How to Grill Top Sirloin Steaks
on Jul 24, 2023, Updated Jun 17, 2025
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These steaks are a great balance between tender and pleasantly chewy, with a great beefy flavor. Top sirloin is best cooked to around medium-rare for best taste and texture.
When grilled properly, top sirloin has the beefy flavor of pricier steaks but at a more gentle cost. The texture of these steaks is a great balance between tender and pleasantly chewy. This steak can come in a range of sizes: I was happy to find 8-ounce top sirloins, a perfect one-person portion. The marinade with shallots, garlic, and rosemary adds flavor and tenderness. As long as you don’t overcook it, grilling top sirloin will result in a juicy, flavorful steak that will make your beef lovers very happy.
Serve these up with some classic sides like Broccoli Orzo Salad, Macaroni Salad, Grilled Asparagus, and Tomato, Mozzarella, and Basil Salad. Or for an interesting summer meal pair these with Grilled Peaches with Burrata.
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Grilled Top Sirloin Steaks: These steaks are a great balance between tender and pleasantly chewy, with a great beefy flavor. Top sirloin is best cooked to around medium rare for best taste and texture.
Best Type of Top Sirloin to Buy
Sirloin steaks come from the top sirloin roast, part of the sirloin primal, behind the loin and the flank. Top sirloin is more tender than plain sirloin, which comes from the round. It is sometimes called New York sirloin steak, shell sirloin steak, and sirloin butt steak. It may also be labeled shell sirloin steak, especially in the Northeast.
Look for boneless top sirloin steaks or center-cut steaks. Sirloin steaks simply labeled “sirloin” or “bottom sirloin” tend to be tougher, while top sirloin will result in a more tender grilled steak. Ask a butcher for the most tender sirloin steaks in the market!
The USDA has designated three grades of meat. USDA Prime is the highest grade, with only about 2% of the beef in the U.S. earning that label. Prime meat has the most marbling, or fat, throughout the meat, which provides the best flavor and the most tender consistency. It’s not all that easy to find, especially for top sirloin steaks.
Your next best option is the Choice grade, which is much more readily available. It’s a bit leaner, but still of very good quality.
The grade Select is below Choice and will be leaner still but also less expensive. However, because top sirloin is a reasonably priced cut of steak, the difference shouldn’t be all that notable.
Look for top sirloin steaks with a deep pink to red color. Avoid meat that is brownish in color — it might just have been cut less recently, but it also may mean the meat is older. Obviously, check expiration dates on packaged meats. Don’t buy packaged steaks with a lot of red juice in them, which may indicate that they were frozen poorly. The result could be dry or spongy steaks. Avoid any meat that smells off in any way.
How to Grill Top Sirloin Steak
- Marinate the steak: Combine the marinade ingredients in a large container. Add the steaks and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours.
- Prepare the grill: Let the steaks sit at room temp while you heat the grill and oil the grill rack.
- Grill the steaks. See the chart below for doneness temperatures, or if you don’t have an internal thermometer, you can use the poke or the touch test to determine how well your steaks are cooked. If you have thick steaks, you can go for those perfect cross-hatch grill marks.
- Rest the steaks and serve: Let the steaks rest for 5 to 10 minutes before slicing and serving.
How Long to Cook Top Sirloin Over Direct High Heat
Buy a meat thermometer! It will make your life so much easier. These times and internal temperatures take into account the fact that the temperature of the meat will continue to climb by several degrees once the steak is removed from the heat to a cutting board. So, the times are guidelines to know when to take the meat off the grill, and the temps will be about 5 degrees higher once the steaks have rested for 5 to 10 minutes.
Sirloin streaks are great on the grill, but again, with a steak that can get tough when overcooked, rare to medium-rare is the way to go. It is more important to aim for the correct internal temperature than to be overly dependent on a timer.
| Thickness | Doneness in Degrees | Grilling Time |
| ½-inch thick | Rare (125 F) | 1-2 minutes per side |
| ½-inch thick | Medium-Rare (130 F) | 2-3 minutes per side |
| ½-inch thick | Medium (135 F) | 3-4 minutes per side |
| 1-inch thick | Rare (125 F) | 3-4 minutes per side |
| 1-inch thick | Medium-Rare (130 F) | 4-6 minutes per side |
| 1-inch thick | Medium (135 F) | 6-8 minutes per side |
| 1 ½-inch thick | Rare (125 F) | 5-6 minutes per side |
| 1 ½-inch thick | Medium-Rare (130 F) | 6-8 minutes per side |
| 1 ½-inch thick | Medium (135 F) | 8-9 minutes per side |
| 2-inch thick | Rare (125 F) | 6-8 minutes per side |
| 2-inch thick | Medium-Rare (130 F) | 8-9 minutes per side |
| 2-inch thick | Medium (135 F) | 9-11 minutes per side |
What to Know About Grilling Top Sirloin
All steaks, especially ones with a propensity for toughness, like top sirloin, should be allowed to rest after removing them from the grill. Let your steak sit for 5 to 10 minutes before cutting into it. This enables the steak to reabsorb the juices, so they don’t pour out onto the cutting board when you slice the meat.
Make sure to slice the steaks against the grain after resting for maximum tenderness. To find the grain, simply look at the surface of the sirloin and notice how the fibers are running parallel in one direction. You want to cut across the grain, perpendicular to the fibers. This will allow the strands or fibers to be much shorter in each slice, and much easier to chew. You can slice sirloin steak as thin as ¼-inch thick, or slice thicker slices, up to 1 inch.
The steak doesn’t have to be marinated, but a marinade really enhances the appealing beefy flavor of the meat and also promotes tenderness when grilling. Anywhere from 12 to 24 hours is a perfect amount of time, so if you wanted to put the steaks in the simple marinade in the morning, you would have nicely flavored steaks to grill for dinner.
Sauces for Grilled Top Sirloin Steak
You can serve the marinated sirloin plain and simple, but if you want to kick things up a notch, serve a sauce on top or on the side!
- Horseradish Sauce
- Chimichurri Sauce
- Roasted Tomato Sauce
- Creamy Cilantro Sauce
- Peach and Roasted Red Pepper Salsa
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How to Grill Top Sirloin Steaks
Equipment
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup olive or vegetable oil
- ¼ cup minced shallots
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 3 sprigs rosemary
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
- 4 (1 ¼-inch thick) sirloin steaks (about 7 to 8 ounces each)
Instructions
- In a large container big enough to hold the steak, combine the oil, shallots, garlic, and rosemary sprigs with a generous amount of salt and pepper. Add the steak and turn to coat. Marinate, refrigerated for 12 to 24 hours, turning the steak occasionally if possible. Remove the steaks from the marinade and pat dry. Let sit for about 15 minutes at room temperature.
- Preheat the grill to medium-high. Carefully oil the grill rack by using grilling tongs to dip a wad of clean paper towels into some vegetable oil, running that over the clean, hot grates.
- Season the steak generously with salt and pepper on both sides. Grill the steaks, turning once about halfway through the cooking time for simple grill marks on each side. Or, turn the steaks every two minutes or so, three times in total to achieve cross-hatch grill marks (turn the steaks 90 degrees as you flip them), until the steaks are done to your liking. This should take about 9 to 10 minutes total for rare (120 F internal temperature), 11 to 13 minutes for medium-rare (125 F), and 14 to 16 minutes for medium (130 F).
- Remove the steak from the grill to a cutting board. Let sit for 5 to 10 minutes before slicing it across the grain.
