How to store your steaks

What's the best way to store a steak for maximum taste and tenderness? Our grill experts round up the results in their steak storage experiment.

It’s Thursday and you’ve bought some fine-looking steaks en route to the cottage, but you won’t be grilling until Monday. How can you keep them in peak condition? We started with five strip loins, cut to the same size from the same animal. After four days in storage, we grilled – weighing before and after – and taste-tested the steaks.

Steak 1 Four days in the coldest part of the fridge, in a vac-pac.
Many butchers can vacuum-seal fresh meat in a heavy plastic shroud – perfect for freezing and great for the fridge. This steak did best, with half of our six judges picking it as their favourite (and another wavering between this and Steak 2).

Steak 2 Four days in the coldest part of the fridge, wrapped in butcher wrap. The easiest storage method, it produced very good results. Four judges ranked it either first or second best, giving it high marks for flavour and appearance. Losing the least weight in cooking – only 11 per cent – suggests it also held its moisture best.

Steak 3 Frozen for three days, in a vac-pac, thawed in the fridge.
This steak fell in the middle of the taste test and the weigh-in. Judges ranked it from second to fourth favourite and, like steaks 1 and 4, it lost about 25 per cent of its weight in cooking.

Steak 4 Frozen for four days, in a vac-pac, thawed in the microwave.
Nuking partly cooked its edges, making this steak impossible to grill evenly. Most of the judges dissed it, with two ranking it last. They described it as “grainy,” with “barely acceptable moistness and tenderness,” although one judge, who had a less overcooked piece from the centre, liked it a lot.

Steak 5 Frozen for four days, in a vac-pac, put on the grill frozen.
The Beef Information Centre suggests that frozen beef can be cooked without thawing (with about 50 per cent more grilling time), but this method left our judges cold. Four of six reckoned this their least favourite steak, strongly criticizing its appearance. Losing almost a third of its weight, it also took low marks for moistness.

The Results

For four days or less, don’t bother freezing steaks. Like any other meat, thaw frozen steaks slowly in the fridge. Microwave thawing or frozen grilling only proves that haste, indeed, makes waste. Nasty, grey, unevenly cooked waste.

—Martin Zibauer