Dinner

Grilled New York strip

Name: Grilled New York strip
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 0.375 lb New York strip steak; 0.25 tbsp Olive oil

After training or on a rest day. 46g of protein, which is most of a day's repair on one plate.

Servings: 4
Total: 30 min
Skill: Easy

What you need

Ingredients

Making for

4 servings

New York strip steak1.5 lb
Olive oil1 tbsp

Quantities scale linearly with servings. Round to the nearest practical amount when shopping.

Steps

1
Salt it and let it come up
Take 1.5 lb of New York strip out of the fridge 30 to 40 minutes before it goes on, and salt both sides now. Cold meat over fire cooks unevenly: the outside is done while the middle is still catching up. The salt also dries the surface, which is what lets it mark properly.
Common mistake: Straight from the fridge onto the grill. At medium well there is very little room between cooked through and dried out, and a cold centre uses all of it.
2
Build two zones
Bank the coals to one side, or leave half the burners off. You want one side hot enough to sear and one side with no fire under it at all. Everything that follows depends on having somewhere to move the steak to.
Common mistake: A single even bed of coals. With nowhere cool to go, the outside is black before 145F arrives in the middle.
3
Dry the surface, oil the meat
Pat both sides dry with paper towel until the meat looks matte. Then rub a little oil onto the steak rather than the grate: oil on the bars burns off before the meat arrives and does nothing.
4
Sear over the fire
Straight over the hot side. Two to three minutes a side with the lid open, turning once. That is where the marks and the crust come from. If fat drips and the flames jump up, move the steak off the fire for a moment rather than trying to cook through a flare-up.
2:30
Common mistake: Shuffling it around to check. Every lift breaks the contact that is making the crust.
5
Move it off the fire and close the lid
Over to the side with no fire under it, lid down. Now it cooks with heat rather than flame, which is the only way to reach the middle without burning the outside. Six to ten minutes depending on thickness.
8:00
6
Check the temperature, do not guess
Thermometer into the thickest part, away from fat. Pull it at 145F for medium well. It keeps cooking off the grill and settles around 150F, which is just past pink. Pressing it with a finger is not a method at this doneness.
7
Rest it, properly
Onto a board for 5 to 10 minutes. USDA asks for at least 3 minutes after 145F on a whole cut, and resting also lets the juice settle back through the meat instead of running out at the first cut.
5:00
Common mistake: Cutting it straight off the grill. The juice ends up on the board and the steak goes dry.
8
Slice across the grain
Find the direction the fibres run and cut across them in half inch slices. Same steak, much easier chewing, which matters more for a kid than it does for you. Pour the juices from the board back over the slices.

Coach's notes

145F with a 3 minute rest is USDA's guidance for whole cuts of beef, and it is also medium well. The safe number and the target number are the same here, which is not true at rarer doneness.
Buy the steak between 1 and 1.25 inches thick. Thinner and it is cooked through before it has any marks on it, which is the one problem technique cannot fix.
A knob of butter on the steak while it rests is worth it if you want it, and it is not in the ingredients because it is not in the photograph.
Leftovers go cold into a sandwich rather than back over heat. Reheating takes it past well done, and cold sliced steak is genuinely good.

Steps

Salt it and let it come up

Build two zones

Dry the surface, oil the meat

Sear over the fire

Move it off the fire and close the lid

Check the temperature, do not guess

Rest it, properly

Slice across the grain

Coach's notes