The Best Method For Making Steak Tips To Avoid Overcooking Your Meat

Steak tips are a fantastic weeknight option for a satisfying serving of beef, but despite their humble nature they aren't always the easiest to cook. As bite-sized hunks of beef that can be skewered for kabobs, steak tips are popular in New England as a budget-friendly option for grilling. While steak tips can technically be any cut of steak prepared that way, the classic style refers to the sirloin tip, which is also called a bavette, or sirloin flap. Coming from the bottom of the sirloin it's a tender but pretty lean cut of meat. That means it's prone to drying out quickly, and even more so when cut into smaller steak tips. So to find out how to avoid overcooking our meat, Tasting Table reached out to an expert, Michael Taus, the chef at La Grande Boucherie, to find out his go-to methods for making steak tips.

For Taus, the way to the best steak tips was clear but simple. He told us that to keep them juicy you want to "Use a marinade to enhance flavor and maintain moisture." While steaks are normally best with a longer marinade of up to 12 hours, the smaller size of steak tips means just a few hours will really help with their texture and flavor. After that you have some options on how to cook them, but no matter what your method, Taus says, "Cook them quickly over high heat, whether on the grill or in a hot pan."

While you don't want to overcook steak tips, they also have an unusual texture that means you don't want to undercook them too much either. Rare sirloin tips tend to be excessively mushy and unpleasant, so you want to aim for a sweet spot in the middle. Michael Taus recommends being very precise, and told us, "Monitor the internal temperature with a meat thermometer for precision — aim for medium-rare to medium." But don't worry about your medium steak being too tough. Steak tips are high in collagen, which doesn't start to melt until it hits 130 degrees Fahrenheit, so tips cooked to a medium range of 130 to 135 will actually be more tender than those cooked below that.

After your steak tips are cooked, Taus has a few more tips to ensure they are as tender as possible. First he says, "let the steak rest after cooking to allow the juices to redistribute." This happens because the meat relaxes as it cools, allowing the cells to reabsorb more liquid. For steak tips around one inch thick, this should happen in about five to seven minutes. Finally Taus says to make sure to "always slice against the grain for tenderness," which is good advice for any steak. While each step here is important to remember, none are that hard to follow, so those perfect steak tips should never be out of your reach.