Skirt Steak Marinade with Chimichurri Recipe – No grill is complete without my insanely flavorful skirt or flank steak marinade with chimichurri sauce! Easy, absolutely delicious and beyond flavorful!
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The Perks and Highlights for the Best Skirt Steak Marinade
Cuisine Inspiration: Latin American flavors
Primary Cooking Method: Marinating and grilling, baby!
Dietary Info: Gluten-free and absolutely full of protein.
Key Flavor: The dominant flavors are a tantalizing mix of zesty citrus, rich olive oil, salty soy sauce, tangy apple cider vinegar, aromatic garlic, and a splash of umami from the Worcestershire sauce. The chimichurri sauce adds a fresh, herby kick to round everything out.
Skill Level Required: Pretty easy
Sweet Highlights:
- Zesty Citrus Magic: The citrus juices help tenderize the steak, ensuring every bite is mouth-wateringly soft.
- Garlic’s Bold Embrace: Garlic adds a depth of flavor that transforms the marinade from good to “can I bathe in this?”
- Chimichurri Charm: This sauce is the unsung hero of the recipe, adding a fresh, herby layer
- Soy Sauce Savvy: A splash of soy brings all the ingredients together
- Grill Marks for Days: There’s something undeniably magical about the smoky goodness that a grill imparts on steak, making this dish a summertime (or anytime!) favorite.
What is Skirt Steak?
Skirt steak is a long cut of beef that’s sliced thinly from the diaphragm muscles of the cow. It is one of the most flavorful cuts of beef but can be a little on the tougher side because of the connective tissue in the cow’s diaphragm muscles. That’s where marinades come in to help tenderize the meat.
Ingredients
The flavor is unreal. Because of the texture of skirt steak (I love to use it here in my carne asada as well) and flank steak, I wanted to make sure I used a marinade recipe that would really infuse a ton of flavor and also help to tenderize the meat. The texture is very different than this london broil, cube steak or ribeye steak, which is much more tender.
The ingredients contained in this marinade including:
- olive oil
- orange juice
- lime juice
- soy sauce
- Worcestershire sauce
- apple cider or red wine vinegar
- minced garlic
Ingredients like lime juice and soy sauce add acid to really break down the toughness of the steak, and it couldn’t taste better if you ask me. That citrus essence gets right down in each and every bite. Put your completed marinade in a resealable plastic bag and add your steak pieces. Refrigerate and marinate for 6 to 7 hours.
Can You Marinate Too Long?
Optimally, for tough steaks like skirt and flank, it’s best to marinate it no longer than 24 hours in the refrigerator. Beyond overnight marinating is overkill. Also, never re-use a marinade.
How to Cook Skirt Steak
Before placing your marinated skirt or flank steak on the grill, it’s important to liberally season the meat on both sides with salt and pepper. Allow your charcoal or gas grill to get good and hot.
Place your steak on the grill and cook both sides for 4 to 6 minutes. The meat should be perfectly charred with wonderful grill marks and have a golden brown color. Remove from the grill and allow the meat to rest for around 5 minutes.
After grilling your steak and allowing it to rest is the best time to cut it. Take your steak and always cut against the grain in thin slices.
Adding Chimichurri Sauce
Adding my chimichurri sauce, takes this recipe to a whole new level y’all. This chimichurri sauce is so fresh with clean flavors. Cilantro and parsley are already so fresh but when added with fresh lime juice, the essence is just so wonderful. It is a lovely accent to this dish.
You can whip this chimichurri recipe up in your heavy duty blender or food processor. The flavors just come together so perfectly with the steak.
More Grilled Recipes
- This Grilled Ribeye Steak with Tequila Glaze is everything!
- These BBQ Baby Back Ribs are incredible!!!
- Grilled Proscuitto Arugula Pizza is necessary!
- What’s a grill without chicken? This Tequila Lime Chicken is necessary.
- This Carne Asada makes my life every time I grill it!
- And finally get this Grilled Catfish recipe on the grill immediately.
Skirt Steak Marinade Recipe with Chimichurri Recipe
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Ingredients
For the Marinade and Grilling:
- 2/3 cup olive oil
- 1/2 cup fresh orange juice
- 1/3 cup fresh lime juice
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
- 3 tablespoons apple cider or red wine vinegar
- 4 garlic cloves minced
- 1 pound skirt steak
- Salt and pepper to taste
For the Chimichurri Sauce:
- 1 cup fresh parsley
- 1 cup fresh cilantro
- 1/4-1/3 cup olive oil
- 1/2 medium onion diced
- 3 garlic cloves
- 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- Optional: 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Instructions
For the Marinade and Grilling:
- Whisk all of the ingredients together and pour into a large ziploc bag.
- Add skirt steak to ziploc bag with marinade and allow to marinade up to 6-7 hours max depending on how thick the meat is.
- When ready to grill, liberally season with salt and pepper.
- Grill until golden brown and perfectly charred then allow to rest before slicing on a cutting board.
For the Chimichurri:
- Add all of the ingredients to a heavy duty blender or food processor and blend until everything is chopped up and smooth then serve. Seriously that easy.
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This is my new favorite recipe for skirt steak. Great marinade and a great sauce. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe.
Can I use all fresh cilantro? I don’t have any fresh parsley. Thank you!!
I’ve done it before with all cilantro, and it turns out just fine.
Looks so delicious!!!!! I’m making mine tonight. It has been in the Fridge for the last 28 hours in the marinade. It smells so so good right now. I can’t wait for dinner. I will let you know as soon as I get through eating. I can’t wait for the sause either. It looks really good Thank you for the great recipe.
This was incredible! I was hoping for leftovers but the Chimichurri sauce was too good and we just kept eating. A first time visitor to the site but now a fan,
We absolutely love this marinade…we make it about once a month! Thank you SO much for sharing it w us! Erica
Delicious!!! I put the marinade and skirt steak together and vacuum sealed and froze it to take on a trip. Took it out in the morning and left it on the counter to thaw. Grilled it that evening. So delicious. Grilled green onions from the garden, wrapped it all in a homemade tortilla.
Just wanted to say I’m getting ready to make this a 3rd time!! I cut the marinade down by a lot (actually to a 1/4 of the recipe) and the chimichurri in half. My husband liked the hangar steak best bc more tender but you can’t go wrong. I followed the recipe exactly other than trimming the amount. This is classic!
Just an INCREDIBLE recipe! ❣ Made it for my husband and daughter recently;today I’ll make it for company of 8.This is the closest I can remember to my friend in the Chicagoland area who made it for me many,many years ago.Thank you!
This is my go to recipe. The only thing I do differently is that I put all the chimichurri ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Thank you for this fabulous recipe.
Made this today and it was delicious. Only thing I did differently is that I fried the steak. After yesterday’s blizzard here in CO, I didn’t have it in me to dig the grill out of the snow bank!