When you see a commercial for steak or a grill that shows a piece of meat with perfect criss-cross grill marks, you probably start salivating on the spot.
However, grill marks are a sham, and you shouldn’t fall for them this summer! Though it might make your food look better, it won’t ultimately taste better, which is really what matters.
To achieve the perfect grill marks on something like steak, chicken, pork, or more, you tend to move them around a few times for the black marks to stay.
But when you do that, you’re losing valuable flavor. The whole idea when you grill a steak is to sear it so a chemical reaction happens inside the meat, browning it and making it more flavorful. When you move the meat around, you lose that.
The only exception to this really is for pieces of meat that are either thinly cut, or small animals like shrimp and vegetables. If you don’t move these ingredients around, thereby creating grill marks, you run the risk of over-cooking and drying them out.
But if you’re throwing a fat steak on the grill for dinner, leave it be and watch how just by not fussing with it, the flavor enhances immensely.
