How to Shop for and Cook Skirt Steak

Skirt steak is juicy and full of beefy flavor. It's well-marbled, which accounts for its great flavor. Its texture is tender with decent chew.

Skirt steak comes from the plate section of the cow, situated under the rib, where its attractive fat content makes for juicy steaks. Skirt steak is a long and thin ribbon of beef—nearly two feet in length—and is named so because its open-grained fibers resemble a pleated skirt.

Though most grocery stores will label the meat as skirt steak, finer butchers will sell you two varieties: Outside skirt and inside skirt. A cow has two of each:

We highly prefer the outside skirt, which measures 3 to 4 inches wide and between a half to one-inch thick. Try to avoid inside skirt, which is wider (5 to 7 inches), thinner (a quarter to a half-inch thick), and is far chewier than the outside skirt. In Japan, the outside skirt is called harami and prized for its beefiness, often marinated in miso or soy sauce and grilled.

These are the best ways to cook skirt steak:

• Searing
• Grilling
• Braising

Skirt steak is also a great steak to marinate. We don’t typically marinate steak since we have found that marinades don’t penetrate more than a few millimeters beyond its surface. For a thick-cut steak, that means minimal flavor impact. But skirt steak is different: It has much more surface area than other cuts. And because it’s so thin, the ratio of surface area to volume is quite large. That means there is a lot of exterior space for a marinade to flavor.

If you look carefully, the grain of a skirt steak forms peaks and valleys like, well, a pleated skirt: The amount of fabric required to make a pleated skirt is much greater than the amount required to make a straight skirt. To illustrate this, we placed a measuring tape on a skirt steak and carefully pressed it into the valleys. When we removed the measuring tape, we found that the surface area for a skirt steak was three times that of a strip steak of the same weight.

Skirt steak is most tender cooked to medium. Because skirt steak has large fibers, it takes more force to bite through, and therefore benefit from longer cooking so the muscle fibers can shrink in diameter.

Flank steaks are found closer to the back hind legs of the cow, while skirt steaks are closer to the front, the forelegs. You can tell it’s flank steak if the piece is flat, thin, wide, and the grain runs lengthwise (the long way). Skirt steak, on the other hand, is narrower and the grain runs crosswise (the short way). Skirt steak has more connective tissue and is fattier and juicier than flank steak, which is slightly easier to find in stores than skirt steak. (If you can't find skirt steak, flank steak is a reasonable substitute.)

Hanger and skirt steaks are two different cuts. The Hanger steak is found “hanging” between the ribs and tenderloin, and is known for its intensely beefy flavor.

Depending on where you're shopping, skirt steak may be sold under a couple different names:

• Fajita steak
• Philadelphia steak