How To Cut a Flank Steak: One Simple Trick To Make Your Steaks Softer

You might be surprised by just how influential the little touches are when cooking a steak. Everything from the sear to how you cut can heavily influence how enjoyable the finished product is.

In the case of a flank steak, the way you carve the meat can be the difference between a delicious, impressive meal and a lengthy wrestling match with a hunk of spiced leather. Thankfully, if your flank steaks are turning out chewy, it is an extremely easy problem to fix. You just need to change one thing.

Cut Against the Grain

Above all else when cutting a flank steak remember these four words: cut against the grain. That is 90% of what you need to know. To explain, let’s define a few terms. 

Many cuts of steak, flank steaks included, have a visible “grain structure.”  You should be able to look at these steaks while they are still raw and see a bunch of parallel lines going across the steak. Those lines are bits of muscle fiber, better known as “the grain.”

If you look at your flank steak and you are still not sure, you can try gently pulling the steak apart with two forks. Generally, the meat will want to separate along the muscle fiber lines. You can also attempt to run your thumb gently over the steak and feel the lines. Cutting against the grain means to cut across those muscle fibers instead of alongside them. This is vital for reducing a steak’s chewiness — something most steak eaters dislike.

Why Cutting Against the Grain Is Important

If you do not cut against the grain and leave those fibers intact, the duty of cutting them falls to your poor teeth instead. You will be sitting there chewing each bite for a full minute, long after the flavor is gone. For inexperienced cooks, this might seem counterintuitive. You have all these nice lines that the meat naturally wants to break apart along. Without knowing how meat works, it can feel natural to want to just go down the path of least resistance.

Why is Cutting Against the Grain Important for Flank Steaks, Specifically?

Flank steaks are typically known as a tougher, chewier cut of meat with particularly well-defined muscle fibers. Those muscle fibers are exactly what gives the meat its chewy reputation. These fibers are tougher than the surrounding tender meat. But if you prepare the steak properly, cutting opposite to the grain, you cut those fibers into significantly smaller, more manageable chunks and they become significantly less noticeable. So, now you know better! Always cut against the grain, regardless of whether you are cutting a flank or a skirt.