Skirt steak marinated in soy sauce, vinegar, lemon, mustard and garlic for half an hour, then grilled four or five minutes a side. The marinade does the work.
Churrasco is the cut
The ingredient list asked for 500 grams of churrasco, which tells anyone outside Colombia nothing at all.
Churrasco there names a cut of beef: skirt steak, the long flat muscle from the belly. It has a pronounced grain, a great deal of flavour and very little fat, and those three facts explain everything else about this recipe.
In an American butcher it is skirt steak. In some places it is sold as arrachera or fajita meat, which is the same thing.
The soy is the salt
Half a cup of soy sauce goes into the marinade and that is a substantial amount for 500 grams of meat.
It is why salt does not appear until the fourth step, after the meat has come off the heat. Salting a piece of beef that has spent half an hour in soy sauce gives you something inedible.
The rest of the marinade is doing other jobs: vinegar and lemon to work on the surface, mustard for body, garlic and oregano for aroma, oil to carry all of it.
Pink in the middle
Four or five minutes a side over medium-high heat, which for a piece this thin means medium at most.
Skirt steak is lean and coarse-grained, and cooking it through makes it chewy in a way that resting and slicing cannot fix. This is a cut to take off the heat while it still gives under a finger.
The recipe says the time depends on thickness and on how you like it, which is fair, but the direction of error is worth knowing: too little is recoverable, too much is not.
Slice it against the grain
The last thing that decides whether this works, and the recipe does not mention it.
Skirt steak has long, visible muscle fibres running the length of the piece. Cut along them and every slice is a bundle of long fibres, which is chewy. Cut across them, at an angle, and each slice is short fibres held together by nothing much, which is tender.
Rest it a few minutes first so the juices settle.
More beef
- Grilled beef — the plainer version.
- Steak with mushrooms — with a cream sauce.
- Colombian ají — what goes beside it.
- Patacones — and what goes under it.
Churrasco FAQ
Skirt steak. In Colombia churrasco names the cut rather than the dish: a long, flat, coarse-grained piece from the belly with a lot of flavour that goes tough if it is overcooked.
No. Half a cup of soy sauce in the marinade is doing the salting, which is why the salt only appears at the end. Adding more before it goes in the pan makes it too salty.
Thirty minutes is the minimum the recipe gives. A couple of hours is better. The vinegar and lemon work on the surface and the soy carries the flavour in.
Four or five minutes a side over medium-high heat, in a pan or on a griddle, which leaves it pink in the middle. Skirt steak cooked through turns chewy.
Against the grain, at an angle, after a few minutes of resting. Skirt steak has a very visible coarse grain and slicing along it gives stringy meat however well it was cooked.
Two. The card used to say one, which would be half a kilo of beef for a single person.
Yes, and that is where churrasco belongs. The times are the same over direct heat.
📖 Recipe
Churrasco (Skirt Steak) with a Soy and Mustard Marinade
Imprimir Pin ComentarIngredients
- 500 g skirt steak (churrasco)
- ½ cup soy sauce
- ¼ cup oil
- 3 tablespoons white vinegar
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 3 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- ½ onion (cut into thin slices)
- Salt and pepper
Notas
Instructions
- In a ziplock bag or a bowl, mix the oil, the vinegar, the soy sauce, the lemon juice, the mustard, the garlic, the onion and the dried oregano.
- Put the meat in, turn it so it is covered by the marinade, seal the bag or cover the bowl, and leave it for at least 30 minutes.
- Heat a little oil in a pan or on a griddle over medium-high heat and cook the churrasco for about 4 or 5 minutes a side, depending on its thickness and how you want it done.
- Season with salt and pepper, take it off the heat and serve.
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