In various parts of Mexico, “arrachera” steak can refer to different cuts of meat; generally, though, it’s a cut called “skirt steak.” The skirt steak is the tough, lean, muscular diaphragm of the cow. It’s a long, thin cut separated into the inside and outside parts; the outside skirt is wider than the inside. Both are very fibrous cuts and respond well to (and need) a robust and tenderizing marinade.
Unequivocally the strangest cut of meat I’ve ever seen
by
u/Maelstrom116 in
Costco
The arrachera available at Costco is the inside cut of skirt steak. It comes from RYC Foods, preseasoned in the package, and is tenderized with papaya enzymes. Though customers have reported that it usually comprises two thin, flat, wide pieces of skirt steak per package, there seems to be some real variation in what gets sold. Some packages have been seen to include one particularly long, thin piece that would shrink and curl up a bit as the proteins cook. A commenter suggests that perhaps the steak’s silverskin or membrane hadn’t been properly removed. Silverskin is a tough connective tissue that doesn’t melt down during cooking like fat. If the skirt steak wasn’t properly trimmed, it’s very likely that a long, thin piece would be contorted into a strange shape as it cooked. Without seeing a picture of the raw meat before it went on the grill, we’ll never truly know — but this seems to be the prevailing theory for why this particular arrachera is so NSFW.