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This is a very large, flavourful, juicy steak cut from the short loin and sold with a T-shaped bone in it. To be called a Porterhouse Steak, it has to have a portion of the Tenderloin in it no smaller than 1 1/4 inches (3 cm) in diameter. This Tenderloin portion in it is actually a Filet Mignon.

If you remove the Filet Mignon piece at home, you basically have a T-Bone steak. Remove the T-bone, and you have a generously sized strip loin steak. How the Porterhouse cut differs from a T-Bone steak is in the size of the Filet Mignon attached to it: a T-Bone will only have a piece of tenderloin in it from 1/2 to 1 1/4 inches (1 to 3 cm) in size.

The steaks are anywhere from 1 1/4 to 3 inches thick (3 to 7.5 cm.) Get one on the thinner side if you want to pan fry it.

The Porterhouse is the steak that many beef aficionados prefer over filet mignons.

In Canada, the government food agent (CFIA) has recently confused matters by saying that a Porterhouse steak may be referred to as a T-Bone steak, which as you can see from above, it is not.

Cooking Tips
Barbeque, grill, broil or pan fry.

Literature & Lore
The much-repeated story is that its name comes from 19th century English coach houses, where these cuts of steak were as popular as the porter they served to go with them. This sounds a little too pat, and is slightly unrealistic if you compare the miserly portions of food in British restaurants with the size of this steak, never mind the cost of the meat with the wages back then, but it is known that it was being served under this name in 1814 in New York City by an innkeeper named Martin Morrison.

"A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place." -- Mark Twain, while touring Europe in 1878.

Also called:

See Also:

Beef Steaks, Steak

Other entries for:

Beef Short Loin
Beef Tenderloin, Club Steak, Delmonico Steak, Porterhouse Steak, Shell Roast, Strip Loin Steak, T-Bone Steak

Other entries for:

Beef
Baron of Beef, Beef Brawn, Beef Brisket, Beef Chuck, Beef Cuts Illustrated -- North American, Beef Flank, Beef Leg, Beef Plate, Beef Rib, Beef Roasts, Beef Round, Beef Shank, Beef Sirloin, Beef Steaks, Braising Beef, Bresaola, Chianina Beef, Chipped Beef, Ground Beef, Kobe Beef, London Broil, Montreal Smoked Meat, Oxtail Brawn, Oxtails, Pastrami, Pork, Pot Roasts, Salisbury Steak, Steamship Round, Stewing Beef, Wadschinken, Wagyu Beef

Other entries for:

Meat
Affettati, Buffalo, Cap On / Cap Off, Game, Goat, Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications, Minced Meat, Offal, Paillards, Potted Meats, Poultry, Roasts, Sausages, Sheep, Steak, Veal, Venison, Yak