Easy Flank Steak - 131 degrees, 1:30 hours

Last night’s dinner!

Flank steak cooked at 131 degrees for 1:30 hours.

Seasoned with garlic salt and black pepper. Learned that it’s better to slice against the grain - will do that next time. :slight_smile:

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Noob.

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7 dots this time! Nice!

Sliced thin across the grain makes it very tender.

I wonder how a long cook like brisket would work to tenderize; then it would not matter how you cut it.

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Even when tender, brisket will still be stringy if you cut in the wrong direction.

Alyssa, you earned those extra 2. That’s something to be proud of.

@john.jcb I wonder that myself!

To get something like that, you’d probably need to take advantage of the enzymatic break down of muscle fibers. The ideal temperatures for these enzymes (I forget the names, will update when I get home) would be 39°C and 49°C, one, then the other for several hours. The problems with these temperatures is they are firmly in the “danger zone”, and you’d need to be sure that the surface of your meat and the bag you were putting it in were both sterilized. Short of that, you wouldn’t be able to be sure that you weren’t encouraging some nasties to grow. That, however, would most likely yield the result you’re looking for.

EDIT: calpains (a group of enzymes, not one enzyme in and of itself) will denature at 40°C, cathepsins (a group of enzymes, not one enzyme in and of itself) will denature at 50°C. These groups on enzymes do not break down collagen and other connective tissues, but rather the muscle fibers themselves. If you were to just rely on the activity of these enzymes, you’d be left with very tough meat if doing a brisket, but if you were to use this in congunction with a long slow cook, you could easily wind up with a very tender brisket, regardless of how it was cut. Again, though, time and temperature danger zone need to be kept in mind.

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