Grilled Flank Steak with a Garlic-Chile Marinade

At school Thursday I was working on a flank steak for the line and for a lunch we are catering and I found two recipes. The first was a garlic, shallot, rosemary marinade and the second was the garlic chile marinade. John chose for me to do the garlic chile. After I finished prepping it for the marinade I had decided that I wanted to make it at home as well and try it out before Monday. I bought one of the marinading steaks and brought it home to try for dinner. It smelled really good and I think it turned out well. Martin liked it and Ethan even ate some, and he's not a big red meat eater.

Grilled Flank Steak with Garlic-Chile Marinade (From cooksillustrated.com)

Ingredients
For Marinade:
6 Tbsp vegetable oil
6 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 2 Tbsp)
2 medium scallions, minced (about 2 Tbsp) (I used a yellow onion instead)
1 chipotle chile in adobo sauce, minced (about 1 Tbsp - just save the rest of the can for something else)
1 medium jalapeno chile, seeded and ribs removed, minced

**Note: The ribs in a jalapeno are the hottest part. If you remove the ribs and the seeds it will cut back the heat significantly)

For the Steak:
1 flank steak (about 2 pounds) patted dry with paper towels
2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp ground pepper

1. Puree all marinade ingredients in blender until smooth.
2. Using a dinner fork, prick steak about 20 times on each side. Rub both sides of steak evenly with salt and the with the paste. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours.


3. Preheat your grill
4. Using paper towels, wipe paste off steak. Season both sides with pepper. Grill steak directly on grill until well browned 4-6 minutes. Using tongs, flip steak; grill until second side is well browned, 3-4 minutes. Cook until the internal temperature is 125 degrees. It will continue to cook as it rests. You do not want to over cook a flank steak! It is a meat that needs to be cooked rare or medium rare.



5. Cover steak with foil and let rest at least 15 minutes to let the juice redistribute.
6. Using a sharp chef's knife or a carving knife, slice steak about 1/4" thick against the grain and on a bias. Serve immediately.



Below is a drawing, it will show where you need to cut your meat to make it so it doesn't end up super tough and chewy. The grains on a flank steak all run the same direction so we need to cut against the grain and on a bias to give the slices a bigger surface area.