5 steaks for Father’s Day I wrote about a couple years ago.
Now if you really want to take your Father’s Day steak to the next level check out the Snake River Farms American Wagyu steaks. These steaks are graded beyond prime and have some insane marbling. Yeah, they are pretty pricey but they are delicious. And how many Father’s Days do you get a year? Celebrate with a great American Wagyu tomahawk steak.
One of the big exceptions to the “more marbling” rule? Grass fed steak. In most cases grass fed steak has a more interesting, complex flavor than its grain finished cousins. Only a very small percentage of the beef produced in this country is grass fed and grass finished. There are many retailers out there who play pretty loose with the term “grass fed” so I would only buy a grass fed steak from a retailer I trusted. Even Whole Foods is a bit vague when it comes to their grass fed distinctions.
The two online grass fed retailers I would trust are Crowd Cow who sources their beef from small farms around the country. They are leaders in the “Craft Beef” movement that produces an excellent tasting product while maintaining high standards and ethical practices. You can read more about Craft Beef here if you are interested. The second retailer I would suggest looking at is Porter Road. Based in Nashville, Porter Road sources all their meat from local farms in the Tennessee and Kentucky areas. All their meat is pasture raised and butchered in their own butcher shop.
Find a good piece of meat and you will notice the difference in the finished product. Of course a quality steak will cost more than the standard one you can get at your grocery store but for a nice splurge once or twice a year it is definitely worth it.
2. Keep track of your temperatures
If you want to cook a great steak you need a good thermometer to keep track of the temperatures. Of course you want to keep an eye on the temperature of the meat but you also need to measure the air temperature on your grill as you are cooking. That is where the Thermoworks Smoke comes into play. With two probes you can accurately measure both the internal temperature of your steak with the meat probe and you can also keep track of the air temperature with the air probe.
Let’s talk about the meat temperature first. If you are going to spend the money for a good cut of meat as discussed above you really want to make sure you nail the internal temperature and doneness. Turn your back for a couple minutes at the wrong time and a nice medium rare prime ribeye can turn into a dry, tough well done steak. I’m not here to preach on what doneness you could cook your steak to. That is a preference issue. Personally I shoot for medium rare for most cuts and that means 125 degrees. Take a ribeye or tri-tip to 130-135 (medium) and it will still be OK but cook a sirloin or filet to those temps and they start getting really dry and mealy.
With the Thermoworks Smoke you can set your alarm for a few degrees under where you want your steak and it will sound an alarm. The Smoke also comes with a nice remote unit so you can step away from the grill to do something else and it will alert you when you hit your temps.
I will talk a bit more about the air probe why that is important in the next tip. By knowing what temperature you are cooking your steak at you will have much more control over the doneness and the overall look and presentation of the final product. When you are cooking with fire on the grill you will generally have a bit less control than in a regular oven. There are no thermometers to turn things on and off like an oven either. So by knowing the air temperature you can know how to adjust your air flow or and your flames.
Do yourself and everyone who will be eating these great steaks a favor and invest $99 in the Thermoworks Smoke. It is by far the most important piece of equipment you need to cook a great steak.
3. Learn how to Reverse Sear a Steak
Sure, you can throw a steak on a hot grill and get a pretty good steak. But this post is about cooking the BEST steak. I have cooked hundreds of steaks over the years and by far the best technique I have used to turn out a great steak is the reverse sear.
In a nutshell when you reverse sear a steak you start the cooking process at a low temperature (225-250 or so) until the steak gets up to about 5-10 degrees under where you want it to finish and then you blast it with as much heat as possible to sear the outside of the steak. The result is an awesome, flavorful exterior while maintaining edge to edge pink in the interior of the steak.
If you cook a steak the traditional way over hot coals or on a hot gas grill you are cooking at somewhere around 500-700 degrees. Even with that much heat it still takes a few minutes for the heat to get all the way to the middle of the steak. While the heat is moving to the middle of the steak the outside of the steak gets overcooked and you are left with a wide grey band of meat and a little bit in the middle that is medium rare.
When you reverse sear and start the cooking process over low heat the heat gently moves its way into the middle of the steak. When the middle is up to temperature the outside edge of the meat will not be overcooked. As you can see in the picture above you are left with a nice edge to edge pink middle. But of course you can’t stop there. Get your grill as hot as possible and blast the outside of the steak with as much heat as you can and the magical Maillard Reaction will for a beautiful crust on the outside of the meat.
Here are 6 Steps to Reverse Sear a Steak
- Light about 10-15 charcoal briquettes and bank them over on one side of the grill. If you are a gadget guy a device called the Slow N Sear can be a huge help. You want the coals as far to one side of the grill as you can get them. If you are using a gas grill light just one burner on one end of the grill.
- Place the air probe of your Thermoworks Smoke in about the middle of the grill. You are shooting for a temperature of 225-250 degrees. Lower than that is OK but it will take longer to cook your steak. Much hotter than that and you will start to get a grey band on your steak. Adjust the air vents on your grill or the gas until you can maintain that temperature. On my Weber Kettle that means the bottom vents are almost all the way closed and the upper vent is about 1/2 open
- Place the steaks on the grill away from the heat. Insert the meat probe of your thermometer into one of the steaks and set your alarm at around 10 degrees less than your final temperature. For medium rare that means 110-115. For medium go to 120-125. When you reach that temperature pull the steaks off to a rack and cover them with foil. Depending on how thick your steaks are this should take 30-60 minutes. And I wouldn’t really bother with reverse searing if the steak is less than 1 inch thick.
- Dump a full, lit chimney of charcoal on the pile of the briquettes already in the grill. If you are using the Slow N Sear just fill it up with some super hot, lit charcoal. On a gas grill crank everything up as hot as you can get it.
- Sear the steaks over the super hot coals. I like to flip them every 30 seconds or so. It should take 2-4 minutes overall to get a nice crust on the outside. I like spinning the grate on my Weber Kettle every time I flip my steak. By doing this you are putting the steaks on a cool part of the grate. Hot grates mean grill marks which easily turn into bitter, burnt flavors. After 2-4 minutes your steaks should be up to the proper internal temperature as well. I check mine regularly with my Thermopop thermometer while I am searing.
- Rest the steaks for about 10 minutes before serving. If you cut the steaks right off the grill a lot of the juices will run out. By resting them for a few minutes you will allow the juices to redistribute into the meat.
Once you get the reverse sear technique down you will open up a whole new world of meat goodness. Regular steaks like ribeye, NY strip, sirloin, and porterhouse are great candidates for a reverse sear. Cuts like tri-tip and teres major are wonderful when reverse seared. You should even reverse sear large roasts like a prime rib or whole tenderloin as well.
This Father’s Day you should start with a good cut of meat, use a good quality thermometer to measure your temperatures, and learn the reverse sear technique. Do these three things and you will cook your best steak every this Father’s Day.
