The T-bone and porterhouse are

steak A steak is a cut of meat sliced across muscle fibers, sometimes including a bone. It is normally Grilling, grilled or Pan frying, fried, and can be diced or cooked in sauce. Steaks are most commonly cut from cattle (beefsteak), but can also ...

s of beef cut from the short loin (called the sirloin in

Commonwealth countries The Commonwealth of Nations, often referred to as the British Commonwealth or simply the Commonwealth, is an international association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire from which i ...

and

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

). Both steaks include a T-shaped lumbar vertebra with sections of abdominal internal oblique muscle on each side. Porterhouse steaks are cut from the rear end of the short loin and thus include more tenderloin steak, along with (on the other side of the bone) a large strip steak. T-bone steaks are cut closer to the front, and contain a smaller section of tenderloin. The smaller portion of a T-bone, when sold alone, is known as a filet mignon (called fillet steak in

and

), especially if cut from the small forward end of the tenderloin. Experts differ about how large the tenderloin must be to differentiate T-bone steak from porterhouse. The United States Department of Agriculture's ''Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications'' state that the tenderloin of a porterhouse must be at least wide at its widest, while that of a T-bone must be at least wide. Owing to their large size, and as they contain meat from two of the most prized cuts of beef (the short loin and the tenderloin), T-bone steaks are generally considered one of the highest quality steaks, and prices at steakhouses are accordingly high. Porterhouse steaks are even more highly valued owing to their larger tenderloin. In British usage, followed in the Commonwealth countries, "porterhouse" often means a British sirloin steak (i.e. US strip steak) on the bone, i.e. without the tenderloin on the other side of T-bone. Some British on-line butchers also offer American style porterhouse steaks. In New Zealand and Australia, a porterhouse is sirloin steak (strip steak in USA) off the bone. The earliest mention of the term "porterhouse steak" in a newspaper appears to have been in a letter written by Thurlow Weed that appeared in the ''

Hartford Courant The ''Hartford Courant'' is the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is advertised as the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States. A morning newspaper serving most of the state north of New Haven and ...

'' on August 9, 1843, but the following year (August 24, 1844) it also appeared in a list of food prices in The '' New York Herald'', and it appeared regularly in newspapers after that. In 2025 the Oregon Senate voted unanimously to make the T-bone the state steak of

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

. The legislation is still pending.

Anatomy of the T-bone

To cut a T-bone from butchered cattle, a lumbar vertebra is sawn in half through the

vertebral column The spinal column, also known as the vertebral column, spine or backbone, is the core part of the axial skeleton in vertebrates. The vertebral column is the defining and eponymous characteristic of the vertebrate. The spinal column is a segmente ...

. The downward prong of the 'T' is a transverse process of the vertebra, and the flesh surrounding it is the spinal

muscle Muscle is a soft tissue, one of the four basic types of animal tissue. There are three types of muscle tissue in vertebrates: skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, and smooth muscle. Muscle tissue gives skeletal muscles the ability to muscle contra ...

s. The small semicircle at the top of the 'T' is half of the vertebral foramen.

Preparation

T-bone and porterhouse steaks are suited to fast, dry heat

cooking Cooking, also known as cookery or professionally as the culinary arts, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or Food safety, safe. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from ...

methods, such as grilling or broiling. Since they contain a small amount of

collagen Collagen () is the main structural protein in the extracellular matrix of the connective tissues of many animals. It is the most abundant protein in mammals, making up 25% to 35% of protein content. Amino acids are bound together to form a trip ...

relative to other cuts, longer cooking times are not necessary to tenderize the meat. There is some contention as to whether the bone conducts heat within the meat so that it cooks more evenly and prevents meat drying out and shrinking during cooking, Delia Smithbr>Lamb
LBCbr>Cooking in the credit crunch
or the meat near the bone will cook more slowly than the rest of the steak, and the tenderloin will tend to reach the desired temperature before the strip.

''Bistecca alla fiorentina''

'' Bistecca alla fiorentina'' (), consists of a T-bone traditionally sourced from either the Chianina or Maremmana breeds of cattle. A favorite of Tuscan cuisine, the steak is grilled over a wood or charcoal fire, seasoned with salt, sometimes with black pepper, and olive oil, applied immediately after the meat is retired from the heat. Thickly cut and very large, "Bistecca" are often shared between two or more people, and traditionally served very rare, sometimes garnished with lemon wedges, if not accompanied by red wine, and accompanied by Tuscan beans as a side dish.Waverly Root, ''The Food of Italy'', 1971, .

''Cotoletta alla milanese''

The same cut of meat, but from a calf, is used for '' cotoletta alla milanese'', which consists of 1.5 cm-thick cuts which are battered in breadcrumbs and fried in clarified butter with salt.

References

External links