Why Is My Steak Tough?

You bought a good steak, you cooked it, and it fought back. Before you blame the beef, work through these four in order, because the first two account for most of it.

1. The cut was wrong for the method

Some cuts are built to be cooked fast and hot. Others are built to be cooked slowly in liquid, and they are tough by design, because they carry the connective tissue that only breaks down over hours. A chuck roast in a hot pan will be tough no matter how carefully you cook it. That is not a mistake in technique, it is a mistake in casting.

If you are not sure which is which, our guide to beef cuts sorts them, and the most tender cuts covers the fast-and-hot end.

2. It went too far

This is the big one. Muscle fiber tightens and squeezes out moisture as it heats, and past a certain point a tender cut becomes a dry one. The fix is a thermometer and the discipline to pull early, because a steak keeps cooking after it leaves the heat. Our temperature chart has the ranges and the carryover figure.

3. You sliced it with the grain

Look at the surface of the cooked steak and you will see the muscle fibers running in one direction. Cut along them and every mouthful is a long rope of fiber. Cut across them, at ninety degrees to the direction they run, and you shorten every fiber on the board. On a flank, a skirt or a hanger this single choice is the difference between tender and inedible.

4. You did not let it rest

Cut into a steak straight off the heat and the juice runs onto the board instead of staying in the meat. A few minutes of rest lets it redistribute. It also lets the carryover finish, which is why resting and pulling early are really the same instruction.

“You know, this is one thing that I've never figured out how to crack it to do it really well is meatloaf. If I've got, you know, my grandmother or my mom doing a meatloaf, that's fantastic.”

Gray Shipley

If Gray has not cracked meatloaf after a lifetime around beef, you are allowed to have lost a steak. The point is to know which of the four it was.

When it is actually the beef

It happens. Age, breed, how the animal was finished and how long the beef was aged all change texture. Dry-aging in particular does some of this work for you, because enzymes in the muscle break down connective tissue over weeks of hanging.

“There's two kinds of chefs. There's the chef that is really skilled and really talented and they could tell you about it and, you know, they may go on a TV show and show off about their ability to, you know, pick food out of the trash or take a bag of Doritos and turn it into something gourmet. And they view their exceptional talent as the main contributor to the end product.”

Gray Shipley

“We used to just kind of not try to outsmart God, let the animal do what it's supposed to do and stay out of the way.”

Gray Shipley

Gray's point is about chefs, but it cuts both ways. Good technique can rescue ordinary beef, and poor technique can ruin good beef. Neither fact lets the other one off.

Work through the four in order. It is almost never the fourth one.