What Is The Perfect Number Of Times To Flip A Steak On The Grill?

While cooking dinner in a crockpot or oven can be pretty hands off, grilling requires a lot more involvement. However, it's possible to get too involved with your meat while it's grilling, at least according to chef K.C. Gulbro, who runs both Copper Fox and FoxFire in Illinois. This veteran restaurateur is a proponent of minimal flipping while grilling a steak.

As Gulbro notes, there's some truth to the steak myth that flipping the meat too many times will result in a loss of juices, leaving it dry and overcooked. To play it safe, he turns a steak once, then flips it, then turns it again. "The outcome," he explains, "is an evenly cooked steak with more control" and one where the juices stay inside where they belong. 

If you have itchy flipping fingers, you could always throw some vegetables on the grill to cook alongside the steak. Since these are likely to be much cheaper than beef, you can flip them to your heart's content while minimizing targeting the main course.

While grilling may be a relatively easy way to cook, it's not without hazards. After all, there's an open flame right there. This means that whether or not over-flipping your steak really affects its flavor, there's a safety-based reason for avoiding the practice. As K.C. Gulbro cautions, "Flipping the steak continually may cause a flare-up."

Flare-ups happen when the fat hits the fire. (Kind of like when the you-know-what hits the fan, only less messy and potentially more dangerous.) These are most likely to happen when you first put the steak on the grill, and again when you turn it over. The more you flip, the more chances you create for flare-ups to occur. If your flare-up is severe, you may need to cover the grill until the fire dies down in order to avoid endangering the lawn or any innocent bystanders. Even if it's not so bad, those dancing flames that look so enticing in a steakhouse commercial can cause what Gulbro calls "unwanted charring."

One truism about cooking advice (or just about any advice) is that no matter how many experts recommend X, there will be numerous others who insist upon Y. This means that yes, there are those who swear by flipping their steaks multiple times when they grill. In fact, there's even an acronym for it: the JKF method, which stands for "just keep flipping" and is pretty self-explanatory.

Grill masters who advocate for the JKF method feel that flipping a steak every 20 to 30 seconds (or even more frequently for a fatty steak like ribeye) creates the best crust since this allows the outside to be exposed to high heat without drying out the inside, as is the case with more stationary steaks. Constant flipping, it seems, keeps the meat pink and tender under that amazing crust. It also allows the steak to cook more quickly, with multiple flips reducing the cooking time by about 30%. Still, there is that increased possibility of flare-ups, so if you opt to give your steak more air time, keep the grill lid — and maybe a fire extinguisher — handy at all times, especially if you're grilling on your balcony.