Anyone looking to prepare a meal outdoors for family, friends and co-workers might wonder about the best meat for the BBQ? We are lucky to have a published cookbook author Chef Ted Reader available to answer that question. Ted is a very experienced professional chef and media personality known as the Godfather of the Grill.
Because nothing tastes as good as meat cooked on the barbecue, especially during the summer months, Chef Ted can help us determine what we should buy and prepare the next time we shop for the occasion. He will help us deliver a quintessential BBQ experience to our diners, a taste sensation he describes like this,
There’s the smoke flavour, especially on charcoal or wood-fired barbecues, which sticks to the surface of the meat. You don’t get the same taste when you’re pan frying meat, or broiling it in an oven. As it cooks on the grill, fat drips onto burners or hot coals, sending smoke back up to flavour the meat. That contributes to its distinct grilled taste and aroma. The dry heat of grilling makes a crispy exterior which seals-in moisture when cooked properly creating a delicious contrast.
Chef Ted Reader – Image courtesy of Ted Reader
Ted has authored twenty cookbooks, including award-winners like Gastro Grilling. There’s nothing like cooking meat outside over open flames, Ted says, as he shows us the best meat cuts for the BBQ, and how to properly cook them on the barbeque, outside, all year long.
Chef Ted Reader on the Best Meat for the Barbeque
Dry-aged steak at Cumbrae’s in Toronto, July 2025. Image by Mark Keast
Best Steak for the BBQ
“Well, number one, I’m steak guy.” Ted Reader begins, “I do love steak. The problem with the industry right now is that beef is really expensive. Just a few years ago, you could get a good steak for ten bucks. Now that same steak is $35 or $40 dollars; a Tomahawk used to be $50, and now it’s $150.”
“I do love my premium beef cuts, but the problem is the premium cuts are now really premium. If you can afford it, that’s great, but of you can’t, you can still have a steak experience with a less expensive cut. Personally, my favorite steak is a bone-in New York strip steak. That’s what I love. And because you get the flavor from the bone, you get the texture, the firmness of a strip. I like it cooked anywhere between rare and medium rare.
“I like to either put my steak spice on it or just a little bit of salt and pepper. Like to cook it over hot coals and sear it. It’s a nice thick steak, something in a two inch range. And I sear it on both sides, put it to the side and close the lid and let it roast until it’s cooked.“
Which steaks are the best value for barbequing?
“When it comes to buying less expensive cuts, chuck steaks are good value. To get a good chuck steak, what you need is a good butcher. That’s the first thing when it comes to buying steak, bypass the grocery store and go direct to a butcher. Find a butcher in your neighborhood and make him your friend.”
“If you’re going to spend the money, then go to somebody that knows and understands meat better than anybody else. You go to butcher shops that are focused on retail. You’re not going to get outstanding steaks all the time at No Frills, although you can find some deals, but you have to look. So building a relationship with your butcher is important.”
“Before you see the butcher, determine what your favourite steak is. You might like a tenderloin or a strip loin or a rib steak or a bone-in rib steak. You might be more of a sirloin person or a flank steak or a skirt steak person. There are multiple different steaks that you can get, and every steak requires you to cook it differently. So first off is to determine what you feel comfortable learning how to cook, because the key to making steaks for one or two can translate easily into having a dinner party for twenty people, but it all starts with the quality of the meat.”
Image by Mark Keast
Questions to Ask Butcher About Steaks
“And so when you go into the butcher, you want to ask about where’s your beef come from? Is it Canadian? Is it American? Is it AAA or certified Angus? Is it U.S. Prime? Is it Wagyu? Is it grass fed or is it corn fed? Grain fed? You want to find out what’s in there. When it comes to a steak, fat is flavor. So internal fat versus external fat.
External fat gives you a more succulent steak because it’s kind of self basting as that fat renders down and you get that flavor in the meat. Some beef becomes very, very lean and leaner over cooks quickly and is a little bit firmer and drier. Canadian beef is an excellent choice. We don’t need to bring it in from the U.S.
“I have multiple butchers that specialize. I prefer my pork from the guy down the street and my beef from another guy. I change it up. I don’t just always shop at the same spot. I’m always looking for something that I can be creative with. I’m looking for a different style or a different cut. In the world of steak, then you talk about aging. Is it wet aged, which means is the strip loin in a bag? How long has it been in that bag, from the time it’s slaughtered to the time you decide to process it? Is it dry aged, where it comes out of that bag, and it’s put on racks, and it’s allowed, in a cold, controlled atmosphere, to air dry for so many days? It depends on how strong you want. But learn that from your butcher.
“You need to determine the thickness. And so when you buy steaks, you should, in the beginning, if you’re trying to learn how to cook a steak, buy the same cut and you buy the same thickness, so that every time you cook it, you’re working with the same material.
“If it’s a one inch steak, it’s going to be cooked fast and hot and direct, and the lid open, and that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to put it on, you’re going to cook it on one side, you’re going to flip it over, and you’re going to take it off. You’re always going to take it off one degree less than what you normally like. So if you’re a medium eater, you’re going to want to cook it off at the medium rare, just on its way past medium rare, so that by the time it rests, it comes up to exactly how you like.”
A helpful cooking tip for barbequing steaks:
Let the meat sit at room temperature for twenty minutes before grilling to ensure even cooking and a perfect sear.
Chef Ted Reader with a Mega Burger fresh from the BBQ. Image courtesy of Ted Reader
Best Burgers for the BBQ
“We can do ground chicken, ground turkey, wild games. There are stores that are now offering elk and bison and deer, and all different types, wild boar. So you can start to create burgers that are of a different flavour and style. Talk to your butcher about that.”
“Frozen burgers should always be cooked from frozen, never thawed. Fresh burgers. Are you forming the burgers so that you can put it on the grill, or are you making a ball and you’re smashing it on a griddle? Smash burgers are extremely popular. There are these flat top griddles that you can turn your backyard into almost a restaurant, because you’ve got 36 inches of searing place where you can cook bacon and eggs and pancakes and everything else.”
A Cooking Tip for BBQ Burgers
Make a slight indentation in the centre of each patty before grilling to prevent it from puffing up, ensuring even cooking and a juicy burger.
Best Sausages for BBQ
“Most butcher shops make a variety of different sausages, so you always have choice in that counter. You don’t always have to serve a sweet Italian or a hot Italian. You can select a multitude of different meats and flavors that are enhancing those proteins. So, sausage would be my third pick on best meats for BBQ.”
“There are two types of sausage. There’s the raw sausage that has all kinds of flavor inside. And I like lots of garlic. I like lots of spice in my sausage. But then, alternatively, there’s the fully cooked sausage. A hot dog is a pre-cooked meat product. A smoked sausage is also a cooked product. You can eat them straight out of the package if you wish, or slice them thin, like a deli meat, and eat them that way. Or you can grill dogs, and get a smoked sausage off the grill.”
“Street dogs are fully cooked. Those guys on the street outside the Rogers Center, they never serve a raw sausage. They never cook anything from raw, everything in their coolers is already fully cooked. All they have to do is heat them up, and try not to burn them. It’s a food safety thing. I like street dogs. I like a good, hearty hot dog. Chicken dogs are good. Turkey dogs are good, veal dogs are good.”
“So it’s an easy dinner that you can do a lot of different things on, whether it be a relish, or you’re putting on a chili, or you’re going to put some cheese sauce, or you decided that you wanted to top it with some smoked pulled pork or brisket, and drizzle it with some sauces. You can do anything you want. And so sausage is a great meat, and it’s an easy, quick dinner.“
Our Best Tip for Grilling Sausages
Prick the sausages lightly with a fork before grilling to release excess fat and prevent bursting, ensuring even cooking and a juicy bite.
Image courtesy Chef Ted Reader
Best Chicken Cuts for the BBQ
“Chicken, I go there a lot. One of my favorite recipes is Slash & Grilled Chicken Drumsticks. You take the drumsticks, you slash ’em, then you rub them with barbecue seasoning and get the sauce into the cuts. Then you throw it on the grill and let the magic happen.
“You don’t cook them at high temperatures, you grill them on medium, and then you put them to the side and let them cook. And when that chicken cooks, you’ll be able to see through the slashes down to the bone. When the bone is gray and dark, you know it’s fully cooked, and you get little crispy bits, and you get textural changes that’ll be soft and moist and juicy, but crunchy on the outside. I toss it with my barbecue sauce, a little bit of maple syrup, a little bit of hot sauce, sriracha, Tabasco, whatever you want to use.”
“I toss the chicken in that. And then I take crushed up barbecue potato chips and scatter them onto the chicken and toss in the potato chips so you get this sweet and saucy and crunchy. That’s an original recipe, one of my most popular. The wings and legs and thighs should always be cooked up to about 180 degrees internal, and that way the meat just slides right off the bone.”
Quick Tip for BBQ Chicken
Use a two-zone fire. Set up direct heat for searing and indirect heat for slow cooking to keep the chicken juicy and avoid burning.
St. Lawrence Market, Toronto. Image by Mark Keast
Best Fish for the BBQ
“It’s old school, it’s been around 35 years, but plank salmon is a great thing to cook. But straight up grilling fish is very trendy. I do tuna steaks, hot and fast, on and off. Salmon, or any other type of fish that you’re going to grill can be tricky. A lot of people complain that when they put it on the grill, it sticks.”
Chef Reader tells us how to prevent the fish from sticking to the grill.
“Make sure that before you turn your grill on, apply non-stick spray to your grill grates. And the fish needs to be cold before it meets the BBQ. Meats need to come direct from the fridge to the grill. Seafood, chicken, especially steaks, people say, take them out for hours. No. You promote bacteria at that point. Ten, 15 minutes, half an hour at the most, is all you need to let a steak come up to a little bit of warm temperature, to take the chill out of it.
“Seafood? Out of the fridge, onto the grill. So you take it out of the fridge, you brush it with a lightly with a little olive oil, season it however you like, and you start it on the grill. You can start it meat side down or skin side down. It doesn’t matter. And the key is, is that when you take your spatula, and you want to have a fine edge spatula, when you slide it under the piece of fish, if it sticks, it’s not ready to be turned. So don’t try and turn it. If it’s stuck there, it just means that the meat is still stuck to the grill because it hasn’t cooked. Once it cooks, it will release itself from the grill, especially if you’ve added a little bit of fat in there, like the oil or the non-stick spray.”
And then you grill it and you watch it, and just treat it like a steak. It’s a big piece of salmon. Grill it, flip it over, move it to the side, close the lid and let it bake. The longer it takes to cook, the more beer, the more champagne, the more wine, you get to have, right? So just chill. Just slow things down. Keep it simple. Fresh herbs. Citrus, if you take a lemon or a lime or an orange and you cut it in half, and you grill it and then squeeze it over a piece of fish. Throw in some fresh dill and salt and pepper, you’re done. You don’t need anything more.”
Our Best Tip for BBQ Fish
Grill fish skin-side down first over medium heat to crisp the skin and lock in moisture, then flip carefully to finish cooking.
For some of the best and most popular grilling recipes from Chef Ted Reader, check out his Gastro Grilling cookbook.
Top image, meat counter at Cumbrae’s in Toronto. Image by Mark Keast
I am a 50-something Torontonian who loves everything about my city. It’s been my home, my playground, for my entire life. I went to school here. I met my wife here. I own real estate here. I love writing about the transformation of my city on the world stage, which hasn’t been anything short of dramatic. That continues on, as I write this. I write on the real estate scene. I write on travel and fashion. I like following the world of luxury watches.
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