The Secret Ingredients That Make Texas Roadhouse Steaks Taste So Good

When you're in the mood for a meaty meal, you might head to Texas Roadhouse. The international restaurant chain regularly serves up down-home country cooking, including hearty steaks, ribs, and stacked burgers, to more than 6,000 customers per week on average at each one of its 600 global locations. That adds up to more than half a million meals served every day. And while much of the Texas Roadhouse menu is meant to cater to a carnivore's tastes, its aforementioned steaks really stand out. Not only does every outpost of the eatery have a designated butcher to hand-cut the beef, but the cuts are also expertly seasoned. If you've been wracking your brain trying to figure out the secret behind the meat's flavor, we're about to let you in on it. Drum roll, please: Two of the most important ingredients that make Texas Roadhouse's steaks taste so tasty are good ol' sugar and salt.

Per a listing for (now-unavailable) Texas Roadhouse sirloin seasoning on Amazon, the dry blend also features herbs and spices like garlic, onion, paprika, and turmeric. As any steak connoisseur will tell you, however, the combination of sugar and salt are the real stars of the show, working together to create a sweet and savory finish that elevates the meat's flavor. 

There's a big difference between adding and enhancing flavor when it comes to food, and salt is an essential ingredient if you're trying to achieve the latter. Whether we're talking sweet, sour, or umami (as in meat), the addition of salt can make pleasant flavors more pronounced while stifling unpleasant ones, like bitterness, in order to create a more balanced, better-tasting bite. Salt is also known to help tenderize meat, making it great for cooking steaks.

But, you may be thinking, why would you add sugar to beef? Well, the sweet ingredient makes for a wonderful steak seasoning for a number of reasons. First, there's the fact that sugar simply tastes good, and its sweetness can be used to contrast the robust and savory flavors of red meat, resulting in a more well-rounded taste. Second, sugar can help achieve a nice crispy sear on a steak by way of caramelization.

As for putting the two together à la Texas Roadhouse? It's a match made in steak-searing heaven. In addition to amping up the flavor, salt draws moisture from the red meat, dissolving sugar in the process. The ingredients then get reabsorbed into the steak. When tossed on the grill or stovetop, the salted and sugared steak is on its way to becoming a perfectly flavored and crusted masterpiece.