Grilled Steak with Coffee Spice Rub

This grilled steak with coffee spice rub was a great way to break in the grill for the year. The amount of coffee spice rub was just right for the meat, and it provided a highly seasoned result that was pretty to look at and really tasty. The coffee provides a deep, pleasantly charred quality that is a really interesting background flavor.

A great treatment for gas-grilled meat, which never really gets that “outside” taste like cooking over a fire does. We used this on flank steak instead of skirt, and the timing worked just fine—like skirt, flank does best on the rare side. I liked that this recipe didn’t call for a prolonged period of sitting with the rub on; made steak dinner much more doable for a weeknight. Solid recipe!

This was really easy and a nice introduction to something other than just salt and pepper on a steak. I think skirt steak can dry out quickly, so pay close attention to the timing. I checked a corner when I took it off the grill and then again after letting it rest. Keep in mind that more residual cooking takes place than you may realize during the short rest time. I used all the spice rub—I thought I was going to be short, but the oil allows it to cover the steak more completely than if it was a dry rub. I will definitely make this again and plan to try it on other types of steak. It would go well with guacamole, some pico de gallo, and grilled vegetables.

Who doesn’t love a good grilled steak recipe? And this is a good one. The coffee spice rub is easy to put together, and we used a bold Colombian dark roast coffee in the rub. Skirt steak is difficult to find where we live, so I used a 1 1/2-kilogram flank steak, which is readily available.

I used the entire rub on the steak, as I coated the pieces generously. The grilling time was 4 minutes on the first side and 3 minutes on the second side for a perfect rare to medium-rare steak. The coffee in the rub gave a depth to the crust. We enjoyed the slight heat from the cayenne and the earthiness of the paprika, but we all found it a touch salty. When I make this rub again, I’ll decrease the amount of salt to 1 tablespoon, which I think will make it perfect.

This grilled steak with coffee rub recipe was really tasty, although I have to admit I couldn’t get my hands on skirt steak and had to make this with rump instead. If you’re in the same boat, worry not! I used about 2 pounds steak, cut into 3 big pieces. The amount of coffee spice rub was perfect for this amount of meat.

It took 5 minutes to get the meat prepped, 25 minutes to let it marinate, and then I heated up the grill. After just under 5 minutes of cooking, the steaks were basically medium-well, so I wish I’d pulled them a minute earlier. I’d never used coffee in a rub before—it gave the steak an interesting texture and helped boost the smokiness, but it was overpowered slightly by the cumin (not a bad thing, in my book—I love cumin).

This grilled steak with coffee rub recipe makes a simple, satisfying spice rub for steak using ingredients that you likely already have in your possession, though I’d use a higher ratio of ground coffee next time to truly advertise it as a coffee rub (only one out of the three of us really detected any coffee). The spice rub mixture sufficiently flavored the steak without overwhelming it.

The recipe is a cinch to make, and you could easily swap other proteins. Finding even 1 pound of skirt steak, let alone for a reasonable price, turned out to be quite the wild-goose (-cow?) chase, but damn it if it wasn’t one heck of a juicy steak in the end. Since I only had 1 1/2 pounds steak, I didn’t use all the rub—I probably had 1 1/2 tablespoons left and felt it was sufficiently seasoned. My grill wasn’t starting, so I used a grill pan, uncovered.

If this grilled steak with coffee rub recipe could have been described with only two words, they would be “ay, caramba!” It had the amazing taste of the spices with an aftertaste of coffee. Delicious!