Porterhouses, T-Bones, and New Yorks, Oh my!

Porterhouses, T-Bones, and New Yorks. All of these are cuts of meat we hear ALL THE TIME. But even though they are different types of steaks, did you know that they all come from the same cut!?

Fun Meat Fact #1: Whether you are cutting t-bones and porterhouses or new yorks, they all come off of what’s known as the primal cut, short loin. The short loin comes from where else but the loin part of beef. These muscles of the beef aren’t worked too hard which means the meat in this area is tender.

When we break our carcass beef, we take off the short loin with the sirloin attached. When it comes off the beef, it looks like this.

What you’re seeing here is the sirloin with the short loin trailing into the background of the photo. We then take and break the sirloin off of the short loin.

Once the short loin is broken from the sirloin, it looks like this:

The short loin contains part of the tenderloin and if you look at the diagram above it sits in between the rib section of the beef, actually containing the beef’s 13th rib, and the sirloin section. This photo is showing us the sirloin side which contains porterhouse steaks. So what is the difference?

Fun Meat Fact #2: Porterhouse steaks sit along the part of the short loin that sits next to the sirloin, they also contain a large part of the tenderloin. This is the difference between a porterhouse and a t-bone, t-bone steaks do not contain a large part of the tenderloin. The difference between a porterhouse and a new york is that if you were to take the bone out, and separate out the two, you”d have a new york steak and a filet steak.

So in all actuality, when you decide to have t-bones and porterhouses cut on your beef, you are losing some of your filet steaks because they will be left on the porterhouses. It’s also important to note, that we do not differentiate between porterhouses and t-bones on our custom beef, they will all be labeled t-bones. So it’s up to you to have the knowledge to figure out which ones are porterhouses and which ones are t-bones. 😉

Fun Meat Fact #3: T-bone steaks sit along the part of the short loin that sits next to the rib. Actually, your first cut into the short loin from the rib side could TECHNICALLY be a rib steak, there isn’t much difference. T-bone steaks are cut bone-in, which seems like a no brainer due to the name but you’d be surprised what people don’t know sometimes. And just like a porterhouse, if you were to take the bone out, you’d have a new york steak. Although with a t-bone, there would be no filet steak to take off. Or very little. Sometimes a t-bone can contain a small part of the tail end of the filet which can be seen in the photo above as well as the diagram in the first photo. The tenderloin tapers off as you go further towards the rib end of the beef. T-bones are named due to the bone that makes up the steak, it is shaped like a “T” which you can see in the photo above.

Fun Meat Fact #4: If you were to take the short loin and bone it out, you would have a new york strip as well as a whole tenderloin. The new york strip when cut up into steaks are you got it, new york steaks. As you can see in the first photo, the tenderloin has been pulled off and the bones (that make up that t-bone shape) are being removed. The strip is then simply cut up into steaks. Since the tenderloin is pulled off as a whole piece, you net more filet steaks this way (because they aren’t being cut up attached to the porterhouses). At our shop we call them new york steaks, but in all actuality, this strip of meat can be called by many names: Ambassador Steak, Boneless Club Steak, Hotel Style Steak, Kansas City Steak, New York Strip Steak, Strip Loin Steak.

So there you have it. Porterhouses, T-Bones, and New Yorks, Oh my! Happy Friday everyone! Now go eat some steak and while you’re at it thank a farmer or a rancher (or a butcher!) 😉