I am currently eating beef every day and am looking for the best most flavorful steak. The thought came to my mind, what makes steak taste better?
Fat is what indirectly and most significantly gives steak a better taste. It is also a collection of other factors. These factors can include grass-fed or grain-fed, the quality grade of meat or the amount of marbling which is the fat spread throughout the muscle, and the cuts of meat.
I will go into more of these factors below and how each can cause steak to taste better. The factors are:
- Meat quality grade
- Cut of meat
- Grass-fed or grain-fed
- Salt
- Searing
- Not overcooking
These factors are easily managed by your choices in what type of steak you buy and how you cook it. The most important is the amount of fat a steak has. This allows the juices of the fat to come out into the steak to give it a more mouth-watering flavor.
How do meat quality grades and the cut of meat cause steak to taste better?
Fat is what makes steak juicy and flavorful and meat quality grades have to do with the marbling in steak and fat content. The higher marbling, the higher the fat content throughout that piece of steak, and the more juiciness and flavor.
There are three different meat quality grades in the United States which are select, choice, and prime. Here is a description of each:
Select: this is the lowest quality grade which constitutes the least amount of marbling. It’s a leaner piece of meat that is less juicy and flavorful.
Choice: this is the most common quality grade in stores. It is the middle-quality grade with more marbling than select but less than prime, giving more juiciness and flavor.
Prime: this quality grade has the highest amount of marbling which makes it the juiciest and most flavorful. It is not easy to find and it is usually only served at higher-end restaurants, and I have been recently seeing it more in stores.
I talk more about how Angus beef has a meat quality grade of choice or higher in my post here.
Of course, there is a big difference in price between the three quality grades. Select can be cheaper than choice but a ton cheaper than prime. The difference between the price of select and prime is huge as well, and I find prime to be nearly double the price of select for the same cut of meat.
The cut of meat also causes steak to taste better because some cuts are much fattier. Fat causes the steak to be juicy and brings out more of the flavor. Not to say that leaner steaks can’t be tasty as well, they just don’t have as much fat as the fattier steaks to give them that additional flavor.
Here are some of the fattiest and leanest steaks:
Fattiest: ribeye, t-bone, porterhouse, New York strip
Leanest: sirloin tip side, eye of round, top round, top sirloin
Does grass-fed beef taste better?
Grass-fed steak has a lot stronger flavor than grain-fed steak. So, grass-fed can be more flavorful and taste better if you enjoy that kind of flavor. Although, it is not an easy flavor to adjust to if you haven’t had it before because it is a gamey flavor.
It may have a gamey flavor but grass-fed is usually higher in omega-3’s and lower in linoleic acid than grain-fed. There is also usually more CLA in grass-fed and it is usually organic and free of pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones.
There is better health benefits for grass-fed beef. If you can’t handle the gamey flavor then eating grain-fed beef can give you good health benefits as well.
When to sear steak to make it taste better?
Searing steak which is making the surfaces of the steak a little crispy creates a Maillard reaction which gives the steak flavor. This can be done easily and it is not necessary to follow a step-by-step process.
The searing of the steak gives the outside of the steak that crispy flavor and there are two ways to do it. A straight-up sear is where you sear the steak first and a reverse sear is where the steak is seared second. The reverse sear is usually more popular because it is eating get a better sear on a steak after it is already somewhat cooked and it makes the steak cook more evenly.
To do a sear you simply have to cook the steak on high heat on both sides. This should only take a few minutes and you have to pay attention to it to make sure it doesn’t burn. Do not be afraid to give the steak multiple flips, only flipping the steak once does not make anything better.
How to not overcook steak so it tastes better?
Overcooking a steak can cause it to lose its juiciness and flavor. If you overcook a steak then the juices disappear and the steak becomes dry. This can be exacerbated by how lean the cut of steak is.
If the cut of steak is one of the leaner cuts then it is easier to dry out and overcook. This is why it is important to keep an eye on lean steaks when you are cooking them. It is also important to realize that they tend to cook faster.
The less cooked a steak is the juicier and the more flavor it has. So, the rarer a steak is the better it will taste. Of course, some people may not like the flavor of a medium rare steak, the point is it is best to not overcook it so that it tastes better. I suggest cutting into the steak to check the doneness.
Cutting into the steak while cooking it has some people unnerved. Some people think that it lets out juices just like how some people think searing locks in juices as well. I don’t think we should take this advice because cutting into a steak doesn’t mean you are cutting into an impenetrable barrier. Juices flow out of the steak as it cooks. And, searing the steak does not create an impenetrable barrier either as juices can still flow out.
We shouldn’t have to worry about this when we are cooking steak. If you want to use a thermometer to check the doneness of the steak then that is fine as well but it shouldn’t be considered a must.
How does salt make steak taste better?
Salt is the most important ingredient when seasoning a steak to make it taste better. Without salt, steak will not taste that great at all. Have you ever tried to taste a steak without adding any salt? Yeah, not very good.
In the photo below I have the same salt I was holding in the photo at the beginning of the post. It is the salt that I like to use, which is Redmond’s real salt. It is from an unpolluted mine and it has the highest mineral content out of any salt I have found.
The amount of salt that you need to put on steak to make it the most flavorful without being too salty is really up to the individual. You can always put more salt on a steak but not necessarily take it off. So, once the steak is too salty it is probably gonna stay too salty.
I would suggest putting salt on at the beginning and at the end of cooking. There are people who think that salt can tenderize a steak by breaking down the protein so you should put it on an hour before or let it sit overnight. I don’t think that salt tenderizes steak that much and if you really want to tenderize a steak you should use some fruits to marinate it.
Some fruits have enzymes that break down the protein in steak. And they will even break the steak down into mush if it is marinated for too long. Yes, you can tenderize steak too much. You can read about the best way to make beef tender here.
Conclusion
There are a lot of ways to make steak taste better. The two most impactful are the fat content in the steak and putting an adequate amount of salt on the steak as well. Searing is very common and is an important step in making steak taste better. You have to be careful not to overcook the steak as it will dry out and lose flavor.
