Carne Asada

Name: Carne Asada
Total time: 260 min
Yield: 4
Ingredients: 2 lb beef (skirt or flank steak, thin); 1 unit orange (juice); 3 tbsp lime (juice); 5 clove garlic (minced); ⅓ cup cilantro (chopped, stems included); 1 tsp cumin (ground); 1 tsp oregano (Mexican, dried); 2 tbsp olive oil; 1 ½ tsp salt; ½ tsp black pepper (ground); 8 unit tortillas (corn, warmed)

Meat & Game · Latin American & Caribbean

11 ingredients · 260 minutes · 4 servings

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642kcal48.3g protein34.9g fat33g carbs~$3.17/ serving*

only in an optional ingredient: gluten, soy

Restrictions

Only if you add itgluten (beer, soy sauce) · soy (soy sauce)Leave that ingredient out and the dish does not have it.

Diets

No porkNo alcohol · without one

Worked out from the ingredient list. It knows nothing about brands, shared equipment or cross contamination, and it is not a certification — if you have an allergy, you still have to read the label.

Ingredients

Servings:

2 lb	beef (skirt or flank steak, thin)
1 unit	orange (juice)
3 tbsp	lime (juice)
5 clove	garlic (minced)
⅓ cup	cilantro (chopped, stems included)
1 tsp	cumin (ground)
1 tsp	oregano (Mexican, dried)
2 tbsp	olive oil
1 ½ tsp	salt
½ tsp	black pepper (ground)
8 unit	tortillas (corn, warmed)

Optional

Not counted above. The dish works without them.

1 tbsp	soy sauce (for depth)
1 unit	chili (serrano, minced, in the marinade)
1 unit	onion (white, diced, to serve)
¼ cup	beer
1 unit	lime (wedges, to serve)

Steps

Mix8 min
non-reactive bowl or bag — not aluminium
orange juice + lime juice + garlic + cilantro + cumin + oregano + olive oil + pepper (+ serrano, + soy sauce, + beer), whisked. Hold the salt back if you plan a long marinade, and use glass or plastic: this much acid reacts with aluminium and picks up a metallic taste
Marinate180 min
refrigerated, 2-4 hours, turned once — no longer than 6
- beef
beef in the marinade. Two to four hours is the window. Marinade penetrates only a few millimetres whatever the label claims, so longer buys almost no extra flavour while the citric acid keeps working on what it has reached — past six hours the surface goes opaque and mealy, cooked by acid rather than heat, and it will never take a proper char
Season15 min
out of the marinade, wiped nearly dry, salted, 15 minutes at room temperature
the steak wiped down and + salt applied now. Wipe it dry: a wet surface has to boil off before it can brown, and the herbs clinging to it will burn to bitter specks on a hot grill. Letting it lose the refrigerator chill means less time over the fire to reach the centre
Grill6 min
hottest possible fire or a smoking cast iron pan, 2-3 minutes a side, uncrowded
steak over direct high heat until deeply charred outside and about 52-55°C inside for medium rare. A thin cut gives you a very short window in which the crust forms before the interior overshoots, so the fire has to be genuinely hot — a moderate grill cooks it through grey before any char appears. Leave it alone; each turn restarts the browning
Rest8 min
board or warm plate, loosely tented, 5-10 minutes
before cutting. Skirt and flank are coarse-grained cuts under real tension after high heat, and resting lets the fibres relax and reabsorb liquid that would otherwise be lost on the board
Slice5 min
against the grain, sharp knife, thin, on a slight bias
- tortillas
- onion
across the grain into thin strips (+ onion, + lime, in warmed tortillas). This is not presentation — skirt and flank have long, tough muscle fibres, and slicing across shortens them to a few millimetres so the teeth cut them easily. Cut the same steak along the grain and it is genuinely chewy. Find the direction of the lines on the surface and cut perpendicular to them