T-bone Steak

T-bone Steak

The T-bone and porterhouse are steaks of beef cut from the short loin, consisting of a T-shaped bone with meat on each side: the larger is a strip steak and the smaller a tenderloin steak. Porterhouse steaks are cut from the rear end of the short loin and include more tenderloin, while T-bone steaks are cut from farther forward and contain less.

There is little agreement among experts on how large the tenderloin must be to call a T-bone steak a porterhouse; steaks with a large tenderloin are often called a T-bone in restaurants and steakhouses. The US Department of Agriculture's Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications state that the tenderloin of a porterhouse must be at least 1.25 inches (32 mm) thick at its widest, while that of a T-bone must be at least 0.5 inches (13 mm).

Due to their large size and the fact that 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 due to their larger tenderloin.

In the United States, the T-bone has the meat-cutting classification IMPS 1174; the porterhouse is IMPS 1173.

In British usage, followed in Commonwealth countries (except Canada), porterhouse refers to the strip steak side of a T-bone steak, while the tenderloin side is called the fillet.