We can all agree on a few things here: Great roast beef should taste, first, like beef. It should be buttery, rich, and juicy, with a nice smoky, grilled or broiled flavor. It should also be tender enough to eat in a taco or burrito, but substantial enough to serve as a steak and eat with a knife and fork. Finally, the marinade should have a good balance of flavors, with no one ingredient overpowering the others. Here's how to make the carne asada of my dreams.
Saying "I'm going to develop a carne asada recipe" is like saying "Bartender, bring me a beer, please." The immediate follow-up is likely to be "I'm afraid you'll have to be a bit more specific than that."
Carne asada translates to "grilled beef" and, in its simplest form, can be nothing more than a steak, seasoned with salt and pepper, cooked over a hot fire. However, colloquially, when we hear the term "carne asada", we immediately think of the marinated meats that you are going to chop and stuff in your tacos, burritos or cemitas. But what exactly is in that marinade? Depending on who you ask, you'll get any number of different answers. Lime juice, garlic and herbs are often used. Some recipes call for dried or fresh chiles. Others opt for a fajita-style liquid marinade with soy or Worcestershire sauce.
When I was a kid, my favorite Mexican restaurant was the Cal-Mex El Torito chain. We were going to one of the New Jersey branches with the whole family. I ate my hot chips and watery salsa while coloring the faux-Mexican outlines on the paper tablecloth with the crayons they gave us, waiting for my fried ice cream, crusted with cornflakes and sprinkled with cinnamon, to arrive. . My dad used to play with his margarita granita, a drink that, by the way, was popularized in the United States by that same chain.
I'd had many versions of carne asada in my short life (my dad loved Mexican restaurants), but when it came to filling in the carne asada-shaped lines etched into my head, El Torito had the biggest crayon by far. His version was a piece of flank steak marinated in a pasilla-based sauce, grilled over the coals until nearly charred and crisp around the edges, and served slathered with a sauce that blended fresh citrus and more than that hallway
The east coast branches of El Torito have since closed, but when I moved west I was delighted to find that the chain was still going strong. When I decided to work on this recipe, my first step was to go straight to the source. I visited El Torito three times over the course of two days to get a good idea of what they are doing with their carne asada. The taste was vaguely as he remembered it: sweet, salty, a little peppery and deeply charred, but he certainly didn't remember the meat being this floury or grey. If this was going to be my prototype, I would have to make some major improvements before going into full production.
I went to the butcher's counter on the way home and bought all the cuts of meat that could work in my recipe. It was time to get serious about my meat.
The Meat Counter: Choosing the best cut of meat
Carne asada is usually made with flank steak, but I wanted to try a variety of inexpensive cuts to make sure. I bought half a dozen different cuts of beef and marinated them in a basic mix of lime juice, garlic, cilantro, olive oil, and chiles before grilling them over medium heat over hot coals.
Hanger is big and meaty, with a nice chunky texture that's well suited to marinades, but its large triangular cross-section isn't ideal for taco or burrito fillings.
Flank steak is easy to cook and slice due to its wide, flat shape, but it is too lean for this application.
The tri-tip , while fairly inexpensive and well-marbled, is simply too big. With such a low surface area to volume ratio, you barely get the flavor of the marinade.
The rib eye was one of my favorite cuts for roast beef (as well as one of my favorites to cook as a steak), with tons of meaty flavor and melt-in-your-mouth fat. The only problem is that the ribs require a very thin cut, which is fine for stuffing tortillas, but not great if you want to serve them to guests as a whole piece.
Fin meat , my second choice, has a thick, wide texture that is tailor-made for picking up and sticking to marinades. It is relatively lean, but its juiciness and great flavor make up for it.
The flank steak , as suspected, was the clear winner here, with the richest, butteriest flavor, a very good surface-to-volume ratio that maximizes flavor from the marinade, lots of thin edges to make them crisp and charred, and, when cooked properly, a texture that melts in your mouth.
Skirt steak comes as a long piece of meat with ribbons, about three inches wide and at least a couple of feet long. When you buy skirt steak from the butcher, the vast majority of the time you get inside skirt:
the fattier and more desirable brisket is sold almost exclusively to restaurants. This means that the real key to working with brisket is to leave a relatively large amount of fat on it (trim only the silvery skin which looks very tough) and cut it crosswise with the grain into five to six inch strips. lengths Cutting the steak this way will allow you to easily cut against the grain when serving.
The components of great marinades
Aside from the obvious of adding flavor, a good marinade has three goals: to improve texture by allowing the meat to better retain juices, to improve surface browning, and to tenderize. For our roast beef, we want all three of these effects.
I explored many of the different kinds of ingredients one might find in a marinade when I was working on a recipe for fajitas, a similar but different Mexican dish. In that article, I mentioned the essential marinade ingredients that will ensure maximum results in all of these categories.
Marinade ingredients and their effects
For my marinade, I knew I would want a mix of many of these ingredients, but there was simply too wide a variety to start with. So I started doing some general strokes, trying out some basic styles that I had seen in books and on the internet. After some testing, I eliminated those liquids that seemed too similar to fajita marinades. Then I removed the ones with too much oil and fresh aromas, like garlic and herbs. Those ingredients were welcome, but I wanted the backbone of my marinade to be much more robust, like the El Torito version I was used to. The dried chiles were where I would start.
the chiles
I've tried and written a lot about how to get the best flavor out of your chilies, and my almost universal recommendation is to ditch the chili powder instead of whole dried chilies, which almost always taste far superior.
I have also recommended microwaving the whole chiles to bring out their flavor, and that works well in this recipe as well. About 15 seconds in a microwave-safe dish is all it takes for the dried chiles to become toasty and pliable.
I've tried incorporating chilies into my adobo in a variety of ways, including steaming them in chicken broth and pureeing them (as I do in a couple of chili recipes), just roasting and grinding them, and mixing the roasted chilies with my liquid ingredients in my countertop blender
In this case, the easiest method turned out to be the best. Simply throwing toasted guajillo or pasilla and ancho chiles (along with some chipotles) into the blender with the liquid ingredients and grinding produced an adobo that was smooth enough to eat as a sauce, but still had some nice bits of chile skin left on it. which softened when the marinade sat out.
the wet ingredients
The next step was to nail in the wet ingredients. Citrus juice was a no-brainer. I tried the pure lime, but it was too acidic for the sauce and overwhelmed the other ingredients. A blend of lime and orange tempered the tartness and added a nice floral note to the aroma, which paired nicely with the smoky chipotle peppers. A bit of olive oil also loosened the mixture and provided some fat to distribute those fat-soluble flavor compounds around the meat.
To enhance the flavor of the mixture, I tried mixing various ingredients, such as molasses and Worcestershire sauce, an ingredient that is quite prevalent in the El Torito version. But no matter how little I used, the combination of Worcestershire and sugar was too reminiscent of barbecue sauce. I cut it off completely.
Instead, I knew I wanted another ingredient rich in glutamic acid, the chemical responsible for triggering our sensation of taste. I resorted to the usual suspects: soy sauce and fish sauce.
A little pinch of both gave the sauce the depth it needed and helped bring out the flavor of the flank steak, while also improving its level of moisture and tenderness. Fish sauce is not traditional in Mexican cuisine, but this is carne asada: there are no rules about anything, apart from what falls on the plate at the end of the recipe. Also, in the amount used here, the fish sauce completely melts into the bottom.
Rounding out the flavors of my adobo was garlic, a small handful of fresh coriander leaves, some whole roasted cumin and coriander seeds, and a bit of brown sugar to balance out all the extra saltiness and acidity.
marinating time
What about the time it takes for the marinade to take effect? Does marinating for hours or even days at a time help, detract, or make no difference at all? To test this, I placed flank steak pieces in vacuum sealed bags of marinade, sealing a new bag every few hours to test marinade times ranging from zero to 36 hours. Much to my wife's annoyance, this meant waking me up every few hours in the middle of the night to a loud alarm so I could go put another piece of meat in the marinade. I'm not sure why I put up with it, but I think the food might have something to do with it.
After marinating, I decided that the only way to ensure all my samples cooked identically would be to sous vide them in a temperature controlled water bath. Each steak spent an hour at 120°F (49°C), then a few minutes on a smoky grill to bring them to a nice medium point before tasting.
A dozen steaks later, I came to a shocking conclusion: Aside from the ones that had gone from zero to an hour in the marinade, most of the steaks tasted nearly identical and weren't particularly flavorful.
It was pretty obvious what the marinade was missing: salt. While I had been putting as much salt in the marinade as I would use for a serving sauce (about 1 1/2% to 2% salt by weight), a marinade actually needs to be a lot saltier for it to really soak through. absolutely.
Many people seem to be under the impression that meat is like a paper towel, or perhaps a ShamWow, capable of absorbing whatever we dip it into. If that were the case, we would see a lot more sponges and diapers made from meat. .
Okay, maybe not, but you get my point: meat is already packed with stuff, so it's not particularly good at soaking up more stuff. To make it absorb more, you need to alter its structure, and that's where salt comes in. In significant enough proportions, salt can dissolve the muscle proteins responsible for holding meat fibers together tightly. Once they loosen up, that salt can soak into the meat, taking away some other flavors as well.
Increasing the salt content to 3% (just a couple extra teaspoons) can significantly improve the flavor of the meat, though even with added salt the marinade can only penetrate so far. Those big aromatic molecules in a marinade are simply too big to go beyond the surface.
Once I increased the amount of salt, I found that in about three hours, the meat had absorbed most of the flavors it was going to pick up. The difference between meat marinated for one hour and meat marinated for three hours was much greater than the difference between a batch marinated for three hours and a batch marinated for 12 hours. Eventually, though, the acid in the marinade will start to work against it, turning the meat mushy instead of meaty, so I don't recommend marinating for more than 12 hours total.
I happily found that if I set aside some of the marinades before adding the extra salt, it made for not only a decent but a fantastic sauce for the meat, whether I decided to eat it whole with a knife and fork or stuffed into tacos with onions and cilantro.
Grill your flank steak
The last step is actually the easiest (and the most fun!): grilling.
There's a cardinal rule for flank steak, and we've said it over and over again: use the highest heat possible. I mean steamy, searing, painfully hot.
Flank steak is very lean, but it tastes best when charred to the point of crispiness. At typical grilling temperatures, the center ends up overcooking before the outside has a chance to char. For best results, add your steak to the grill only once the coals are at full temperature, or after the gas has had a chance to preheat until it can't preheat any more.
That's the only way to get a gorgeously charred steak on the outside, full of smoky, sweet flavors, with a center that's still pink and the fat starting to soften and melt, lubricating the whole thing. I usually recommend using a thermometer, and if you have one, the center of this steak should register 110°F or so when you remove it (the carryover will bring it to medium-rare 125 to 130 °F/52 to 54°C). But even without a thermometer, as long as the outside is nicely charred, there's a good chance it'll hit that temperature endpoint. It takes a little more charcoal than usual, or a slightly longer preheat, but the results are worth it.
An important detail: after the steak comes off the grill and rests for a minute to reach its final temperature, make sure to cut it against the grain, that is, perpendicular to the very pronounced ridges that appear in the meat. If you don't,
it will leave long muscle fibers in your meat, making it feel rubbery and tough. It will also instantly reduce any accumulated street credibility you may have gained from friends, family, and acquaintances to an effective operating level of zero, and you'll be forced to start building that credibility all over again from scratch.
If there was a short list of foods that help boost your street cred when executed correctly, carne asada would have to be pretty high up. Now, if only I could find a way to replace that fried ice cream and frozen margaritas from my memory, I could finally break free from the shackles of my youth.
Ingredients
3 whole dried ancho chiles, stems and seeds removed (see note)
3 whole dried guajillo chiles, stems and seeds removed (see note)
2 whole chipotle peppers, canned in adobo sauce
3/4 cup (180 ml) fresh juice from 2 to 3 oranges, preferably tart oranges
2 tablespoons (30 ml) fresh juice of 2 to 3 limes
2 tablespoons (30 ml) extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons (30 ml) soy sauce
2 tablespoons (30 ml) Asian fish sauce, such as Red Boat
2 tablespoons (30g) dark brown sugar
1 small bunch cilantro, young leaves and stems only, divided
6 medium garlic cloves
1 tablespoon whole cumin seeds, toasted and ground
1 teaspoon whole coriander seed, toasted and ground
kosher salt
2 pounds (900 g) flank steak (2 to 3 whole flank steaks), trimmed and cut on the grain into 5- to 6-inch lengths (see note)
Warm corn or flour tortillas, lime wedges, chopped onion, fresh cilantro, and avocado, for serving
Addresses
Place the dried ancho and guajillo chiles on a microwave-safe plate and microwave until pliable and smelling toasty, 10 to 20 seconds. Transfer to a blender jar and add the chipotle peppers, orange juice, lime juice, olive oil, soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar, cilantro, garlic, seeds cumin and coriander seeds. Mix until a smooth sauce forms, about 1 minute. Season to taste with salt. Transfer half of the sauce to a large bowl and the other half to a sealed container. Set the sealed container aside in the refrigerator.
Add an additional 2 teaspoons of salt to the sauce in the bowl. It should taste slightly saltier than it is pleasant to taste. Add 1 piece of steak to bowl and turn to coat. Transfer to a gallon-size ziplock bag with the top folded to prevent excess sauce and meat juices from contaminating the seal. Repeat with the remaining steaks, adding them all to the same bag. Pour any excess marinade over the steaks. Squeeze all the air out of the bag and seal it. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours or up to 12 hours.
When you're ready to cook, remove the extra sauce from the fridge to allow it to warm up a bit. Light a fireplace full of charcoal. When all the charcoal is lit and covered with gray ash, pour and place the coals on one side of the charcoal grate. Put the cooking grate in place, cover the grate and preheat for 5 minutes. Alternatively, set half the burners on a gas grill to the highest heat setting, cover and preheat for 10 minutes. Clean and oil the grill rack.
Remove fillets from marinade and wipe off excess. Place it directly on the hot side of the grill. If using a gas grill, cover; if you use a charcoal grill, leave it exposed. Cook, turning occasionally, until steaks are well charred on the outside and centers register 110°F (43°C) on an instant-read thermometer, 5 to 10 minutes total. Transfer to a cutting board and let rest for 5 minutes. Slice thinly against the grain and serve immediately, adding extra salsa, lime wedges, avocado, onion, cilantro, and tortilla chips.
special equipment
grades
I like ancho and guajillo chiles here, but a mix of chiles such as black, pasilla, and California can be used instead. An equivalent weight of hanger or fin steak may be used in place of flank steak.
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