Roy Choi's Carne Asada

Name: Roy Choi's Carne Asada
Total time: 30 min
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: mexican
Ingredients: 2 jalapeños; 1 medium tomato, cored and cut into quarters; 1 small yellow onion or 1/4 large one, peeled and cut into quarters; 5 cloves garlic; 2 tablespoons white granulated sugar; 1/4 cup ancho chili powder; 1 tablespoon ground black pepper; 1 tablespoon kosher salt; 1/2 large bunch cilantro, leaves and stems, well rinsed; 1/3 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice (about 1 orange); 3 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lime juice (1 or 2 limes); 1/4 cup mirin; 1 12-ounce can (1 1/2 cups) Budweiser or other lager beer; 2 pounds skirt steak, cut into 10-inch sections; 2 tablespoons olive oil

Recipe from Roy Choi

Adapted by Sam Sifton

Roy Choi's Carne Asada — Marcus Nilsson for The New York Times; Food stylist: Brian Preston-Campbell. Prop stylist: Angharad Bailey.

Total Time: 30 minutes, plus marinating time
Rating: 5(1,187)
Comments: Read comments

Roy Choi is the dharma bum of the Los Angeles food scene, a Zen lunatic bard of the city’s immigrant streets. He is a founder of Kogi BBQ, which used food trucks to introduce the city to Mexican mash-up cuisine, and the creative force behind a handful of Los Angeles restaurants that celebrate various iterations of big-flavor cooking at the intersection of skater, stoner, lowrider and Korean college-kid desire. He cooks poems, and they taste of Los Angeles. Choi's carne asada — grilled meat — might raise eyebrows in Puebla and Laredo alike. There is mirin in the marinade and a lot of garlic. But there is purity to its expression of urban Southern California. This is a recipe to expand minds, a delicious take on a venerable classic. —Sam Sifton

Featured in: Carne Asada

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Ingredients

Yield:Serves 6

2jalapeños
1medium tomato, cored and cut into quarters
1small yellow onion or ¼ large one, peeled and cut into quarters
5cloves garlic
2tablespoons white granulated sugar
¼cup ancho chili powder
1tablespoon ground black pepper
1tablespoon kosher salt
½large bunch cilantro, leaves and stems, well rinsed
⅓cup fresh-squeezed orange juice (about 1 orange)
3tablespoons fresh-squeezed lime juice (1 or 2 limes)
¼cup mirin
112-ounce can (1½ cups) Budweiser or other lager beer
2pounds skirt steak, cut into 10-inch sections
2tablespoons olive oil

Ingredient Substitution Guide

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Preparation

Step 1
Preheat the broiler. Place the jalapeños on a cookie sheet or in a skillet with an ovenproof handle, and put them under the broiler until their skins begin to blacken and bubble. (You can also do this by putting the peppers directly over a burner on your stove or on a gas grill.) Pull the stems and seeds from the jalapeños and discard them; skin the peppers and put them into a food processor.
Step 2
Add the tomato, onion, garlic, sugar, ancho chili powder, black pepper and salt to the bowl of the machine, and pulse to combine. Add the cilantro, the fruit juices, mirin and beer. Process again until smooth.
Step 3
Transfer the marinade to a large, nonreactive bowl and submerge the steak in it. Cover and place in refrigerator for at least four hours or overnight.
Step 4
Build a fire in your grill. If using a gas grill, turn all burners to high
Step 5
When all coals are covered with gray ash and the fire is hot (you can hold your hand 6 inches over the grill for only a few seconds), remove steaks from marinade, drizzle with olive oil and placeon the grill directly over the coals and cook until deeply seared, turning a few times, approximately 10 minutes for medium-rare. Remove steaks from the grill and allow to rest a few minutes. Slice against the grain into thin strips and serve with warm corn tortillas, pico de gallo (see recipe), grilled scallions, whatever you like.

Ratings

5 out of 5

1,187 user ratings

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Comments

Geoff7 years ago

Find a Mexican grocery, or even your local supermarket, and look for the bagged dehydrated peppers in the Mexican food section. Even in New Jersey, we have Guajillo, Ancho and a bunch of other ones. Get the Anchos. Put one or two into a Pyrex cup and pour boiling water over it, let it sit for 10 minutes and then remove the seeds and membrane if you don't want all the heat. Throw this into the food processor and it beats Ancho chile powder hands down.

Jack Wells7 years ago

In California this dish is often made with pork instead of beef. I would highly recommend swapping the skirt steak for pork tenderloin.

Jim Bullard7 years ago

Carne Asada is always made with steak meat, 99.9% of the time it is flap meat, perfect for a taco, nice marbling, cooks fast. You can either chop it up ot just slice it, add onions mixes with cilantro limes and salsa, not hot sauce but salsa With Pork it is a Carnitas Taco, not a Carne Asada Taco, Carne Means Meat, asada is to grill, roast . Some people like to marinate the meat with oranges, limes or lemons or both

grace2 months ago

I made this last night for a loved ones bday dinner. Was a huge hit! I used a grapefruit ipa instead of a lager bc it’s what I had but everything else was the same. Marinated overnight and the flavor really made its way through the steak! Grilled up quickly and it was perfect with pico de gallo and a slice of avocado.

AJ5 months ago

The meat was tender and juicy, but didn’t have much taste. I marinated it for 4 hours. I used butterflied American wagyu sirloin, which has amazing marbling. Will try again, and maybe save some marinade as a salsa.

FrankW8 months ago

This was first posted in 2012, over 12 years ago, the comments are a must with this delicious recipe, you can see growth in the cooks/users with s stint of angered directional pronouncements six years ago. Haha it’s hard letting go of what you were taught that’s no longer written in stone. Roy Choi still is s force of nature! I’ve made the pico de gallo many times but today I’m using flank steak and Fresno peppers to make the carne asada for the first time.

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