Flank Steak - What I have learned

En Español

My first philosophical conclusion related to cooking is that it’s not enough to follow the instructions on the recipes and have all the ingredients. The recipes that are in books or on the Internet are for people who already know how to cook, not for people who are learning to cook. I have prepared many recipes, many, and they rarely turn out as I imagine when I choose them. People who design the recipes assume their readers have a basic knowledge of the behavior and the changes foods undergo when they are mixed and exposed to heat. Analyzing the evidence, I DO NOT have this basic knowledge, nor have I taken the time to scrutinize, step by step, each recipe to figure out why I get the results I get ... Lousy! Despite my many failures, I have not given up on learning to cook because I want to belong to the group of people who possess the secrets and culinary wisdom and that make any dish a smooth production.

After carefully assessing my disastrous experiences with flank steak on the grill and researching the rationale behind each step of the recipe, I realize that I made many mistakes. For example, the meat was charred on the outside and not cooked on the inside because the choice of tools and the temperature of the meat before cooking were wrong.

The grill that I used was made of aluminum, very thin and light. According to Alton Brown, author of the book "I'm just here for the food. Food + Heat = Cooking ", it’s better to have a surface that conducts heat evenly and that is sufficiently thick in order to maintain the thermal energy. Aluminum, although a good energy conductor, is very thin and light so it does not keep the heat after placing a piece of cold meat. Also, because it’s so thin, it heats up very quickly. Thus I spent tedious hours truing to clean the burnt marinade off the damn thing. A better alternative is to use an iron grill, which keeps and conducts heat evenly because it’s so dense.

Meat should be at room temperature before cooking ... I had no idea of this! As I found in cookthink.com, it is important to let refrigerated meat get to room temperature before cooking, about 30 minutes. Otherwise you run the risk that the outside dries out or, worse, it burns while the inside does not get cooked. A trick mentioned in cookthink.com, is that if you cannot let the meat come to room temperature, cook over low to prevent burning.

I found all of this in reference the cooking process, but what do I need to do once it’s cooked? LET IT REST! The objective is to let the juices, which are concentrated in the center by the heat, redistribute throughout the piece of meat, making it tender. Another good thing about letting it rest is that the juices don’t end up all over your plate, but remain where they should be.

To learn more about the two main characters of this recipe, the flank steak and the marinade, I looked and this was what I found:

The flank steak is one of the best cuts to marinade. In other words, a cut of meat that takes a lot of flavors that is in the sauce.
Traditionally it was thought that the acid component of the marinade served to soften the meat but according to Alton Brown, on his book "I'm just here for the food. Food + Heat = Cooking " this effect only occurs at the surface and not inside the meat. It is a myth!

A marinade for usually consists of:
(from cookthink.com)

• Acid: Vinegar, Wine, Yogurt, Juice citrus
• Oil: Vegetable oil
• Elements aromatics: onion, garlic, ginger
• Salt: Soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, miso:
• Herbs / spices: Rosemary, oregano, cumin, cinnamon
• Sweet pepper / spicy crushed red pepper, hot sauce, pepper, chopped