Marinated Grilled Flank Steak Recipe | Simple Nourished Living (2024)

FAQs

What's the longest you should Marinate Flank Steak? ›

Place the steak in the bowl and turn it, so it is completely coated with the marinade. (You can also place the steak and marinade in a plastic freezer bag and place it in a bowl.) Chill and marinate for at least 2 hours or up to overnight.

The muscle fibers in flank steak all run in a single direction, so this cut of beef is ideal for tenderizing with a marinade and grilling over high heat. I like to marinate to help tenderize and flavor the steak and then sear over scorching high-heat until medium rare.

Try poking holes for better penetration when you only have a short time for marinating the meat. It'll help maximize tenderness in the Flank steak without risking too much of a good thing.

Then, grill the steak until it's medium-rare. Flank steak is most tender at this level of doneness, and cooking it further can give it a chewy texture.

There's disagreement over how long is too long with citrus

But a thinner cut like flank steak is naturally going to have more relative surface area, meaning over-marinating — and thus turning a lot of it into a mushy mess — is even more of an issue than with thicker cuts.

The critical reason for this is that flank steak, although lean and tasty, is tougher than other cuts of beef due to the many long, thin fibers running through it. To help tenderize flank steak, it is often marinated and cooked by grilling, stir-frying, broiling, or smoking.

The big advantage of dry rubs, and the reason we love using them so much, is that they don't add any additional moisture to the exterior of a piece of meat the way that a marinade does.

Do you close the grill when cooking flank steak? ›

Closed lid means convection

When we're grilling, we all aim for food with a crusty, slightly charred exterior and a moist, tender interior. We want that result whether we're cooking a thin flank steak, or a thick slab of ribeye. We want it when we grill wispy asparagus, and also when we grill hearty potatoes.

However, every great steakhouse seasons the steaks they cook. Typically a steak is seasoned with coarse ground black pepper, sea or kosher salt, garlic, and some type of signature spice. In addition to the seasoning most steakhouse's use a marinade, butter, or some type of baste or finishing liquid.

Remove Marinade Before Cooking: To prevent flare-ups on the grill and ensure properly browned meat when sautéing or stir-frying, wipe off most of the excess marinade before cooking. Keep just a little marinade on the meat surface to maximize flavor.

The oil helps emulsify the marinade into a thick sauce that coats the meat. It's also a flavor-carrier. And having a coating of an oil-based sauce on your steak before you grill it will help it cook better and more evenly.

A steak marinade should include three basic ingredients -- acid, oil and spices -- with each playing an essential role in the marinating process. Most recipes call for marinating steaks about 24 hours, but you can extend that to two days by following a few basic steps to prevent the growth of bacteria.

Information. Most recipes for marinating meat and poultry recommend six hours up to 24 hours. It is safe to keep the food in the marinade longer, but after two days it is possible that the marinade can start to break down the fibers of the meat, causing it to become mushy.

You can even get by with 30 minutes! You don't want to marinate the steak longer than 12 hours, however, because the acid in the marinade will begin to change the structure of the meat and it can become mushy.

A meat thermometer should read 130°F. Rest your Flank steak for 5 minutes before serving, covering lightly with foil. The temperature of the meat will continue to rise about 5°F during this time (this is called "carryover cooking"). The final temperature will read 135°F.