How to Cook Porterhouse Steak Perfectly

Most guides on how to cook porterhouse steak are written for the American cut, which is a large bone-in steak with the fillet still attached.

An Australian porterhouse is a different animal: a boneless striploin steak, usually 250g to 400g, with a fat cap running along one edge. It cooks in minutes, not in an oven.

This guide gives you the pan method, the barbecue method, cooking times by thickness, internal temperatures and the resting rule that decides whether the steak is any good.

Australian Porterhouse Is Not American Porterhouse

In Australia, porterhouse means a boneless striploin steak, the same cut sold as sirloin, striploin or New York strip, while in the United States a porterhouse is a bone-in steak carrying both the striploin and the tenderloin.

The difference matters because it changes the method entirely. An American porterhouse can weigh 700g or more and holds two muscles that cook at different rates, so it needs indirect heat and time. An Australian porterhouse is a single muscle, typically 2cm to 3cm thick, and wants nothing more than a very hot pan and a few minutes.

If you follow an American recipe on an Australian steak, you will overshoot. That is the single most common reason a good porterhouse comes out grey. The cut you are holding is closer to what an American cook would call a New York strip, and the closest Australian equivalent to the American porterhouse is a T-bone.

For the full picture on where the cut sits and how it eats, see our guide to porterhouse steak.

How Long to Cook Porterhouse Steak

For a 2.5cm Australian porterhouse, render the fat edge for 60 to 90 seconds, then sear 2 to 3 minutes per side in a very hot pan and rest for 5 minutes, which lands it at 52C for medium rare.

Thickness, not weight, sets the timing. Two steaks of the same weight cut to different thicknesses need different treatment, so measure the steak rather than reading the label. The times below assume a pan or grill plate that is properly hot, and a steak that has been out of the fridge for 30 minutes.

Our meat cooking times and conversion tables carry the same figures for other cuts.

How to Cook Porterhouse Steak in a Pan

Render the fat edge first, then sear the flat sides, and finish with butter in the last minute. A heavy cast iron or stainless pan holds heat far better than non-stick and is the only real requirement.

1. Take the steak out of the fridge 30 minutes ahead. Pat it completely dry and salt both sides generously.
2. Heat the pan until a drop of water skitters across it. Add a neutral oil with a high smoke point.
3. Stand the steak on its fat edge, holding it with tongs, and render for 60 to 90 seconds until the fat is golden and has left a slick in the pan.
4. Lay it flat and sear for 2 to 3 minutes without moving it. Turn once and repeat.
5. Add a knob of butter, a crushed garlic clove and thyme in the final minute, tilt the pan and spoon the foaming butter over the steak.
6. Move it to a warm plate or board and rest for 5 minutes.

Rendering the fat edge is the step almost every recipe skips, and it is the one that separates a good porterhouse from a flat one. The fat cap will not soften in two minutes lying flat, so it either gets its own time upright or it arrives at the table chewy.

How to Cook Porterhouse Steak on the BBQ

Set the barbecue up with a hot zone and a cooler zone, sear over direct heat, then move the steak across if it needs longer.

Get the grill plate genuinely hot before the steak goes anywhere near it, which usually means ten minutes with the lid down. Oil the steak rather than the plate, so the oil does not burn off before the meat lands. Sear 2 to 3 minutes per side over the hot zone, turning once, and resist pressing down on it.

The fat edge needs the same treatment it gets in a pan. Stand the steak up against the grill bars or lean it against a cooler steak for a minute so the cap renders rather than dripping straight onto the flame. If flare-ups start, move the steak to the cooler zone and let them die down before returning it.

For a wider look at which cuts suit the grill, see our guide to the best steak for a BBQ.

Reverse Sear, and When It Is Worth It

Reverse searing is worth the extra time on a porterhouse thicker than about 4cm, and unnecessary on anything under 3cm.

The method is simple. Put the steak on a rack in a 120C oven until the centre reads 42C, which takes 25 to 40 minutes depending on thickness. Rest it for five minutes, then sear it in a screaming hot pan for 60 to 90 seconds per side. The slow start cooks the meat evenly all the way through, so you avoid the grey band that forms under the crust with a straight sear.

On a 2.5cm steak the payoff is small and the effort is real. On a thick-cut porterhouse, or a whole striploin you have portioned into 4cm steaks yourself, it is the difference between an even pink centre and a steak that is medium at the edges and rare in the middle.

Resting, Slicing and the Mistakes to Avoid

Rest a porterhouse for 5 minutes on a warm plate, then slice it across the grain at about 1cm thick, or serve it whole.

A steak keeps cooking after it leaves the heat, though far less than a roast does. Expect around 3C of carryover, which is why the table above takes the steak off below its final target. Rest it uncovered or under a loose sheet of foil, never wrapped tightly, or the crust you just built goes soft.

These are the five things that go wrong most often:

• Cooking it straight from the fridge. A cold centre forces you to overcook the outside.
• A pan that is not hot enough. The steak stews and greys instead of browning.
• Skipping the fat edge. The cap stays chewy and the pan misses the fat it should be cooking in.
• Turning it repeatedly. One turn builds a better crust than five.
• Cooking past medium. Porterhouse is lean compared with scotch fillet and dries out quickly beyond 58C.

Our full guide to resting beef explains how the timing changes across cuts.

Buying Porterhouse in Australia

Ask your butcher for steaks cut at 2.5cm to 3cm, and buy the whole striploin if you want the best price per kilo.

Thickness is the specification that matters most and the one supermarkets get wrong. A 2cm steak gives you almost no window between rare and medium, while a 3cm steak is forgiving and takes a proper crust. Buying a whole striploin and cutting your own steaks solves this permanently, and it is cheaper.

At Cost Cut Meats, whole porterhouse striploin runs from around $32/kg for the AMG grass-fed Angus to $40/kg for the Southern Ranges grass-fed and finished. Look for a clean, even fat cap of roughly 5mm to 10mm and a fine, tight grain. MSA grading gives you a reliable floor on eating quality, and marble score tells you how much intramuscular fat to expect. You can see the current range in the porterhouse collection, and if you want a full meal built around it, try our porterhouse steak with roast vegetable salad.

Conclusion

Cooking porterhouse well comes down to three things: know you are cooking the Australian cut, render the fat edge before the flat sides, and take the steak off the heat below its final temperature. Buy it thick and the rest looks after itself. See the current porterhouse range.