I'm Just Here for the Food_ Version 2.0 - Alton Brown [13]
Skirt Steak: The Master Recipe
Skirt steak is flat, uniform in thickness, and rarely longer than a 12-inch pan is wide. Not only was it born to be seared, it is one of the leanest cuts of meat suitable for searing.
Software:
1 skirt steak (see Beef Blueprint)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Hardware:
Spray bottle for the oil
Cast-iron skillet
Resting rack
Aluminum foil or a large bowl
Application: Searing
Prep the meat. Remove the steak from the refrigerator, pat dry, and place on rack for at least 15 minutes. (Less difference between meat and oven temperature.)
Lube the meat. The goal here is to barely coat the surface of the meat with a thin film of oil. This will hold the salt to the meat, provide no-stick insurance, and serve as a heat conductor for all those nooks and crannies that don’t actually come in contact with the pan. The trick is to make this layer skimpy. Too much oil and the salt will wash away. Oil also likes to spatter and even burn when faced with high heat, so I say use as little as possible. To that end, I employ a drugstore spray bottle. I don’t put anything in it but peanut or safflower oil and I keep it set for “spray” rather than “stream” at all times.
Season the steak liberally on both sides with kosher salt and pepper. What the heck does “season liberally” mean? Truth is, most folks underseason their food before cooking, which usually drives them to oversalt at the table. In the case of skirt steak, I go with at least ¼ teaspoon of salt per side.
Grind pepper onto each side (I go with half as much pepper as salt), and then use your hand to really rub the seasoning into the meat. Rubbing is the only way to make sure you’ve got good salt-to-meat contact. Once the massage is over, go wash your hands, and allow the meat to sit for at least 5 minutes. This allows some juices to come to the meat’s surface—and those juices are what will give the steak a nice crust when seared.
Heat the pan. Place your largest cast-iron skillet on the cook top over high heat. Allow 3 minutes for the pan to reach cooking heat.
Turn on your stove’s exhaust system. If you do not have an exhaust system, open a window. Hold the steak so that the bottom edge hangs down right at the closest edge of the skillet and lay the steak down into the pan. This isn’t so much to prevent splattering as to make sure that you get the whole thing in the pan without sliding it around. This is important because moving the meat around in those first few moments can cut down on crust production.
Leave the meat absolutely alone for 3 minutes, then flip it over and cook for another 3 minutes—uninterrupted, please. This will result in a perfectly medium-rare steak. Want it more done than that? No, you don’t … really, you don’t.
Remove the steak from the skillet and let it rest on a resting rack for 5 minutes, covered loosely with aluminum foil or with a large bowl. Do not skip this step.
While the method given at right is the classic, it’s not one that I use anymore. That’s right, I no longer cook skirt steak on a pan, griddle, or even a grill. I cook it directly on natural chunk charcoal coals.
I get a couple of quarts going, spread them out across the grate, fan off the ashes, and lay on the meat. I let it cook 1 minute, flip the steak onto fresh coals, and cook another minute. Then I quickly wrap it in heavy-duty foil for a half hour. It’s the best-tasting meat I’ve ever had. And yes——it’s seared!
Now, skirt steak is not a very tender piece of meat. It’s lean and fibrous and flat-out tough unless you slice it correctly—meaning thin. By slicing thin across the grain, you present the prospective chewer with short muscle fibers rather than long ones, which creates a far more tender mouth feel. The problem with thin, however, is that a skirt steak is not very thick to begin with, so if you cut straight through