Steak Cook Time Calculator — How Long to Grill a Steak

Background.

On a ¾-inch top round steak, the published grilling chart allows a single minute between medium rare and medium: 10 minutes over charcoal to reach 145°F, 11 to reach 160°F. On a 1½-inch top sirloin over gas the same step takes six minutes, 24 against 30. Steak times are that uneven from one cut to the next, so each answer here is one specific cell of one published table, and it always comes with a temperature to check it against.

The table is the Beef Checkoff's grilling guide from Confident Cooking with Beef. It lists 45 steak rows, grouped by where on the animal the cut comes from — chuck, rib, loin, sirloin, plate and flank, and round — each at the thicknesses the chart actually covers, with separate columns for charcoal and gas. Every cell is a range. The low number is the total time to medium rare at 145°F; the high number is the total to medium at 160°F. Total means total: a cell reading 10 to 14 is ten minutes on the grill altogether, about five a side if you turn once. Nothing between the published thicknesses is estimated, and nothing beyond them is extrapolated.

Some of the chart's most useful content is not in minutes at all. Its thickest cuts — the 1½-inch ribeyes, porterhouse, tenderloin and top sirloin — carry footnotes telling you to take the steak off 5°F or 10°F early and let it stand 5 minutes while stored heat finishes the centre. Round cuts come with a recommendation to stop at medium rare, and several lean cuts are marked for marinating first. Each of those notes appears in the result sentence for the row it belongs to.

On safety: 145°F (63°C) is the minimum internal temperature for a whole-muscle beef steak, held by a rest before carving, and it is also the chart's own medium-rare figure. That is why there is no rare setting. Steak cooked below 145°F is below that guidance and is not advised for anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised.

What is steak cook time calculator?

A grilling time is the approximate number of minutes a steak of a given cut and thickness spends over a stated heat, turned once, before its centre reaches a target temperature. Doneness is that temperature — not the time, and not the colour. In this chart medium rare means 145°F (63°C) and medium means 160°F (71°C); Clemson Extension's beef factsheet uses the same two figures and adds 170°F for well done. Carry-over cooking is the rise that continues after the steak leaves the fire, as heat held in the hotter outer layers moves inward. On thick steaks it is large enough that the chart builds it into its instructions. The rest is the time the steak stands before carving, while the centre holds or climbs toward its target.

How to use this calculator.

1. 01Measure the steak with a ruler at its thickest point and choose the matching row. Most rows are ¾ inch, 1 inch or 1½ inch; the flat iron is listed by weight (8 oz each), and flank and skirt by the weight of the whole piece. If your steak falls between rows or beyond them, the chart gives no time for it, so cook by thermometer alone.
2. 02Choose Grill. Charcoal times assume medium, ash-covered coals, roughly 30 minutes after lighting: with your palm held at grate height you should manage about 4 seconds before pulling it away. The gas times were developed on Weber Genesis grills, so a much hotter or weaker burner will run faster or slower.
3. 03Choose Doneness: medium rare at 145°F or medium at 160°F. For Round cuts — top round, bottom round, eye of round and both sirloin tip steaks — the chart recommends medium rare only, although it still prints a medium time.
4. 04Grill for the total shown, turning once at about the per-side figure, and start checking before the time runs out. Push an instant-read thermometer in from the side so its tip sits in the thickest part, away from bone, fat and gristle.
5. 05Take the steak off at the pull temperature and rest it for at least the minutes shown. Where the pull temperature is below 145°F, take a second reading after the rest to confirm the centre has reached 145°F before you carve.
6. 06For cuts marked for marinating, keep the used marinade away from cooked meat. If you want to baste with it or serve it as a sauce, Clemson Extension says to bring it to a rolling boil for at least one minute first.

The formula.

The result is a table lookup followed by two small calculations.

t = the chart cell for your cut, thickness and grill: its low end for medium rare, its high end for medium. t_side = t ÷ 2, on the chart's assumption that you turn the steak once. T_pull = 140°F for medium rare or 155°F for medium on the four double-asterisk rows, 135°F or 150°F on the single-asterisk row (1½-inch top sirloin), and equal to the target T_target everywhere else. ΔT = T_target − T_pull, the carry-over rise. Rest = 5 minutes on the footnoted rows, the chart's own "let stand 5 minutes"; 3 minutes, USDA's minimum, on all the others.

A carry-over rise of zero does not mean a thin steak stops cooking the moment it leaves the grill. It means the chart publishes no early-pull figure for that row, and the calculator will not supply one of its own.

Thickness is where intuition fails. Heat reaches the centre of a steak by conduction, and in simple heat-flow models the time to warm the centre grows with the square of the thickness rather than in step with it. The chart shows the effect. Six cuts appear at both 1 inch and 1½ inches, and on charcoal at medium rare that extra half inch — 50% more steak — adds between 40% (tenderloin, 10 to 14 minutes) and 111% (bone-in ribeye, 9 to 19 minutes) to the time, and more than 50% on five of the six. Averaging between rows would get thick steaks badly wrong, which is why only published thicknesses are offered.

Grill type moves the answer less predictably. At medium rare, gas is slower than charcoal on 26 of the 45 rows, identical on 17, and faster on 2, the 1-inch and 1½-inch boneless ribeyes. The widest gap is the 1½-to-2-pound flank steak: 11 minutes over charcoal, 16 on gas. The chart reports both columns without explaining the pattern.

The rest time involves a recorded disagreement between sources: USDA's minimum is 3 minutes, Clemson Extension advises 4, and the chart's footnoted thick cuts say 5. Showing the shortest as a floor, and the chart's 5 where it specifies one, keeps every result inside all three, since standing longer is never the unsafe direction.

A worked example.

Frequently asked questions.

References& sources.

1. [1]Beef Checkoff Program (Cattlemen's Beef Board / National Cattlemen's Beef Association). "Confident Cooking with Beef — GRILLING GUIDELINES," pp. 28–29. The source of every minute figure on this page: the CHARCOAL GRILLING and GAS GRILLING columns of "Approximate Total Cooking Time for Medium Rare (145°F) to Medium (160°F) … minutes", the * footnote (remove at 135°F medium rare / 150°F medium, let stand 5 minutes), the ** footnote (140°F / 155°F, let stand 5 minutes), the note "Recommend cooking Round cuts to medium rare (145°F) doneness only," and the note "Chart guidelines were developed using Weber Genesis gas grills." Retrieved 2026-07-30; the PDF carries no printed revision date.
2. [2]Clemson University Home & Garden Information Center, factsheet "Safe Handling of Beef" — the independent check on this page's doneness mapping: "Steaks and roasts should be cooked to 145 °F (medium rare) followed by a 4 minute rest, 160 °F (medium), or 170 °F (well-done)." Its broiling and grilling guidance puts a ¾-inch steak at 4 to 5 minutes per side, i.e. 8 to 10 minutes total, which agrees with the Beef Checkoff's 7-to-11-minute ¾-inch rows. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
3. [3]Clemson University Home & Garden Information Center, factsheet "Food Safety for Outdoor Cookouts" — the source of the charcoal-readiness and marinade guidance repeated on this page: "Let charcoal get red-hot with gray ash for about 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the quantity"; marinade reused from raw meat "must first bring it to a rolling boil for at least one minute"; "Cook beef, lamb, pork and veal steaks, roasts and chops to 145 °F for medium-rare with a 4-minute rest before carving or eating, or 160 °F for medium." Retrieved 2026-07-30.
4. [4]Clemson University Home & Garden Information Center, factsheet "Cooking Meat Safely" — thermometer placement and why colour is not a doneness test: the thermometer "should be placed in the thickest part of the food away from bone, fat or gristle," and "color and texture changes are not reliable indicators that all bacteria have been destroyed." Lists 145 °F for all cuts of beef, lamb, pork and veal. Retrieved 2026-07-30.
5. [5]Canada Beef, "Grilling Steak Know How" — a second national beef authority, independent of the US Beef Checkoff and operating under Health Canada's guidance, confirming the same medium-rare figure: "COOK to medium-rare 145°F (63°C) at the least," alongside the instruction to use "a digital rapid-read thermometer to know when they're done." Their per-thickness minute chart is published as a graphic and was not transcribable, so this reference corroborates the temperature rather than the times. Retrieved 2026-07-30.