GrillinFool
Full Fledged Farker
- Joined
- May 8, 2009
- Location
- St. Louis
First, what is a pork steak?
Outside of the Midwest, they aren’t well known and retail grocers do not offer this particularly tasty cut of pork. You can obtain them most everywhere if your local purveyor handles whole Boston butt or pork butt roast or any of the myriad of other names such as the pork shoulder butt shown below:
Pork steaks are also known as blade steaks and simply put, pork steaks are merely a sliced Boston pork butt.
I visited a local grocery store where the head meat-cutter, Mike, agreed to assist in illustrating how pork steaks are cut:
This is what the whole butt looks like prior to Mike performing his craft with this tasty cut:
Mike trims the end and any excess fat to fit the steaks to the tray used to sell:
The Boston butt is sliced into steaks (usually ½” to 1 1/4” thickness) on the saw:
Mike does not slice the whole butt into pork steaks. He saves a portion of one end to sell as a small roast (the back of the pic below) and sells the small end pieces as finger ribs which Mike thinks are the tastiest part, (the front of the pic below). What’s in the middle of the two are known as center cut pork steaks:
Some grocers slice the entire Butt and that’s referred to as whole butt sliced into pork steaks and usually offered at a lower retail price since the end pieces are included.
Finally we have view of what the end product looks like before wrapping, pricing, and offering for sale in the display case – small roast on the upper left, finger ribs on the upper right and center cut pork steaks down the middle:
Hopefully you’ll be able to take this information to your local butcher and obtain pork steaks in your area.
Now for the Reverse Seared Pork Steaks:
So, I lost the chip that had the original pics of me making reverse seared pork steaks. In order to show you how this is done I had to bite the bullet and make pork steaks again. The things I subject myself to in order to help my fellow Grillin Fools make great BBQ!!!
I started with two fairly thick pork steaks. I don’t recommend trying this method with thin pork steaks as you can dry them out.
Here are the bad boys ready for the grill:
All I did was add coarse salt, black pepper and white pepper. I forgot the granulated garlic in this second round so remember to dust with granulated garlic or garlic powder or use whatever rub you prefer here as it will make a great flavor crust when you sear later.
Then put them on the grill for an indirect smoke – coals and hickory on the right, pork steaks on the left. I went with the more robust hickory over my usual favorites of pear, peach or apple as I will be saucing the pork steaks and going with a milder fruit wood would get overpowered by the sauce. Click here for a lengthy list of different things you can use to smoke and what they pair the best with:
While there are a million ways to make pork steaks, many people put them right over the coals, sear them and put them off to the side to smoke them. The problem with that is that the once the outside of the meat reaches a certain temp it no longer takes on any smoke. The searing of the meat will keep it from taking much smoke flavor. That’s why I am going with this method from now on. I want that smoke flavor in the meat before I give it a sear and add a nice flavor crust. So, put the meat off to the side and let it stay there between 200-225. As you can see here, the temp is a little high, but once I lock down the vents the temp will get down to where I want it to be:
After just one hour look at how they are turning a nice golden color:
I realize that in this next pic you are seeing the pork steaks on a different grill. I needed the grill space on the larger grill for some ribs so I transferred these guys to my grill manufacturer that shall not be named. Here they are after 2 hours cooking indirect between 200-225:
And here they are after 2.5 hours. Look at how golden brown they are from all the smoke they have taken on:
Now it’s time for that sear. I stoked up the fire to have enough heat to put on a flavor crust. Put the pork steaks right over the hot coals for a couple minutes on each side to give it a nice char: 
After you sear each side of the pork steaks, pull them off the heat so they don’t burn or dry out and slather with your favorite sauce. This is a new sauce dad picked up in Dauphin Island called Richee’s which can be ordered here. It’s a tweener between a tomato based and mustard based sauce. It’s pretty original and really good:
Here are the pork steaks pulled to the side with no heat and slathered with Richee’s:
I slathered them a couple more times over the next 30 minutes and allowed the sauce to thicken up and caramelize before I plated one of them:
Let’s see if I recreated the magic of the first time I tried this method:
Smoke ring? Check.
Juicy? Check.
Tender? Check.
Multiple levels of flavor from the seared flavor crust, the penetrated smoke flavor and the barbecue sauce? Check.
As a coworker said who tried the first batch said, “The flavors just keep going and going.”
This is now my go to method for making pork steaks. Try it and I bet it becomes yours too.
Also, you can follow the Grillin Fools on Facebook and/or keep up with us on Twitter@GrillinFool (no S).
Outside of the Midwest, they aren’t well known and retail grocers do not offer this particularly tasty cut of pork. You can obtain them most everywhere if your local purveyor handles whole Boston butt or pork butt roast or any of the myriad of other names such as the pork shoulder butt shown below:
Pork steaks are also known as blade steaks and simply put, pork steaks are merely a sliced Boston pork butt.
I visited a local grocery store where the head meat-cutter, Mike, agreed to assist in illustrating how pork steaks are cut:
This is what the whole butt looks like prior to Mike performing his craft with this tasty cut:
Mike trims the end and any excess fat to fit the steaks to the tray used to sell:
The Boston butt is sliced into steaks (usually ½” to 1 1/4” thickness) on the saw:
Mike does not slice the whole butt into pork steaks. He saves a portion of one end to sell as a small roast (the back of the pic below) and sells the small end pieces as finger ribs which Mike thinks are the tastiest part, (the front of the pic below). What’s in the middle of the two are known as center cut pork steaks:
Some grocers slice the entire Butt and that’s referred to as whole butt sliced into pork steaks and usually offered at a lower retail price since the end pieces are included.
Finally we have view of what the end product looks like before wrapping, pricing, and offering for sale in the display case – small roast on the upper left, finger ribs on the upper right and center cut pork steaks down the middle:
Hopefully you’ll be able to take this information to your local butcher and obtain pork steaks in your area.
Now for the Reverse Seared Pork Steaks:
So, I lost the chip that had the original pics of me making reverse seared pork steaks. In order to show you how this is done I had to bite the bullet and make pork steaks again. The things I subject myself to in order to help my fellow Grillin Fools make great BBQ!!!
I started with two fairly thick pork steaks. I don’t recommend trying this method with thin pork steaks as you can dry them out.
Here are the bad boys ready for the grill:
All I did was add coarse salt, black pepper and white pepper. I forgot the granulated garlic in this second round so remember to dust with granulated garlic or garlic powder or use whatever rub you prefer here as it will make a great flavor crust when you sear later.
Then put them on the grill for an indirect smoke – coals and hickory on the right, pork steaks on the left. I went with the more robust hickory over my usual favorites of pear, peach or apple as I will be saucing the pork steaks and going with a milder fruit wood would get overpowered by the sauce. Click here for a lengthy list of different things you can use to smoke and what they pair the best with:
While there are a million ways to make pork steaks, many people put them right over the coals, sear them and put them off to the side to smoke them. The problem with that is that the once the outside of the meat reaches a certain temp it no longer takes on any smoke. The searing of the meat will keep it from taking much smoke flavor. That’s why I am going with this method from now on. I want that smoke flavor in the meat before I give it a sear and add a nice flavor crust. So, put the meat off to the side and let it stay there between 200-225. As you can see here, the temp is a little high, but once I lock down the vents the temp will get down to where I want it to be:
After just one hour look at how they are turning a nice golden color:
I realize that in this next pic you are seeing the pork steaks on a different grill. I needed the grill space on the larger grill for some ribs so I transferred these guys to my grill manufacturer that shall not be named. Here they are after 2 hours cooking indirect between 200-225:
And here they are after 2.5 hours. Look at how golden brown they are from all the smoke they have taken on:
Now it’s time for that sear. I stoked up the fire to have enough heat to put on a flavor crust. Put the pork steaks right over the hot coals for a couple minutes on each side to give it a nice char:
After you sear each side of the pork steaks, pull them off the heat so they don’t burn or dry out and slather with your favorite sauce. This is a new sauce dad picked up in Dauphin Island called Richee’s which can be ordered here. It’s a tweener between a tomato based and mustard based sauce. It’s pretty original and really good:
Here are the pork steaks pulled to the side with no heat and slathered with Richee’s:
I slathered them a couple more times over the next 30 minutes and allowed the sauce to thicken up and caramelize before I plated one of them:
Let’s see if I recreated the magic of the first time I tried this method:
Smoke ring? Check.
Juicy? Check.
Tender? Check.
Multiple levels of flavor from the seared flavor crust, the penetrated smoke flavor and the barbecue sauce? Check.
As a coworker said who tried the first batch said, “The flavors just keep going and going.”
This is now my go to method for making pork steaks. Try it and I bet it becomes yours too.
Also, you can follow the Grillin Fools on Facebook and/or keep up with us on Twitter@GrillinFool (no S).
