Korean Style Skirt Steak

With the 4th right around the corner, I thought I'd share some barbecue and picnic related dishes in the next couple of days. Today, I'm sharing a super delicious Korean-style skirt steak. Skirt steak is one of the yummiest cuts of meat, in my opinion. It's got great flavor, great texture, and it's v. versatile. It's perfect for tossing on the grill because it just needs a really good sear and that's it. And because it's pre-cut before it's served, it's great for serving to a crowd. You can really stretch your dollar with this one.

Ingredients:
2 lbs. skirt steak
¼ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons oil (canola, vegetable, corn, olive, avocado)
½ teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
2 scallions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
2" piece of ginger, scored and pierced

I like to use a wide and shallow dish for marinating. You can use a ziploc bag if you prefer. Mix together all of the marinade ingredients - basically everything except for the beef. Give your marinade a taste just to make sure the seasoning's all right. If you've got a super low-sodium soy sauce, you might want to add in just a smidge more and if you've got a super salty soy sauce, you might want to either add in a little more sugar and/or oil. Use your tastebuds and make a judgment call.

I like to cut the beef into smaller five or six inch pieces. Usually, it's slightly thinner on one end so cutting it into pieces will give you more control when it comes time to cook (and make sure that the thinner pieces don't get overdone). Swirl the meat around in the marinade to make sure it's all well coated and then leave it to marinade for 1 hour at room temperature. You'll want the meat to be at room temperature when you cook it anyway. Or, if you're doing this ahead of time, you can leave it to marinade in the refrigerator overnight. Just make sure to bring the meat to room temperature before you cook it.

After marinating, the meat should look a little more brown (because of the soy sauce). Gorgeous!

Cook the meat on a grill. If you don't have a grill or it's raining or whatever the reason, then you can cook it on a grill pan or a cast iron skillet. Use a pan that holds a lot of heat so you can get a good sear on the meat. Since the meat is at room temperature, you really just need to cook it long enough to get a little bit of caramelization on both sides - maybe 2 or 3 minutes on each side at the most. If you like your meat well done, then you'll cook it for longer, but if you don't want to waste this delicious beef, you'll stick to medium or rarer.

If you're so inclined, you can also toss some vegetables in the same marinade and grill them up as well.

Let the meat rest for 10 minutes before cutting it up. Make sure to cut it across the grain, unless you like your guests complaining about how chewy the meat is.

Ahh, perfectly pink.

Serve it with rice and cucumber kimchi and jjigae (if the weather isn't too hot). It's friggin' DE-licious. This meat basically tastes like kalbi but it's better because the skirt steak itself also has a lot of delicious inherent meaty flavor. The short ribs we've been buying these days are always super fatty and not as flavorful as I remember as a kid so they haven't been as delicious lately. Plus, we can only get our hands on it when we go to the Korean grocery. Skirt steak is available in normal grocery stores so that already makes it ten times better.

Here's the recipe page: