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Chefs are taught a lot about steak cooking, but one can still visit a restaurant and also have a shocking experience.

At home, the overall game of serving a consistently tender and tasty steak gets even harder.

I’ll follow with an article on cooking an ideal steak, however before we get to that, I’ll address the most critical factor of choosing the right cut.

Here are some tips on choosing the right steak. Choosing the standard of meat will follow in a future article.

Select a great cut

Steak varies a lot in quality.

Firstly you need to choose the right cut for your needs, budget and appetite. Here is gyu katsu of beef cuts that we can that we can definitely classify as ‘steak’ together with some common other names.

Tenderloin (fillet steak, tournedos, eye fillet)

Here is the ‘premium’ cut and the most tender with the least fat.

A good quality grain fed or Wagyu tenderloin will have a great deal of fat marbling through the meat, but this cut should be trimmed of most sinew and will have no fat on the outside. This is the priciest cut and the most tender, but Rib steaks have significantly more flavour.

Tenderloins are usually smaller steaks aswell. Probably the smallest of all cuts.

Restaurant portions average 180-250g and it’s boneless and fat free.

A double cut from the head of the tenderloin is called a Chateaubriand..

Seared Tenderloin could be baked in puff pastry, either whole or in individual portions, with mushroom duxelles or pate. This is called “Beef Wellington.”

Rib Eye, Scotch fillet and Prime Rib

Rib steaks are extremely flavoursome and can be very tender.

The rib has a large piece of moist fat running right through the center. That is normal. Leave gyukatsu restaurant as it provides meat flavour and keeps it moist.

A rib eye is really a fillet of rib – cut off the bone. This is also known as Scotch fillet or ‘cube roll’

The Prime rib or “O.P. Rib” is really a rib-eye with the bone still on it. Just like a huge lamb cutlet, but from beef instead.

Cooking on the bone always gives a lot more flavour, nonetheless it does have a little longer to cook.