I hope you kept your grills hot and ready because winter isn’t here yet, and I’ve got a few more grill recipes to throw at you

This recipe is a South American inspired grilled flank steak I”m dubbing Carne Asada Verde.  This is a legit CIJ original that I threw together one night, that ended up being glorious.

I served it with grilled scallions and grilled baby sweet peppers, I’ll include the steps for preparing those as well.

Hardware

Software

  • 2 medium flank steaks
  • 3 bunches of scallions
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
  • 1 large onion, chopped fine
  • 2 bunches of cilantro, chopped up, stems and all
  • 3-5 jalapeños, sliced thin or minced (you can cut them in half and take out the seeds to reduce the spice if you like)
  • 5 limes
  • 1 can of cheap beer (American lager preferred)
  • 4 tbsp of olive oil
  • 1 tsp of mustard (plain yellow or spicy brown)
  • 1 bag of baby sweet peppers

Do Work!

  1. First zest the limes, all the limes, entirely.  Dont skimp, this adds A LOT of flavor.  Add the zest to your bowl.   Next juice the limes, again, all of them, every drop.  Add this to the bowl as well.
  2. Next take the scallions, start by cutting the little root bit off the bottom and throwing it away.  Next, starting at the green end,  thinly slice the scallions until you reach the half way point.  Once you’re there STOP.  You’re gonna save the thicker bottom halves to be grilled.  Add the sliced scallions to the mixing bowl, set the remaining unsliced bits to the side for now.
  3. Add the cilantro, onions, garlic, jalapeños, beer, oil, and mustard to the bowl.  Season with a little salt.  Whisk until the mixture homogenizes.  This’ll take a little extra effort because the marinade is kind of chunky, but it’ll come together.  Taste the marinade and adjust the seasoning to your liking, but remember you want it to be a little salty when eaten straight, that way it imparts good seasoning to the steaks.
  4. Place each steak into its own zipper top bag and dump half the marinade into each.  Zip the bag and “massage” the steaks to help work the marinade all the way around.
  5. Once the marinade is evenly distributed around the steaks, unzip the bags just a little and squeeze all the excess air out that you can, then reseal them.
  6. Let these marinade for at least two hours.
  7. While the steaks are marinading take your peppers and pop the stems off with a knife.  You can achieve this by placing the blade of the knife just under the green bit and “popping” the knife up, kind of like you’re opening a bottle.  If you cant get the technique down just cut the stems off.  (this step is completely optional, but it makes eating the peppers much easier)
  8. Once your steaks are marinaded turn your grill to high and let it heat up.  Place your stemmed peppers into the other mixing bowl and toss with a little olive oil (not listed) and salt.  Do the same for the scallions, though I recommend doing them separately since you’ll want to carefully place the scallions on the grill so they don’t fall through the grates.
  9. With the grill hot dump the peppers onto the grates.  Using your tongs move them around every 2 minutes are so.  You’ll eventually have to manually turn each pepper over, which is a pain in the ass, but its worth it.  You want them to be charred and delicious, not burnt.  
  10. For the scallions, lay them across the grates at the back of the grill.  After 2-3 minutes use your tongs to simply roll them forward till they’ve rotated 180 degrees and are cooking on the other side.  The scallions will cook a lot faster then the peppers, be aware of this.
  11. Once the peppers and scallions are grilled keep them off to the side and warm.
  12. Let the grill sit covered and get ripping hot once again.  Place the steaks down on the hottest part of one half of the grill then close the lid and let them cook for five minutes.
  13. After five minutes rotate the steaks 90 degrees and place them on the hottest part of the other half of the grill.  By utilizing both halves of the grill effectively you get good charring without having to wait for the grill to get hot again.  Give them another five minutes.
  14. Flip the steaks over and again place them on the opposite half of the grill.  Give them five minutes
  15. At this point you can turn them 90 degrees again and place them on the opposite half, but you’ll want to monitor them.  Depending on the thickness of the steaks and how hot your grill runs, they’ll be getting close to being done at medium.
  16. Once cooked let the steaks rest on the cutting board for 10-15 minutes.  Slice them in half longways, with the grain, then thinly slice them across the grain into bite sized strips.

Serve with the grilled peppers and scallions you’ve got fantastic fucking party grub that’ll earn you brofists from the dudes and panties from the girls.

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