Skirt steak is my favorite cut and it’s on sale this week, so I bought a few pounds, cooked it, and hated it: it turned out dry, grey, tough, and tasteless. Whose fault is this?
A) The way I cooked it. I turned on the broiler (in my oven), let it warm up for a few minutes, and stuck the seasoned meat under the broiler for a bit, examined it, turned it over, and let it cool. Should I have let the broiler warm up for, say, 15 minutes instead of 5?
B) My oven’s. Riffing off that last point, is it possible that my broiler just doesn’t get hot enough, no matter how long I gave it to warm up?
C) The butcher’s. It was a little on the thin side, but not much thinner than the skirt steaks I used to prepare (by this method) pretty well. Are there gradations of skirt steak? I assumed skirt steak was skirt steak.
D) Aldi’s. That’s the store I bought it from. Did they sell me shoe leather instead of skirt steak?
E) My memory’s. I liked this cut of meat when I was younger, but I haven’t bought it for years. It’s gotten very expensive, and I eat very little red meat these days.
I still have a few pounds left in the freezer, so no rush, but I would like to know how to prepare this next batch so it’s juicy and flavorful, the way I remember it.
Also, any idea for what I can do, if anything, with the remaining overcooked portions, other than “throw the damned things away and stop torturing yourself” ?
I remember eating skirt steak that were thickish strips wound into a “roll” and pinned with a wooden skewer. A local meat shop that sold them, not the supermarket, but this was 40 or 50 years ago. When my mom cooked them under the broiler, she cooked them the same way you did. They always turned out succulent and tasty. Good memories.
I mostly wanted to reply because one time my mom opened the broiler to let the meat rest for a minute. The beagle got up on her hind legs snatched one (the biggest one!) and was out the doggie door before anyone could stop her. Funny and sad.
But I don’t know what went wrong with yours. I’d guess poor quality meat.
Did you cut it against the grain? That could be the toughness. But it sounds overall like you overcooked it.
Good point. Our roll-ups were definitely cut cross-grain.
I cut it every which way. Thin, thick, against the grain, with it. Didn’t help. Tough, tough, tough.
I’m no cooking expert but maybe try pounding the hell out it with a tenderizing mallet?
Yeah I think you just overcooked it then. I’ve had the Aldi skirt before and it was fine. I do mine on the stove top in a cast iron pan and cook to about 135 internal, let rest for five minutes to bring it to around 140 and allow juices to reabsorb. I usually like my steaks at about 120-125, but skirt I cook a wee bit more. I like the texture best at medium.
And it is extremely important to cut this particular cut of meat against the grain if you want to avoid chewiness.
Eyeballing a steak under the broiler is a pretty good way to overcook it. I agree that’s probably what happened here.
Agree.
Easy to over cook.
Wot is eyeballing?
Cooking it by how it looks rather than by thickness/time/internal temperature. The broiler is incredibly unforgiving for steak, and even moreso for thin cuts which are going to overcook in the blink of an eye.
Yeah…I’d think the broiler would be difficult to cook this steak well. It is probably possible with some practice and adjustments to dial it in but still…and it’s gonna cook fast.
Agree with all of the above – on a good and hot broiler you’re talking a couple minutes a side for a skirt steak. Best to take all doubt out of the situation with a probe thermometer. A marinade can help. And always slice thinly against the grain.
I’m pretty much in agreement with all of the above - love it, marinate it, it was probably overcooked, and grill/skillet vs difficult to observe broiler.
One other thing that wasn’t explicitly mentioned, but I find the fat to be key to skirt steak - you said this one was thinner than usual, so perhaps it was also leaner than usual, which might contribute.
Hard to tell but I did buy what should have been a good cut of meat, perhaps t-bone, I forget, and I had the most tasteless beef I can remember given it’s cut. It was from Walmart*, so go figure. But I do assume that some cows are just not as tasty as others. And given the choice the tastier cows most likely go to high end places, or when low taste quality cows come on the market (for whatever reason), they are sold at a discount and discount places tend to snap them up and hope for the best.
- No after that experience I never bought a piece of beef from Walmart again, and that was about 10 years ago.
Yep. We use skirt steak often for carne asado or some sort of teriyaki beef. On a hot charcoal grill it takes a few (emphasis on “FEW”) minutes to cook.
you need the “outside” skirt steak, not the “inside”— ask the butcher if in doubt, or if unlabelled. the outside is smaller and more tender, with at least as much flavor. rick bayless mentions this specific cut in his shows. I usually see the inside for sale, if it’s mentioned at all. the outside is harder to find.
In addition to all the comments above about overcooking that IMO are spot-on …
How did you season it? The skirt steak you get in restaurants has usually been marinated for hours to make that inherently cheap chewy cut taste & feel nice.
That’s not gonna help either. When you (anyone) only eats a “favorite” food once every few years, it’s probably not really much of a favorite and your (everyone’s) rose-tinted memory will majorly get in the way.