Since it is without tin, skirt steaks needs to be cooked quickly, otherwise it won’t have a chance to develop that crispy crust it needs before the interior turns to toast. This means we need to apply direct heat. But as anyone who has ever cooked a steak over charcoal can attest, there’s almost always a result in flame ups.
You know, the soot producing flames that result any time to firebrands out of the meat and travels through the air onto the coals below. The way I see it, the meat and the heat are must haves in this equation, but the air not so much. So we don’t need this, that way there’s no air and if there’s no air, there’s no way we can have flames.
So we will cover the meat nicely and do a little ash management. Obviously, you don’t want to do this in to your house. Uncover the meat.
No, I’m not crazy. Here’s the thing. Now, the coals directly under the meat can’t get any oxygen so there won’t be any flames. That is going to be perfectly charred in 60 seconds. And I don’t care how much it hisses and how much it smokes or complains, do not touch that.
Now flip them over. Look at that mahogany sear, yes odds are goods and charcoals going to stick. Just pick it up and move it, there. Now, we flip and allow it to cook for another 60 seconds. Again, no touching.
60 seconds are up. So we remove our meat to a nice clean piece of double thick heavy-duty aluminum foil, double layers of course and wrap firmly. Now this isn’t actually resting because there is a lot of heat still in there. So I think of it is a post grill braise that will help to break down the connected tissues.
You know, I hate to see all that heat down there go to waste. So while this does it’s thing, grab a nice heavy cast iron skillet. So here’s something in the 12 inch range and slap it right down on the coals. Give that five to ten minutes to heat up. That’ll be just enough time to fabricate some fajita fixings.
Skirt steaks. I’m going to have some skirt steak. Wait a minute you know, how you slice skirt steaks or even flank steak for that matter, matters almost as much as how you cook it. For instance, if you were to take a slice with the grain, it might look very appetizing. But our strategy here to cut as thinly as we can against the grain.
Now there are some recipes out there that will tell you that this is not the right thing to do because it doesn’t look good on the plate. They’ll tell you to cut on the bias. Kind of a 45 degree angle like this, now I’ll grant you that that looks very, very pretty laid out on a plate. But know this, because the meat fibers are longer in this, this piece is going to be a little bit chewier than this piece. And let’s face, it if it’s all inside a fajita, you’re not going to see it anywhere, but cut it however you like.
Once you do get everything sliced up, I like to move everything back into the pouch. Why? Well, have a look at all that lovely sauce in there.
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