new take on flank steak

My local food store had a special on flank steak last week for $6.99/lb., a great price. I picked up the last one and now had to find a new recipe.  Although, I have a half dozen recipes on my blog, I turned to my reliable resource, the NYTCooking app, and found another wonderful recipe from Melissa Clark for Grilled Flank Steak with Worcestershire Butter.  Flank steak can be a chewy piece of beef. However, if sliced thinly across the grain, you shorten the steak fibers and make the meat easier for chewing.
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 Ms. Clark’s recipe takes 45 minutes to prepare, not counting marinating time.  Mine marinated for at least 2 hours. However, you can go as long as overnight. The marinade contains fresh thyme sprigs, garlic, a jalapeño, fresh chives, Worcestershire sauce, dark brown sugar and fresh lemon juice. Unfortunately, when I picked up the tomatoes, I neglected to purchase a jalapeño pepper. I substitute red pepper flakes in its place.

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While the meat was marinating, I prepared the Worcestershire compound butter. A compound butter is softened butter to which you add assorted herbs or spices and combine. This butter contained more thyme and chives, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, lemon zest and salt and pepper. After combining all the ingredients you place the mixture on a piece of parchment or wax paper and form into a log. The log is then placed in the refrigerator to harden so that it can be sliced for use. 
 
You can either grill or broil the meat, I grilled mine for approximately 5-7 minutes per side. After removing the steak and placing it on a cutting board, I placed two slices of the Worcestershire butter on the meat. As an accompaniment, there was a charred tomato salad to go along with the steak. The salad included scallions, basil, salt, pepper, a bit of lemon juice and olive oil. 
 
The meat came out succulent, slightly herbaceous flavor and a bit of char from the brown sugar is in the marinade. The Worcestershire butter “gilded the lily.” It was delectable! The accompanying charred tomato salad was a great foil against the richness of the beef. Overall, a wonderful dinner! With careful planning, this could be a good choice in the weeknight meal rotation. The meat can be marinated the night before along with prepping the compound butter. On the day of, the tomato salad can be made ahead of grilling the steak. Easy and delicious, they’ll love you for this one! Give it a try and let me know what you think. Any leftover butter can be used to gussy up a beef hamburger, yum!