The Tomahawk Steak is a ‘bone-in rib steak’ with the entire rib bone intact. This bone is frenched, either trimmed of meat and fat or partially as in the picture above for presentation. The Tomahawk is cut from the rib section. The primary muscle of the Tomahawk is the longissimus dorsi, which is also the primary muscle in the Porterhouse, T-Bone and New York Strip.

The Longissimus dorsi are a pair of long, tender muscles that run down either side of the spine of the steer, outside the ribs, all the way from the neck to the hip. The tenderness of a steak is inversely related to the amount of work that a muscle does during the steer’s lifetime. So as a relatively unused muscle, the Longissimus dorsi commonly referred to as the loin or the backstrap are extremely tender, making them an ideal candidate for steak and also quite expensive.

While cheaper cuts like flank, and skirt, or cuts like hanger and flatiron are my favorite, but the “king of the steakhouse” are still those cuts that come from the Longissimus dorsi and the Psoas major.