How to Grill a Flat Iron Steak (and What to Do With It After)

Grilled flat iron steak sliced over a blue cheese salad with tomatoes and a champagne vinaigrette
The whole point: sliced flat iron over a crunchy blue cheese salad. There is more blue cheese available than pictured, and you should use it.
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Let me make the case for the flat iron, because somebody has to. It’s a shoulder cut (the top blade, off the chuck), which means it comes from the part of the cow nobody writes poems about, and it costs a fraction of what the glamour cuts run. But pound for pound, I think it’s one of the best steaks you can put over a fire. It’s nearly as tender as a filet, and unlike a filet it actually tastes like something. I’ll say the quiet part out loud, y’all: I would take a good flat iron over a tenderloin most nights of the week, and I’d spend the difference on more steak.

It also happens to be one of the easiest steaks in the world to cook well, as long as you do two things: dry it out, and cook it hot and fast. That is the whole game. Everything below is just those two ideas with details attached.

Here’s the part folks skip, and it’s the part that matters most. A wet steak steams; a dry steak sears. So a couple of hours ahead (the night before is even better), you pat the steak bone-dry, salt it well on both sides, and set it on a couple of paper towels on a sheet pan, uncovered, in the fridge. Then you leave it alone and let it dry out completely. The salt works its way in, and the surface turns tacky and then dry. That tacky layer has a name, by the way: it’s a pellicle, a thin skin of protein that forms on meat as it air-dries, and it’s exactly what gives you a hard, dark, searable crust on the grill instead of a grey, weepy one. Two hours is good; longer is better. (It is also a fine excuse to get the steak handled early and pour yourself something while you wait. I’m just saying the timeline allows it.)

Two raw flat iron steaks salted and drying on paper towels on a sheet pan, beside a salt cellar
The step everybody skips and nobody photographs: salted and drying in the fridge, so it sears instead of steams.

When you’re ready, light the grill and let it get genuinely, alarmingly hot. I run my Kamado Joe up to 550 or 600, lid down, until the grate is scorching. You are not being cautious here. You want the kind of heat that makes you briefly reconsider your eyebrows.

Lay the steak down and then leave it be. Two to three minutes, no poking, no peeking, no lifting the corner to look; let the crust set. Flip it once and give it another two to three on the other side. That’s it. For a flat iron this size I go closer to two minutes a side for medium-rare and closer to three for medium. It’s a thin, forgiving cut, which also means the gap between just-right and overdone is about ninety seconds of inattention, so stay close. Pull it before you think it’s ready, because the next step keeps cooking it.

Two flat iron steaks searing on a scorching grill grate over open flame
550 to 600 degrees, two to three minutes a side, and then rest.

Then rest it. I mean really rest it: ten to fifteen minutes on a board before you so much as pick up a knife. I know everybody says this and I know you’re hungry. Do it anyway. Cut in early and all that juice you worked for runs out onto the cutting board, and now you’re eating a good steak that’s drier than it should be and wondering where it went sideways. It went sideways because you were impatient. Fifteen minutes. Go set the table.

What I actually do with a flat iron, nine times out of ten, is build a steak and blue cheese salad around it. It’s one of those dinners that manages to feel virtuous and indulgent at the same time, and is honestly mostly a delivery system for the blue cheese.

Print Recipe

Grilled Flat Iron Steak and Blue Cheese Salad

Prep Time2 hours 55 minutes
Cook Time5 minutes
Rest Time15 minutes
Course: Main Course, Salad
Cuisine: American
Servings: 2

Ingredients

Steak

  • 2 lb flat iron steak about 1½ to 2 lb
  • Kosher salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper

Salad

  • Crunchy greens romaine, leaf lettuce, anything with a spine, torn
  • A couple of handfuls of shredded cabbage a little red and a little green, for color
  • 1 large Ripe tomatoe cut into wedges (garden or good farmers’-market if you’ve got them)
  • Blue cheese crumbled, as much as your conscience allows (Rogue Creamery, out of Oregon, is one of my favorites)
  • A vinaigrette of your choosing this was a champagne vinaigrette
  • Kosher salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

  • At least a couple of hours ahead, pat the steak dry, salt both sides, and set it on paper towels on a sheet pan, uncovered, in the fridge. Let it dry out completely. 2 hours minimum, up to overnight if you want.
  • Light the grill and bring it up to 550–600°F. You want it scorching.
  • Grill the steak 2–3 minutes per side (closer to 2 for medium-rare, closer to 3 for medium). Rest it 10–15 minutes, then slice against the grain.
  • While it rests, build the salad: greens and cabbage piled in a wide bowl.
  • Right before serving (and not one minute sooner), toss the greens with the vinaigrette.
  • Arrange the salad on a plate, Lay the tomato wedges around the edge and hit them with salt and a lot of black pepper. Scatter the blue cheese over the top.
  • Thinly slice the steak against the grain. Pile the sliced steak on top of the salad. Eat immediately.

Notes

● Dress at the last second. Dress it early and the greens go limp and you have thrown away the crunch that is the whole point.
● Slice against the grain. A flat iron has an obvious grain running through it; cut across it, never with it, or it chews tougher than it should.
● On the blue cheese: the amount is strictly between you and your conscience. (More is better.)
● Leftovers are the secret second dinner: cold sliced steak the next day on a crusty roll with spicy mustard and a garlicky pickle spear on the side.

P.S. Yes, I dry-brined a steak and described it as a head start on a cocktail. Both things can be true.

P.P.S. The vinaigrette was a champagne one that happened to be on sale at Whole Foods, which I mention only so you know I am not above a sale, and neither should you be.

P.P.P.S. If you set this salad in front of someone and they ask for “just a little” blue cheese, by all means respect their wishes, and then quietly add a bit more anyway.