There is nothing quite like a steak, to some, that meaty feeling and flavor a steak has is simply irreplaceable, and when life gets you down, eating a steak is much healthier than chunking down a whole jar of ice cream. If you are a steak lover you certainly have had a Porterhouse steak and a T-bone steak, but do you know the difference between one and the other? The truth is a lot of people do no and as a matter of fact, it really isn’t that big of a difference.
Key Characteristics and Differences
Both of these steaks are cut from the same area of the beef, the short loin. This beef cut comes from the back of the animal, and it contains parts from the tenderloin and the top loin. Usually this cut makes it so that the meat has a bone shaped like a T, hence the name T-bone steak. The bone divides the steak into two parts, with the tenderloin filet on one side and the top loin on the other side. The top loin is usually a part better known as the Kansas City or the New York City Strip Steak.
The position of this bone is actually crucial, because if you remove this bone, you end up having two different steaks on your hands (not literally), instead of just one. But this one steak is called the T-bone steak and it is well known. According to the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) a T-bone steaks need the a thickness of at least 0,25” in order to be considered a T-bone steak and if it does not, it is considered a Club steak.
So if you get served something small, you know you’re being scammed and that what you got is not a really a T-bone steak, it might be great, but it is not what you ordered. Certainly, you won’t check the exact measurements of the steak, but if you have an idea of how big it should be, that is good enough.
On the other hand, a Porterhouse steak is much larger than a T-bone steak. So much that it is usually good enough for two people to eat. While the T-bone steak only needs to be 0,25” thick, the Porterhouse steak on the other hand, needs to be at least 1,25” thick in order to be considered what it is, according to the USDA. And that is the single difference between a T-bone steak and a Porterhouse steak – the Porterhouse steak is just larger than the T-bone steak turning it, in a certain way, the king of T-bones. It’s just a matter of how hungry you are, and of how much meat you can take in one single meal.