Buying guide · Australia, MSA

Australian BBQ cuts: names, MSA grades and temperatures

An Australian barbecue cooks steaks and sausages over direct heat, on an open grill or a flat hot plate, mostly in the southern summer around Christmas and Australia Day (26 January). Its cuts carry local names — scotch fillet, rump, porterhouse, eye fillet — several of which mean another steak in the United States or Britain, and much of the beef carries a Meat Standards Australia (MSA) grade for one cut cooked one way. At 2.5–3 cm / 1–1¼ in, a steak browns on a hot grill in 6–10 minutes and keeps a pink centre.

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Also known as: Australian BBQ cuts · barbie steaks · Aussie barbecue · Cortes para la barbacoa australiana · Phần thịt cho tiệc nướng BBQ kiểu ÚcLast reviewed 22 Oct 20269 sources

Grill, hot plate and the summer calendar

The typical Australian barbecue, gas or charcoal, has two cooking surfaces: an open grill with bars and a solid steel or cast-iron hot plate, often called the flat plate. Steaks go on the grill for marks and smoke or on the plate for an even crust; sausages, onions and thin cuts usually go on the plate. Many public parks have free electric barbecues with a hot plate only, which suits steaks 2–3 cm thick that cook in a few minutes.

The season follows the southern summer, from December to February. Christmas lunch on 25 December is often a barbecue or a mix of cold seafood and grilled meat, and Australia Day on 26 January is a public holiday widely marked with a barbecue. Because Australian supermarkets and butchers label cuts by local names and, for much of their beef, by MSA grade, both are worth understanding before buying.

The steak cuts, by their Australian names

Names that change at the border

Two Australian names cause most of the confusion abroad. A porterhouse in Australia and New Zealand is a boneless striploin steak, the same steak sold in Britain as sirloin and in the United States as New York strip; an American porterhouse is a large bone-in steak with a wide piece of tenderloin. Rump in Australia and Britain is a cross-cut through several hip muscles, roughly the American top sirloin with its cap. The scotch fillet is the boneless ribeye, called rib fillet in Queensland, and the eye fillet is the tenderloin. See striploin, ribeye, rump and T-bone.

How the MSA grade works

Meat Standards Australia (MSA) is a voluntary eating-quality program run by Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA). Instead of giving the whole carcass one grade, it predicts how each cut will eat when cooked by a particular method, using a model built from consumer taste tests that weigh tenderness, juiciness, flavour and overall liking. Each cut-and-method combination receives a score out of 100; scores from 46 upward are sold as 3 stars (good everyday), 4 stars (better than everyday) or 5 stars (premium).

Because the prediction is tied to the method, one muscle can carry different grades: a rump can grade higher as a grilled steak than as a roast, and within the rump the centre of the main muscle scores higher on the grill than the outer muscles. MSA is separate from the AUS-MEAT marble score (0–9, then 9+), which measures marbling only and is used mostly for wagyu; see buying wagyu online in Australia and grading systems.

Reading the label

1. Look for the MSA symbol. It means the carcass passed through an MSA-licensed processor and was graded. Beef without it may still eat well, but its eating quality was not predicted.
2. Read the star grade where it is shown (3, 4 or 5). It refers to the cut in the pack, not to the whole animal.
3. Check the cooking method shown with the grade, such as grill, roast, stir-fry or slow cook. A cut graded for slow cooking will not necessarily eat well as a rare steak.
4. Keep the other claims apart: grain fed (an AUS-MEAT term with a minimum number of days on grain), grass fed or Certified Pasturefed, breed and marble score describe how the animal was raised or how marbled the meat is, not the MSA prediction.

Thickness and heat

For a hot grill or plate, 2.5–3 cm / 1–1¼ in is the practical thickness: thin enough to cook through on direct heat in 6–10 minutes, thick enough to keep a pink centre while the outside browns. The grill should be hot, around 230–260 °C / 450–500 °F at the bars, which on a gas barbecue usually means burners on high with the lid closed for 10–15 minutes beforehand. Steaks thicker than 4 cm / 1½ in — rib on the bone, tomahawk, a thick eye fillet — need two zones: burners off on one side, the steak cooked there with the lid down to a few degrees below its target, then seared over the hot side, a reverse sear.

Doneness is read with a probe thermometer in the centre of the thickest part, away from bone; a steak 2.5 cm thick rises a further 2–4 °C / 4–7 °F while it rests. Minced meat, including sausages, follows a different rule: the USDA gives 71 °C / 160 °F for ground meat, because mincing carries surface bacteria into the centre. See steak temperatures.

Off the heat and after the rest

Sausages: medium heat, to 71 °C

Sausages, called snags in Australian slang, are the other half of most barbecues, from the community "sausage sizzle" — a sausage in a slice of white bread with grilled onions — to butcher-made beef, pork or lamb sausages. Thick sausages cook best over medium heat on the hot plate, turned often, for 12–20 minutes; on full heat the casing splits and chars before the centre is cooked. Pricking them lets fat and juice run out. They are done at 71 °C / 160 °F in the centre.

How much per person

With salads and bread on the table, a common allowance is 200–250 g / 7–9 oz of boneless steak per adult, or 350–500 g / 12–18 oz of bone-in cuts such as T-bone or rib on the bone. When sausages are served too, 150–200 g / 5–7 oz of steak and one or two sausages per adult is usual. Children eat about half. A whole rib on the bone or tomahawk of 1–1.5 kg / 2.2–3.3 lb, carved off the bone, serves two to four.

The bone accounts for much of the difference. Field data, weighed piece by piece, put the usable share of a bone-in short loin cut into T-bones at 79.6 % of its weight, against 83.9 % for a boneless ribeye roll and 78.2 % for a boneless striploin after trimming.

Where a barbecue steak goes wrong

Putting steaks on a barbecue that has not been preheated. Pressing them with tongs or a spatula, which squeezes out juice. Moving them constantly instead of turning them once or a few times. Grilling rump, flank or skirt past medium and slicing them with the grain. Cooking thick bone-in cuts on direct heat alone, so the outside chars before the centre warms. Reading a recipe from another country without checking which cut "porterhouse" or "sirloin" means there. Treating "grass fed" or a marble score as if it were the MSA grade. Leaving meat in the sun: perishable food should not stay out of refrigeration for more than two hours, or one hour above 32 °C / 90 °F.

Names in Australia, the United States and Britain

Field data

Numbers measured in a working kitchen, piece by piece, not taken from a table. Another kitchen, another trimming specification, another number. How field data is collected.

Field data

Ribeye (cube roll)

61sheets (pieces cut)

341.2kg processed

81 %portion yield

83.9 %usable

9.4 %fat removed

2.9 %other usable meat

Steakpedia Field Kitchen1 Jul 2026 – 21 Oct 2026

Open data: download (CSV · JSON, CC BY 4.0) →

Field data

Striploin

11sheets (pieces cut)

56kg processed

77.2 %portion yield

78.2 %usable

7.8 %fat removed

1 %other usable meat

Steakpedia Field Kitchen1 Jul 2026 – 20 Oct 2026

Open data: download (CSV · JSON, CC BY 4.0) →

Field data

Short loin, bone-in (T-bone)

28sheets (pieces cut)

266.5kg processed

77.4 %portion yield

79.6 %usable

8.9 %fat removed

2.2 %other usable meat

Steakpedia Field Kitchen4 Jul 2026 – 21 Oct 2026

Open data: download (CSV · JSON, CC BY 4.0) →

Frequently asked questions

Sources

9

1. Meat & Livestock Australia. Australian Beef — cuts and cooking methods. www.australianbeef.com.au/know-your-meat/beef-cuts
2. Meat & Livestock Australia. Meat Standards Australia: Standards Manual for Beef Grading. Sydney, 2021. www.mla.com.au/marketing-beef-and-lamb/meat-standards-australia
3. AUS-MEAT Limited. Handbook of Australian Meat, 7th ed. (International Red Meat Manual). Brisbane, 2005. www.ausmeat.com.au
4. Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (UK). Beef Meat Purchasing Guide. Kenilworth, 2016. ahdb.org.uk
5. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service. Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications: Fresh Beef Series 100. Washington, DC, 2014. www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/IMPS_100_Fresh_Beef%5B1%5D.pdf
6. USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart. 2023. www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/safe-temperature-chart
7. McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, rev. ed. New York: Scribner, 2004.
8. Steakpedia Field Kitchen. Butchery records, July–October 2026: 279 sheets, 1,604.6 kg of meat processed, weighed piece by piece on a calibrated scale and logged per cut. Open data, CC BY 4.0. steakpedia.com/field-data
9. Meat & Livestock Australia. Tips & Tools MSA02: How MSA grades are determined. www.mla.com.au/globalassets/mla-corporate/marketing-beef-and-lamb/documents/meat-standards-australia/msa-mla-tips-and-tools-msa02-how-msa-grades-are-determined_v01.pdf

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