How to Grill Steak
A grill gives you something a pan cannot: two temperatures at once. Sear over the hot side, finish over the cool side, and you get a crust without overcooking the middle. Here is the method, and Gray
Grilling is what most of us do when there are people in the yard and the evening is warm. It is also the method with the most room for things to go wrong, because the heat is not under your control the way a dial is.
The fix is to stop treating the grill as one fire.
Build two zones
Bank your coals to one side, or leave one or two burners off. You now have a hot zone for searing and a cool zone for finishing. Everything else follows from that.
- Thaw fully and dry the surface. This matters as much on a grill as in a pan.
- Get the grates hot and clean. A cold grate sticks, and a dirty one tastes of the last thing you cooked.
- Sear over the hot zone. Two to three minutes a side on a steak around an inch thick. Leave it alone so the crust forms.
- Move to the cool zone to finish. Lid down, and bring it up to about five degrees below your target.
- Rest it eight to ten minutes.
Dry the steak first
“Get the moisture off the surface.”
Gray Shipley
A grill is more forgiving than a pan here, because steam can escape past the grates rather than pooling under the meat. More forgiving is not the same as indifferent. A wet steak still greets the fire by steaming.
Charcoal or gas
Gray's answer is not the one most grilling articles give.
“I like the control of gas, the control of the temperature, the control of the heat. So, I'm kind of on either end of that spectrum, but I don't like being in the middle.”
Gray Shipley
His point is that control is worth something, and that the middle ground is the weakest position. If you want flavor from fire, go all the way to hardwood. If you want repeatability, take gas and stop apologizing for it.
“But, you know, one thing I don't trust about charcoal is, if you're going to use charcoal, you really need to use a good hardwood charcoal that's not treated with chemicals. And you don't want to use just kind of a base level bag from the store.”
Gray Shipley
That is a real caution. Cheap briquettes are made with binders and fillers, and you are cooking your dinner directly in their smoke. If you are using charcoal, use lump hardwood.
Flare-ups
Fat dripping onto fire is flavor right up until it is soot. Keep the cool zone clear so you have somewhere to move the steak, and keep the lid handy. Do not spray water on coals.
Which cut to put over the fire
Thick, marbled, and the fat drips into the fire and comes back as flavor. The steak a grill was made for.
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Two cuts on one bone. Keep the tenderloin side over the cooler zone so it does not run ahead.
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Thin enough to cook in minutes, forgiving enough that timing does not have to be exact.
View ProductThe crust article explains the dry surface in detail, the temperature chart covers where to pull it, and resting is the last step people skip.
Two zones, a dry steak, and somewhere cooler to move it. That is grilling.
- Grilling and Food Safety, USDA FSIS
- Cook to a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature, FoodSafety.gov
Food-safety temperatures and storage times on this page are cited to the agencies above rather than to us.
Written at Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina: a family cattle farm raising and dry-aging beef in the Appalachian Mountains, now in its fifth generation. No shortcuts since 1872.
Every quote on this page is Gray Shipley talking, the man who runs this farm. We sat down with him, turned on a recorder, and left his words alone.
Nobody knows this beef better than we do. On food safety we leave it to USDA FSIS and FoodSafety.gov, and we have linked their pages above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
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