Two inch thick pork steaks simply seasoned and then slow roasted on an open air, Santa Maria style barbecue pit. To finish this pork steak recipe the steaks are slathered in BBQ sauce and cooked until ooey, gooey perfection is achieved.

What is a Pork Steak?

A pork steak is simply a pork shoulder (also called a pork butt or a Boston butt) sliced into steaks by your local butcher. The farther you are from St. Louis, the less likely you’ve heard of these. Pork steaks, like the pork shoulder, is full of fat and collagen which makes them delicious, but it also means they need some time and care to be prepared properly. Therefore, a pork steak cannot be seared on each side like a beef steak and served rare.

The beauty of pork steaks is all that fat and collagen makes it really hard to dry them out, even if cooked north of 200F. They are a stress free way to feed a crowd. Cook them to 185F and drop them into an aluminum pan of BBQ sauce to simmer until guests arrive. That’s exactly what I did with these Smoked Pork Steaks.

Although, don’t buy a bone-in pork shoulder and try to carve pork steaks yourself. You need a band saw to get through that bone.

For a more detailed explanation of what a pork steak is and how to cook them, click that link.

Or if you are slightly more daring click: Reverse Seared Pork Steaks with Adobo BBQ Sauce.

Santa Maria Pork Steak Recipe Ingredients

For the Pork Steaks

• Pork Steaks
• Salt
• Your Favorite BBQ Seasoning
• Your Favorite BBQ Sauce. We used Andria’s BBQ Sauce.

For the Spritz

• 1 cup beer
• 1 cup apple cider vinegar

You will also need either a food grade squirt bottle or a plastic water bottle with holes poked in the top

Yes, I realize the ingredients are very vague.

This recipe is extremely old school.

Almost primal.

Meat, Seasoning, Fire (and some sauce).

That’s it.

Buy a pork steak per person if an inch or so thick. If 1.5″ thick, buy 2 for every three people coming over.

Santa Maria Pork Steak Recipe?

OK, the extent that this is a Santa Maria recipe is that I cooked this over live fire in my Santa Maria cooker (it’s a Hooray grill).

The same results could be achieved in a charcoal or even a gas grill.

We will cover that later.

To begin, season the pork steaks with salt and your favorite BBQ seasoning:

If you are confused as to who that is seasoning the pork steaks, I decided to collaborate with my fellow St. Louisan, James Boatright who is a phenomenal pitmaster and lives only a few miles away.

James is an alum of the BBQ Showdown on Netflix as well as one of my fellow Live Fire Legends.

We had some fun that day:

If you want to see those ribs in the pic above, slow smoked and then BLOWTORCHED, tap that link.

We also did a rotisserie pork loin.

Back to the Santa Maria pork steak recipe.

When dealing with two inch thick pork steaks, season more than the tops and bottoms, get the sides too:

With the pork steaks seasoned, then get that fire lit.

Accordingly, James busted out a flame thrower and we got the Hooray lit:

How to Grill this Pork Steak Recipe

Season the pork steaks with salt/BBQ Seasoning. Then light a fire (either wood, charcoal or gas) and place the pork steaks off to the edge of the heat to smoke/slow-cook for an hour or so, depending on the thickness of the pork steaks. Keep flipping the pork steaks to slow down the cooking process and get that delicious char. Re-apply a dusting of seasoning while flipping the pork steaks.

Once the temps of the pork steak hit 120F-130F lower the heat by raising the grill grates, dropping the gas level or bank some of the hot charcoal to the side. Sear pork steak over the fire, flipping and either re-season or spritz with the beer/apple cider vinegar. Keep flipping/seasoning/spritzing every few minutes until each pork steak has an internal temperature north of 175F. Finally, slather with BBQ sauce and flip every couple minutes to thicken that sauce.

Get the Pork Steaks on the Grill

Place each pork steak just off the edge of the direct heat, whether a wood fire (like this one) or on charcoal or even gas.

Thus, the goal here is to bring the temp of the pork steak up slowly and imbue a little smoke flavor.

Indeed these pork steaks are just off the edge of the direct heat:

Keep the pork steaks off the edge of the direct heat which allows them to slowly rise in temp.

Start Flipping

You still need to flip and rotate from time to time when going slow like this. Because the meat at the far end of the pork steak away from the fire will cook much slower than the meat right off the edge of the coals:

Periodically, check the bottom of the pork steaks and flip and rotate accordingly:

And re-season from time to time:

We aren’t talking about a heavy coating of seasoning.

Just a dusting.

See, 70% of the seasoning is lost during the cooking process. Some melts into the meat, but most is lost.

Let’s keep replacing that lost flavor:

Flip and season or use that spritz.

Accordingly, I went back and forth between them:

Once the pork steak internal temp hits north of 120F-130F, drop the temp of the direct heat and move the pork steaks right over the top of that fire.

For a gas grill, reduce the gas. For charcoal, bank some of the coals off to the side.

Cooking on a Santa Maria grill, then simply crank up the grill grate a few inches.

Keep flipping and seasoning/spritzing:

Now is not the time to walk away from the grill.

With the meat right over the fire, we have to flip fairly frequently to keep the pork steaks from burning and yet still cook the pork:

And a little seasoning:

Then, spritzed pork steaks:

Also, there is a thick layer of fat along the outside of each pork steak.

Let’s crisp that fat up.

Specifically, I use one of the pork steaks to lean the others against to char that layer of fat:

It only takes a couple minutes:

Then I leaned that one pork steak against the other two to crisp up the outer edge.

So, how long do we flip and season/spritz?

What Temperature to Cook Pork Steaks?

To liquify the fat and break down that collagen, pork steaks need to be cooked to a minimum of 175F-180F. They can be cooked all the way to 210F if you want. Anything above 200F or so will be fall off the bone tender.

Indeed, I realize that James is wearing an apron from the Pork Counsel stating to cook pork to 145F.

That is absolutely the case for pork loin/pork chops. But pork steaks need a little more because of the proliferation of that fat and collagen.

These pork steaks were just shy of 180F:

Time to slather in sauce.

We used Andria’s BBQ Sauce:

Then spread that sauce around with a sauce brush:

Flip the pork steaks over and sauce on the other side:

Sauced:

Remember when I said not to walk away from the grill? That is even better advice now.

Every step of this process has required the flipping of the pork steaks to happen a little faster than the last.

The sauced pork steaks need to be flipped really fast. Despite Andria’s BBQ Sauce only having 4 grams of sugar per serving (which is about a quarter of the industry standard), the sauce can burn quickly over the direct heat.

So flip and sauce every couple minutes and it only takes a couple applications for this pork steak recipe:

That’s some ooey, gooey perfection.

Indeed “ooey” is a technical term!

Plattered:

Finally, time to slice:

One final shot!

I know there are a lot of pics in this recipe but the photography was so good from my team that I couldn’t help it.

And there are even more down below the recipe card.

Santa Maria Pork Steak Recipe Rundown

I can’t praise these pork steaks enough. Just layer after layer after layer after layer of flavor. THIS is how grilling is supposed to be. Meat, seasoning, fire (oh and some sauce). Truth be told though, I would’ve used thinner pork steaks. 1.5 inches max. 1.25″ is probably the sweet spot, but inch thick steaks would work too.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below or send me an email.

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Recipe Card:

Print

Santa Maria Pork Steak Recipe

Pork Steak simply seasoned and slow roasted over an open fire Santa Maria barbecue pit and then sauced to ooey, gooey perfection in this Pork Steak Recipe

Course Barbecue, BBQ, Entree, Main Course

Cuisine American, American Fare, Barbecue, BBQ, Pork Steak, Pork Steaks

Keyword Andria's, Andria's Barbecue Sauce, Andria's BBQ Sauce, Apple Cider Vinegar, BBQ Sauce, Cider Vinegar, Flip Forever, Flip Forever Method, Hooray Grill, Just Keep Flipping, Just Keep Flipping Method, Live Fire, Pork Steak, Pork Steak Recipe, Pork Steaks, Recipe, Santa Maria, Santa Maria Cooker, Santa Maria Grill, Spritz, What is a Pork Steak, What temp to Cook Pork Steaks

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 2 hours hours

Servings 6 People

Equipment

• Food grade spray bottle

Ingredients

For Pork Steaks

• Pork Steaks 1" - 1.5" thick
• Salt
• Your favorite BBQ Seasoning
• Your favorite BBQ Sauce We used Andria's BBQ Sauce

For Spritz

• 1 cup Beer
• 1 cup Apple cider vinegar

Instructions

• Season the pork steaks with salt and the BBQ rub
• Prepare the grill by sparking up a medium hot fire. Set your favorite smoke wood near the direct heat. Place the pork steaks off the edge of the direct heat to slow cook/smoke. Flip and rotate the pork steaks a couple of times on the way to the pork steaks hitting 120F-130F. Re-season the pork steaks every time you flip them with a dusting of seasoning.
• Once the pork steaks reach 120F-130F internal, cool the fire. For a gas grill, dial back the hot burners to as low as possible. For charcoal grills, bank some of the coals off the edge. On a Santa Maria grill, raise the grill grates to elevate the cooking surface farther away from the hot coals. Set the smoked pork steaks over the direct, albeit reduced, heat.
• Keep flipping every few minutes. Also, every time you flip either dust with some more seasoning or spritz with the apple cider vinegar/beer spray. Keep flipping/dusting/spritzing until the pork steaks reach an internal temperature of 175F-185F. Then, pour over the BBQ sauce and brush it over the entire surface area. Flip the pork steaks and sauce the other side. Flip and sauce every 90-120 seconds 2-3 times. Finally, remove from the grill and serve.

More pics of this cookout:

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