Roast Beef Skirt with Chimichurri Sauce

Unfamiliar, functioning in every breath, flavourful Beef Skirt

Apart from the more gastronomically recognised beef cuts, the beef skirt is a hidden gem, only available in a more traditional butcher and occasionally available in a few high end supermarket labelled as ‘forgotten cuts’. Skirt steak is a thin, long cut of beef from the diaphragm from the Flank (belly) section of the cow, also known as “Hanger steak” (or “Onglet” in France). It has plenty of fat marbling which makes it moist and flavoursome.

Unknowingly my Girls love the taste and texture of beef skirt meat from very young, beautifully incorporated within the best moist Cornish pasty voted by a majority of the Pang Clan. Sarah’s Pasty Shop in Looe is a must at least once when we holiday in Cornwall. I only told them 2 years ago about the skirt steak in the pasty and they have been eating slow roasted beef skirt steak for over 5 years and enjoyed the soft chew.

In this recipe, Chimichurri Sauce is to accompany the beef.

I use the fresh herbs available from my garden, I gathered 15g of parsley and 15g of fennel fronds. Then add 10g of dried Mexican oregano, 5 gloves of garlic, 1 shallot, 70g of extra virgin olive oil, 30g of red wine vinegar, 15g of lemon juice, 5g of salt, 3g of crushed black pepper and 5g of chilli flakes (or more if preferred).

Using a pestle and mortar, start crushing the garlic, shallot and salt to form a garlic paste. Then add in the parsley, fennel and dried oregano, use the pestle to bruise the herbs to release the flavour. Finally, add the rest of the ingredients to the mortar, mix with the pestle while drizzling in the olive oil, vinegar and lemon juice to liaise all ingredient together. Scoop out the finished sauce and leave to rest for minimum of 30 minutes, taste and add more salt, pepper and chilli flakes to taste. The Chimichurri Sauce when refrigerated and used as tasty condiment for 1 week, if it lasts that long!

I regularly get the whole beef skirt piece from my local butcher, each whole piece is about 0.6 - 0.75kg and will serve a family of four at about 50% the cost of good beef rump steak or 30% when compared with the cost of beef sirloin steak. To me when cooked properly, beef skirt steak has a better taste profile than beef rump or a sirloin cut.

For this recipe, I am doing slow roasted whole beef skirt at about 0.6kg. I trim out the top sinew covering to the top of the skirt to minimise the curling effect during searing, it can be a bit tricky as the sinew covering is quite thin. The bottom sinew is even thinner, there is no need to trim.

Start with warming of a 325mm diameter non-stick pan, then add 30g of salted butter and turn up the heat to bring the butter to just turned brown and bubbling, then immediately add 30ml of cooking olive oil to temper down the butter to stop it burning. Careful lay the top of the skirt onto the butter and listen to the sizzle, for about 2 minutes to get good caramelisation, then turn to sear the other side for another 2 minutes and remove from pan and set aside.

Add 5 cloves of garlic sliced and herbs of choice to the pan (French tarragon, sage or rosemary), in this case I add home grown French tarragon. Let the garlic and herb sauté for a minutes or two to develop the flavour in the pan and add more butter if desired. Then take the pan off the heat.

Add salt and black pepper to the pan, put in the skirt steak top side up, baste the steak with the buttery oil, garlic and tarragon, then sprinkle salt and pepper, before putting in a pre-heated oven at 50 - 60°C non fan assisted. During cooking, keep an eye on the amount of jus in the pan, normally at this cooking temperature, the protein shouldn’t shrink too much and squeeze out the water within the muscle fibre.

Be aware, some ovens at low temperature settings can be inaccurate, my oven can measure 62°C when at manufacturer’s minimum setting of 50°C. This can be solved by rolling a soft tin foil ball and use it to wedge a gap on the oven door, start with 15mm gap and see what the temperature gauge reads, then open or close the door using the tin foil ball until the desired cooking temperature is achieved.

I generally cook the beef at 50°C for minimum of 2 hour and have tried a roast with a 6 hours roasting time, the 2 hour roast is juicier with a soft chew, whereas the 6 hour version is a lot softer chew with slightly less juicy. As a comparison, I roasted a piece at 60°C for 2.5 hours, which resulted in a slightly firmer chew and less juicy as some of the liquid is out of the meat to form the tasty meat jus.

Today the finished steak was cooked at 50°C non-fan assisted oven for 2.5 hours and rested for 30 minutes at room temperature.

Just noticed, I didn’t put the Chimichurri sauce in the photo above, trust me, it worked well with the beef and well worthwhile for the Summer BBQ meats, in particular, BBQ seared thin slices of salted beef skirt steak known as Cecina in Mexico. I do enjoy the process of thinly slicing of the steak along the grain ! Must do the Cecina again, pair with a salsa call Xnipek (Nose of the Dog).