Tips for Cooking the Best Porterhouse Steak

Grilling a porterhouse steak is like an art form, and like any great artist you want to have the best tools and materials to work with. You should always get the best porterhouse steak you can afford and grill it on a cleaned, preheated and oiled grill at the highest temperature, using tongs to flip it and a grilling fork to check for the correct tenderness. The porterhouse steaks that are really worth buying probably won’t be found in a grocery store, though. You’ll have to visit a specialty butcher or mail order the steaks, which should be fresh and never frozen to keep their bright red color intact.

There is much debate over the marinade and seasoning of porterhouse steaks. Many purists say you’ll never want to add more than olive oil, salt and pepper. Others enjoy a marinade to enhance the flavor and tenderness of the steak, which is fine as long as you don’t drown out the natural taste coming from your high quality meat. One good recipe is a combination of a 12-ounce bottle of dark beer, three cloves of chopped garlic, ¼-cup of chopped onion, ¼-cup of olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper to taste, as well as a pinch of your favorite dried herb such as thyme or oregano if you’d like. Leaving the steak and marinade inside a Tupperware dish in the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours should do it just fine.

If you choose to marinade your porterhouse steak, you’ll want to remove it and let it set for an hour prior to grilling it, and spray the grill with cooking spray. You’ll want to have one side of the grill super hot and one side cooler, whether you’re cooking with gas or charcoal, and start out with a couple minutes on each side over high heat. Then move the steak to the cooler side and cook it for seven to eight minutes, or until it reaches135 degrees Fahrenheit, before cooling it for another five minutes and cutting in.