Flat Iron Steak, Grilled Flatbread, Chimichurri -- A BRETHREN RECIPE

Last week I put up THIS THREAD asking for help with flank steak recipes for a promotional "Iron Skillet Challenge" (a play on Iron Chef) that they were doing at a local contest.

I got a lot of great suggestions from a lot of brethren. I wish I could have incorporated more of them but since we were cooking onsite, hours away from home out of an EZ Up, we really had to plan ahead of time. We also really wanted to keep it simple and not over complicate things. Simple, excellent food is what we were going for. No frills, no sides, just awesome goodness.

They ended up giving us flat iron steak and not flank steak, but it worked out anyway. We photo documented the process and I wanted to share this recipe because it REALLY turned out AWESOME. I'd highly recommend trying it.


So here's what we ended up doing.....


We were given these two flat iron steaks.
It was dark and I never checked the weight, but they were about 1" thick, 4" wide and 12" long. One was slightly smaller than that, but that may give you an idea of how much beef we worked with.



Used a jaccard to tenderize the meat and also to help the marinade take.
We marinated overnight (about 6-7 hours) but if you don't have a jaccard, you may want to marinate a little longer.

The marinade was Tonybel's marinade recipe. The only thing I did differently is I used a whole Mini Corona (one of those 7.5oz bottles) and didn't use water.

Here's Tonybel's original recipe:
Juice of 3 limes and 3 oranges
1/4 onion, diced
1/4 bunch of cilantro, chopped
2 tbs of cumin
1 tbs of garlic powder
1 tbs of oregano
1/2 of a corona
1/2 cup of water
1/4 cup of oil

Now, Tonybel's recipe was originally used in a cook with about 4 lbs of flank steak (4 good sized steaks) so this could be used for more meat. Ours wasn't exactly swimming in it, but I'm just saying you COULD reduce this recipe by half if only marinating one or two steaks if you wanted.

Here's the table, ready to make up the marinade....



We vacuum sealed the two steaks and all the marinade and put it in the cold cambro (code word for competition refrigerator :wink until it was time to wake up.

****fast forward about 6 hours of not-so-great sleep time on air mattresses under the EZ Ups****

First thing on the agenda was to make up the dough for the flatbread.
I found an easy grilled flatbread recipe that I tried last week for a test run that I was really happy with, so we went with that.

Here's the recipe via Martha Stewart:
1/2 cup warm water (100 degrees to 110 degrees)
1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for bowl and brushing
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
3/4 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
MAKES 4 6" FLAT BREADS -- we tripled the recipe

Mix yeast with the warm water and oil, let it proof for a bit (until you start seeing little bubbles), then mix the flour and salt. Put flour in a large bowl, make a well in the middle of the flour and pour in water/yeast. Mix with hands until it comes together. Turn dough out on to floured surface and knead for a few minutes until smooth and elastic. Oil bowl and place dough (oiled & covered) off to the side (preferably into a warm place) for 30 minutes to rise.

Here's some action shots of the dough making process.





At this point, we fired the chimney full of charcoal to heat the Weber OTS.

While the dough was rising, we made up the chimichurri sauce. This sauce recipe was courtesy of Moose. This stuff was AWESOME.

Here's the recipe for the chimichurri:
1 bunch fresh parsley, chopped
8 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup sherry wine vinegar
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

NOTE: We added some cilantro too to keep with the cilantro in the marinade. I think this worked well. Did about 1/2 bunch of cilantro (but had to go with one of those tubes of prepared cilantro since the store was out of fresh.

Now the recipe calls for everything to be chopped and diced, etc. We really wanted it blended well, so we rough chopped it and put it in a small food processor/blender. Worked out great.

Once the grill was hot & ready, it was time to grill the steaks.
We'd taken the steaks out of the marinade and blotted the moisture off with a paper towel and let them sit to come up to "room" temp while the charcoal was lighting. As you can see the acids in the marinade really went to work on the steaks. Perfect!



Here's the steaks on the grill.....







They took about 3-5 minutes per side I think, but we took them to 120-125 IT and then wrapped em up tight in foil to finish cooking and rest while we prepped everything else.

After the dough was able to rise for 30 minutes (and while Jimmy was grilling the steaks), I cut the dough into 12 equal balls (about 1 1/2-2" diameter) and rolled them out into rounds. REMEMBER - I TRIPLED THE DOUGH RECIPE. Take note of my makeshift rolling pin. I forgot to pack mine :doh: so I had to use an empty beer bottle from one of our neighbors (I only brought cans) and filled it with water. It worked out fine. I rolled these out really thin because I wanted them to be more like a tortilla rather than a pizza dough. At home I rolled them to about 1/8" thick and they puffed up into about 3/8"-1/2" when done. The thinner the better if on the grill or the outsides get pretty far gone before the insides get done.





It was finally time to grill off the flat bread.

I brushed the rounds with EVOO and threw em on the hot grate.
These go QUICK! They only take literally seconds a side. Maybe 20 seconds per side. They immediately start puffing and bubbling. Just keep an eye on them and flip em until they get good color, but you can easily let these go too far. This is the reason I made up 12, because I knew we'd probably ruin a few.




Finally it was time to put it all together.
As always, you'll want to slice the steak against the grain, ESPECIALLY with flank or skirt steak. The flat iron steak didn't have the same meat grain as flank, but it still required some attention to be paid.
I sliced this as thin as I could (about 1/8" or less) on a bias.
Lay out as many slices on the flatbread as you want and drizzle with the chimichurri sauce.
We plated these with a couple wedges of lime so the judges could do a last minute squeeze of fresh lime juice.

We actually made up the one in the photo below just for you all becky after we turned in the rest because we were under the gun.
We only had one wedge of lime left for this photo, but you get the idea.....

AND....


The final product....



These turned out FANTASTIC!

The flat bread had a great texture and chew to it. It was thin enough to fold, the oil made it nice and crunchy/crispy, the dough has great flavor on it's own but the grilling really gave it a nice "charred" flavor.

The steak was a perfect medium rare to medium. Very tender and the marinade did a fine job with it.

The Cimichurri sause was the star I think. It REALLY made the whole thing come together and gave the bite a really nice citrus pop. I was a bit concerned with the amount of cayenne in it, but it REALLY wasn't spicy at all. I even tried it on it's own and it had a very slight back end bite to it, but with the lemon juice, vinegar and oil and fresh herbs, it was a very well balanced sauce.





Thanks once again for all the help with this one.
I'm saving it and will DEFINITELY do it again.



Man.......if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times......


THIS PLACE ROCKS!!!!
:thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb:

Q Junkie said:

Thanks for posting this, I am going to try this today. I just have to ask did you use the honey in this or is that a good luck charm?

Click to expand...

No honey in the recipe.

The Honey Bear is always hanging around our comp. He's become our mascot sort of.

A motto of our competition team and private joke with us and several of the other teams that we hang with has become, "Honey Bear Don't Give a Damn!"

That little S.O.B.
He just don't care.

:becky: