Now I haven’t made anything that required flank steak in a long time, but I remember it as a cheap cut that if you were willing to work on it could be made passible with marinades and the like. On the way home, my girlfriend called and says “Hey, got this idea on the Food Network today, want to try it out. Can you stop and get some flank steak?”
I spend $35 on three pounds of flank steak. That’s like filet prices! Why on earth is such a bad cut of meat worth so much money these days?!?! I know that food prices are going up, but nothing like this. I could have made the thing with filet for $3 less!
Yeah, the demand and price for flank steak went up in the mid-80s. It can usually be had for around $10/lb, which is still quite a bit cheaper than your average filet.
Same thing with skirt steak (beef diaphragm). I grew up eating the stuff, which was dirt cheap into the 1970s and 80s, maybe. As recently as 2000 or so, I could get it for about 3 or 4 dollars/pound. But the last few years, the price has gone nuts. Now it’s about 8 bucks per pound.
Of course the way I cook it, it’s worth 8 bucks a pound, but I miss those those days when it was cheap and tasty.
Flank steak was the first actual meat I learned to cook, barring hot dogs and fried bologna and the like. Mom didn’t mind me experimenting on it because it was cheap. I love flank steak, very flexible for marinades, stir-fry, salads, etc. Plus, I hate bones and fat and gristley bits, so it’s perfect for me. I have a zillion ways to prepare it, so of course now it’s premium priced and we rarely have it.
I still get it for $3.99 a pound. Do you have a Mexican grocery or carniceria nearby? I notice it’s cheaper at my local supermercado than my local supermarket.
Same here. Which is good, because it’s a tasty cut and can be very tender when cooked, and cut, right. You’ve got to cut that thing on a bias to get tender bites.
It’s just my personal observation, but flank steak and its close cousin, skirt steak, got expensive when fajitas became popular. If you live in an area that didn’t experience la revolución de la fajita in the '90s, then you can likely still find it at a reasonable price.
My other observation is that my local Super Target only carries certified Angus beef, and it tends to be on the spendy side, including their $10/lb flank steak.
Meh. I do wonders with chuck steak and cubed bottom round - and these cuts will never get pricey. They’re just too tough.
I’m taking pot roast to work tomorrow for leftovers. It cooked all day in a crock pot studded with about eight cloves of garlic - the gravy over the parsnips and turnips is just sinfully good.
You never know. Oxtails used to be cheap, and now they’re a fairly prized and a mid-price cut. Same with beef short ribs (these two being my favorite stewing cuts, particularly short ribs.) I mean, neither are really expensive, but they’re not nearly as cheap as they used to be. Nowadays, chuck seems to be one of the cheapest cuts. I use it all the time for stews, but my preference is to the cuts above. All very easy to cook, and very flavorful.
Is there any reason you couldn’t substitute some other, cheaper cut of meat for the flank steak? From what I understand, flank steak is overall a sub-par cut of meat, so you need to use special cooking techniques to make it tender enough, but what would happen if you applied the same techniques to a cut that was already tender? Would it just become even more tender (and how is that a bad thing?), or would it become worse in some way?
Sure, fajitas made with some other cut might not be as authentic, but then, flank steak costing ten bucks a pound isn’t very “authentic”, either. And does the authenticity really matter, if it still tastes good?
We use flat iron steak for our fajitas because skirt is too expensive and we typically can’t find it anyway. I like flank steak as well but I generally can’t find it and when I can I don’t feel like paying what grocers want for it.
IMO, substituting like that is a often a pointless waste of money at best and disastrous at worst (ignore the issue of this particular cut - flank steak - becoming pricy for now. I’m generalizing about cheap cuts and technique).
Often, so-called “sub-par” cuts of meat have more flavor and more connective tissue than other cuts. When you apply good technique, the meat is much more flavorful, and pieces that with lots of connective tissue will have lots of gelatin as a result of technique. Indeed, cooking technique associated with many cuts of meat were devised to compliment that cut specifically: hence the rare filet and the chicken fried cube steak (tenderized from the round). There is some allowance for substitution of course, but some techniques are best left to certain cuts (and vice-versa). I would think that top-round would lend itself as a sub for flank steak, provided it is cut thin on the bias (as **bouv **has rightly noted above, this is an important aspect to making very stringy cuts of meat tender) and keep it rare.
And, as I like to say, “There are no bad cuts of meat, only bad ways to cook them.”
I wouldn’t have suggested it if flank weren’t so expensive right now. Certainly, you wouldn’t do this with something even more expensive than flank steak, since even if it worked, there are probably better things you can do with those cuts.
I see your point about the connective tissue gelatinizing, though.
Flank steak does not require braising to be tender. It can be grilled quite quickly & sliced against the grain.
Braising, or slow cooking, a piece of meat that does not contain relatively large amounts of fat and connective tissue is going to result in dried-out dinner.
That being said, there are plenty of cuts that will easily substitute for others in most recipes.
I don’t know what you guys are talking about. I get flank steak for about 5 bucks a pound from Costco. Marinate it in the fridge with something acidic for an hour or two, cook it on the grill with some indirect heat, slice it against the grain, and you have some delicious, flavorful, and incredibly tender meat.
I’d rather have that than gristly nasty New York steak.
