Ever wondered about cooking skirt steak or about the difference between a skirt steak and other long, thin, and flat steaks? Well, wonder no more! Here’s your easy guide to finding, slicing, and cooking skirt steak.
Where it’s from: the skirt steak is from the plate part of the cow as seen in the graphic below:
Pros and cons: good, nice strong beefy flavor, excellent in fajitas or beef rolls. It does contain more muscle than other flat steaks, so it’s important that not to overcook when cooking skirt steak–they should always be served medium rare to rare for ultimate tenderness and flavor.
Similar steaks: the flatiron, the flank, and the blade/flap. The skirt steak isn’t quite as tender as some of these other ones (especially the flatiron), but it does have some great flavor!
Where to buy: You can order organic grass fed skirt steaks online on our website via the button below!
Cooking skirt steak: skirt steaks are good marinated and then grilled or pan-fried, though since they are a bit cumbersome they don’t fit as well in a pan. You can skip the marinade and still make a delicious steak, though skirt steaks are not quite as tender as, say, flatirons. You can also use skirt steaks in beef rolls, but be sure to pound the meat to tenderize it first and break down the muscles in it (and your muscles too)! And of course skirt steaks are great in fajitas. Just be sure you don’t overcook! Another delicious way to make skirt steaks is this tasty slow cooker method (which also, by the way, totally works for fajitas)!
And here’s what you can do when cooking skirt steak with an extra-super long steak like the one below:
1. Slice up the raw steak.
2. Marinate (or just lightly season if you want) the small slices, then grill. Be sure to when cooking skirt steak to only cook to medium rare!
3. And slice! Serve with vegetables or your favorite side, or add to a fajita mix.
Very important takeaway: Always. slice. against. the grain. This is standard for all steaks, but it’s especially CRITICAL for skirt steaks. I really can’t stress this enough. This is the number one mistake people make when cooking skirt steak. It breaks my heart when someone does not slice their skirt steak against the grain and ends up with tough, stringy meat that could have been SO easily avoided.
The problem with skirt steaks is that it is not intuitive to slice them against the grain. You’d think you cut them the short way, but actually you cut them the long way. Here’s how:
You can always tell the direction of the grain. You can clearly see it in the raw steak (look at those lines), but you can still see it in a cooked steak. Note how the lines are still fully visible in the cooked steak below:
So you’re going to cut that steak the long way, not the short way. The against-the-grain rule applies for all steaks, but it’s the easiest to forget it on skirt steaks because it doesn’t seem like you should cut them that way. If you end up with really long slices, that’s fine–you can just cut those slices in half.
Just don’t slice along the grain. Please.
And that’s it! That’s the quick and dirty guide to everything you need to know about cutting, buying, and cooking skirt steak! Now go get your grill going or make some tasty fajitas! And, if you want to save this guide for later, you can pin it using the image below:
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