Practice.

But in the meantime, stop asking HOW LONG… because it’s not the right question.

Oh, I could tell you that your steak needs to bbq for about 12 minutes to produce a juicy medium-rare steak; but if your steak is only an inch thick, you just produced something closer to well done.

There are a few factors to consider when pacing your steak on the bbq… but in the end, practice makes perfect.

If you really want to bone up on cooking your T-Bone perfectly, and want to start a summers worth of practice off on the right foot, go and pickup a decent meat thermometer, because the correct question is not:

How long should I cook my steak for?

but:

What should the internal temprature of my steak be?

Like I said, there are a lot of factors to consider if you’re looking for the perfect grilling time, like bbq type (gas, or charcoal) and thickness of steak, etc. Eventually you’ll gain a 6th sense for knowing when your steaks have reached perfection, but until then, use the following information to get you started:

For steaks about 1 inch thick

Medium Rare Internal Temp: 145 degrees F.
Medium Rare (Estimated) Cooking Time: 8 minutes

Medium Internal Temp: 160 degrees F.
Medium (Estimated) Cooking Time: 9 minutes

Well Done Internal Temp: 170 degrees F.
Well Done (Estimated) Cooking Time: 10-11 minutes

For steaks about 1.5 inches thick

Medium Rare Internal Temp: 145 degrees F.
Medium Rare (Estimated) Cooking Time: 13 minutes

Medium Internal Temp: 160 degrees F.
Medium (Estimated) Cooking Time: 15 minutes

Well Done Internal Temp: 170 degrees F.
Well Done (Estimated) Cooking Time: 20 minutes

For steaks about 2 inches thick

Medium Rare Internal Temp: 145 degrees F.
Medium Rare (Estimated) Cooking Time: 17 minutes

Medium Internal Temp: 160 degrees F.
Medium (Estimated) Cooking Time: 20 minutes

Well Done Internal Temp: 170 degrees F.
Well Done (Estimated) Cooking Time: 23 minutes

It was BBQ time here in Barrie this weekend and we had a small BYO-BBQ gathering with family and friends…

One family member (who will remain nameless) brought a box of pre-formed pattys to cook.

Now, if you look at two burgers sizzling away on a grill, one store bought and the other homemade, it’s pretty easy to tell which is which.

I’ve never come across an out-of-the-box burger that doesn’t look like a thin slice off the end of a big ground-beef meat stick; and when you’re looking at the two burgers on a grill, that flat processed piece of meat looks about as appealing as it tastes, especially compared to it’s thicker hand-made counterpart.

But the mechanically flattened factory burger does have one advantage… and that’s, consistent heating (and cooking) across the entire burger.

Unfortunately the same is not always the case for the tastier (and usually larger) homemade burgers. Homemades tend to swell more when cooked and often end up with a much thicker center. Which means, if you want to serve burgers and not meatballs, you have to spend some of the burgers cooking time trying to flatten it out on the grill. The bigger problem is of course that, round burgers tend to have crispy outsides and barely cooked innards.

So what to do?

The rule of thumb here is to prepare the burger before it goes on the grill by making an indentation in the center of each patty about the size of a loonie (or a little bigger than a quarter for all you non-Canadians) and about 1/4 to 1/2 way deep.

The thinned out center means you will always be assured of a perfectly cooked burger, and one that won’t swell as much.

And don’t worry about anyone making comments about a thumb-print in their burger because it should swell just enough that the indent is no longer visible when it comes time to serve!