Coping with flank steak
With the cost of food constantly rising, I'm always on the lookout for what to do with cheaper cuts of meat. I have often lingered over flank steak at the store - it's so much cheaper than other forms of whole beef! But the one time I tried cooking it at home, I basically ended up trying to eat a triangular wad of shoe leather.
But I am determined to give it another shot, so I'm reading up on it first.
Flank steak is a long, thin cut of beef that is usually triangular. It is cheap because it is tough. That's just how it goes. Your job in cooking it is to make it more tender, or at least to avoid making the problem worse.
The first way to do this is with a marinade. A good acidic marinade will not only lend flavor to the meat, it will also soften some of that those collagen fibers which are keeping the flank steak tough. Here's a great recipe for a basic flank steak marinade.
The specific ingredients don't matter as much as making sure the marinade is acidic, and that your meat soaks in it long enough. You can use any kind of vinegar as the acidic base, or even lemon juice.
The next part is to cook it quickly. Aim for medium rare (130-135), which in a cut this thin will only take a few minutes on each side at medium-high heat. The longer you cook it, the tougher it will get. And be sure to give it a full 5-minute rest after cooking, to ensure that the proteins have ample time to relax and reabsorb moisture from the pan.
Finally, always slice flank steak thinly, and cut it across the grain. Either perpendicular or at a diagonal. Doing this means that you will be biting into a lot of shorter protein fibers, which will be much easier to chew than slicing it lengthwise, with those long tough strips.
Armed with a few simple tips, I'm ready to give it a try!
Image courtesy Flickr/quasarkitten