This Is Exactly How José Andrés Preps Steak Before Grilling

For the chef, great steak starts before it reaches the grill, with simple seasoning and careful temperature control.

Published on July 31, 2026

Chef José Andrés says coarse salt is all he uses for most grilled meats and fish, explaining that wood or charcoal smoke provides enough flavor without a marinade.
Andrés says the secret to great steak isn’t a marinade but proper tempering before grilling and cooking it long enough for the fat to render.
Chicken is the exception: When making pinchos morunos, Andrés uses a bold garlic-, cumin-, and spice-forward marinade.

Chef José Andrés is no stranger to the grill. The Asturian chef takes to cooking over live fire like, well, like wildfire. Recently, he even rebranded and restructured many of his acclaimed Spanish restaurant locations, The Bazaar, to feature more fire and more meat. Bazaar Meat — which already has locations in Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, and Las Vegas — is a meat-centric restaurant where wood-fired ovens and open kitchens lend a theatrical flair to the traditional steakhouse concept.

The sound of crackling flames is a memory for Andrés, who spent his childhood in Spain tending the fire for his family’s paellas, but the theatrical way he throws meat on the grill is pure José. Even at home, he loves grilling over live fire, where he has five grills (two outdoor grills, two wood-fired ovens, and a paella pit). His love of open-fire cooking is well known, as is his passion for high-quality meat, but what we wanted to know was what goes on behind the scenes before that meat meets the flame. Which is why we asked him about his favorite way to marinate his meat.

“For grilling meats and fish, I usually just use salt,” he says, noting that he always uses a coarse salt. Most coarse salts work well for seasoning, but his favorite is, of course, Sal de Añana, a mineral salt hand-harvested from the Salt Valley of Añana in Spain’s Basque Country. “If you’re grilling with wood or charcoal, you get so much flavor from the smoke that you don’t need a sauce or a marinade.”

When it comes to steak (like the new wagyu hybrid beef he serves at his restaurant Bazaar Meat, which is part Japanese wagyu and part American black angus), the best marinade is … time. “I like to temper my steaks to about 90ºF, then will grill them to about 115ºF,” he says. “Then you get carryover heat to bring it to beautiful medium-rare at 125ºF. With well-marbled steaks, you want to cook them enough to get the fat to render and for the meat to get really beautifully tender.”

But his stance on whether or not to marinate differs when it comes to poultry.

“If you’re grilling chicken, you can use a marinade,” he says. Unlike well-marbled steaks, which develop plenty of flavor from smoke and rendered fat, chicken benefits from a boost of bold aromatics and spices. One of Andrés’ go-to recipes is the garlic- and cumin-forward marinade for pinchos morunos, Spain’s Moorish-inspired chicken skewers. It combines garlic, toasted cumin, lemon, sherry vinegar, olive oil, pimentón, turmeric, cinnamon, saffron, cilantro, and oregano, and he recommends marinating the chicken for at least two hours, preferably overnight.

So if you’re planning your next cookout, try resisting the urge to marinate every protein the same way. According to Andrés, steak and chicken each benefit from a different approach — and knowing the difference can make all the difference.