The Ideal Temperature For Cooking Steak Tips

Steak tips, the small pieces of meat that are often cut from the sirloin and are especially popular in New England, require a specific cooking temperature. Like all cuts of steak, the right cooking temperature is essential to reach your desired internal doneness, but it's easy to get it wrong with steak tips because they're much smaller compared to a filet mignon or chuck roast. No matter how you plan to serve the end result, if the meat is undercooked or overcooked, it will have a tough or chewy texture.

You can cook steak tips in the oven, on the stovetop, or as part of a kebab with vegetables thrown on the grill, just keep in mind that the cooking method determines the temperature. For steak tips cooked on the stovetop, take inspiration from our maple bourbon steak tips from Tasting Table recipe developer Chanel Murphy-Lowe  and aim for a medium-high heat. If your tips are headed for the oven, set the temperature to 425 degrees Fahrenheit so the steak has time to cook without getting dry. And to make them on the grill, go for a medium-high setting somewhere between 450 and 500 degrees Fahrenheit to give the tips a nice char and to prevent overdone meat.

Adjust the cooking time to reach your desired doneness. To be clear, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends a minimum internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit for any cut of beef. However, you might want a lower temperature depending on how rare you like your steak. "The ranges are 130 to 135 degrees Fahrenheit for medium rare, 140 to 145 Fahrenheit for medium, and 150 to 155 Fahrenheit for medium well," Murphy-Lowe explains. Some consider steak tips to be too tough to eat rare, so aim for medium to medium rare like she suggests for this cut.

In both the Murphy-Lowe recipe and this New England-style beef steak tips recipe from developer Michelle McGlinn, it takes 4 to 6 minutes per side on the stovetop — don't forget to rotate the steak tips. The grill is a bit faster, so expect 2 to 3 minutes on each side, whereas the slower cooking method of the oven can take up to 25 minutes to finish off steak tips depending on the desired doneness. The right temperature is just one component of cooking this cut of meat; there are other rules to remember when cooking steak tips, starting with buying them from a butcher in order to get the best quality.