It’s alluringly juicy, with a tender yet resilient chew. It excels in just about any preparation, from grilling to stir-frying to searing. It’s also remarkably beefy-tasting. In fact, this cut is so flavorful that it’s our go-to (in combination with boneless short ribs) for grinding into burger meat for the ultimate patties.
If you’re a Northeasterner like me, you know this all-purpose cut as “steak tips” or “flap meat.” In other regions, you may know it as “bavette steak.”
Until the 1980s, butchers looked at flap meat as a sort of throwaway cut that could be turned into stew meat or ground beef but not much else. Over time, ever-thrifty and resourceful New Englanders realized that flap meat had much more potential than they’d given it credit for, so they cut it into substantial chunks and assigned it the “steak tips” moniker. Today, steak tips are a mainstay of casual Yankee cooking.
What Are Steak Tips?
Steak tips—a cut with deep beefy flavor and a distinctive loose longitudinal grain—can be packaged as whole steaks, cubes, or strips. Steak tips are cut from sirloin flap meat, the area on the bottom sirloin of the cow near the flank. A whole piece of flap meat weighs about 2½ pounds, ranges in thickness from ½ inch to 1½ inches, and is less expensive than top-tier steaks such as strip or rib-eye.
How to Tell If You’re Buying Steak Tips
Steak tips can be packaged whole or in pieces, but it’s best to buy this cut whole so you can cut it exactly as you like. Since nomenclature is haphazard—depending on what region of the country you live in, steak tips may be labeled as flap meat, sirloin steak tips, tip steak, or bavette steak —you must visually identify this cut.
How can you be sure that what you’re buying is steak tips?
The easiest way is to look at the grain of the meat; buying it whole makes this easy. Steak tips have a distinctive large, coarse grain that is easy to pick out from other cuts of beef, which tend to have a finer, tighter grain. If you’re still unsure, ask your butcher.
Why You Shouldn’t Undercook Steak Tips
Since collagen can make meat tough, a collagen-rich cut likesteak tips should be cooked to medium(130 degrees) rather than the 125 degrees for medium-rare that we prefer for steaks like rib eye, which have less collagen. A higher temperature actually makes the steak tips easier to chew—interestingly, for the very same reason that raw meat tends to just squish under a knife.
That reason lies on the microscopic level. A steak’s muscle consists of thousands of long, sturdy parallel bundles of fiber, visible as the meat’s grain. When meat is raw, these fibers are surrounded by a watery fluid that allows them freedom to move a bit. And when pressed by a knife (or tooth), they can slide out of the way, easing back when pressure is released. That elasticity makes it tough to cut raw meat.
But when meat is cooked above 120 degrees, proteins in the fluid start to coagulate into a gel that becomes more and more firm as the temperature rises. The firm gel effectively glues the fibers in place, so when you try to cut (or bite) through them, they’re easier to sever.This will make any cut more tender, but for steaks such as rib eye, it’s not necessary to cook them to a higher temperature to firm the gel since their texture is already tender enough.
**In sum, be sure to cook steak tips to 130 degrees to ensure supple, tender meat. And to maximize tenderness, be sure to cut the meat thin against the grain.**
Best Ways to Cook Steak Tips
Steak tips are an extremely versatile cut. Sliced thin, they cook up quickly in stir-fries and sautés. Their rich beefy taste also makes them a prime candidate for grinding into burgers.
Cut into meaty chunks, the coarse fibers of steak tips make them ideal for marinating and grilling, since their deep crevices hold on to liquids and trap ingredients such as minced garlic or ginger so that they don’t burn over the hot coals.
Steak Tip Recipes
Here are a few of our favorite recipes for this all-purpose cut.
Crispy Orange Beef
Best Old-Fashioned Burger
Grilled Beef Teriyaki
Shaking Beef
Steak Tips with Mushroom Onion Gravy
Beef and Vegetable Soup
Grilled Beef Kebabs
