Beautiful grill marks on your steak certainly carry a ton of visual appeal, but if your priority is flavor, you might not want to see any grill marks at all. While these marks do indicate that parts of your steak have crusted nicely from the high heat of the grill, you'll be better off cooking your beef in a way that doesn't produce these streaks.

The parts of steak with grill marks may be tasty, but you'll be better off achieving that kind of browning all over the steak, not only on certain parts. Steak browns due to the Maillard reaction, a chemical reaction that occurs when food meets heat and creates crisp, deep, roasted, savory flavors, and more browning means more flavor.

Browning your whole steak evenly on all sides will maximize flavor, compared to a steak that's nicely browned on the parts with grill marks, but not browned enough on the rest of the surface. Flipping your steak often also maximizes the Maillard reaction, disproving the myth that you should only flip your steak once on the grill.