Over 22% Of People Prefer This Cut Of Steak Over Filet Mignon

While most of us could count the most popular steak cuts on our fingers, Mashed decided to get a better lay of the land. We asked what people's favorite cut of steak were, and 656 responded. The most popular, unsurprisingly, was filet mignon, with 28.96 percent claiming it as their preferred cut.

Such a percentage, however, is obviously nowhere near an outright majority. Contenders that stopped filet mignon from starring all alone included T-bone with 14.33 percent and New York strip with 17.07. Lesser ones that still detracted from the winner were hangar steak with its 1.59 percent showing, skirt with 3.66, and flank with 5.06. The "Other" category that took up 6.89 percent of all the votes and was split between answers of "none" or some other variant and sirloin, which just shows that we probably should have included it instead of hangar.

The real challenger to filet mignon's supremacy, however, was the ribeye cut, with 22.56 percent of people preferring it over the filet mignon.

Despite The Spruce Eats acknowledgement of its status as the king of steaks, filet mignon's general reception seems to be similar to the results of the poll. In 2013, Thrillist asked a series of chefs a few questions about underrated meats and overrated meats. While not every chef went after filet mignon, enough of them placed filet mignon as the most overrated meat that it developed into a theme for the piece. "It's one-dimensional," John Besh complains. Josh Capon agrees: "There's not much flavor and not a lot of fat. It was classic back in the day, and obviously it's expensive, but it's not a flavorful piece of meat to me."

The expense and taste are due to the fact that a filet mignon, as The Spruce Eats explains, are steaks cut from the middle of the tenderloin, which in turn is a small cut of the cow. It lacks fat, and because butchers source it from such a specific location from the body, they get one filet mignon per cow.

The ribeye, however, has rich marbling throughout (via BBC). This gives it a richer, juicer flavor. Also, since it comes from the ribs, which is a more general part of the cow, more rib-eyes are produced per cow than filet mignon, making them cheaper.

So, while filet mignon may have a place with its extreme tenderness, people who enjoy steak enough to eat it regularly may find more pleasure in the ribeye.