Steak Drapes

Beef has been on my mind lately, as it usually is. Specifically I've been thinking and daydreaming about the eye of round cut, something that is often sold for the bargain price of $1.99/lb at my local grocer. The problem is I can never seem to figure out how to cook one. Roasting/rotissering it usually tends to make it tough, as does cutting it into steaks. You can stew it, but it's pretty lean and doesn't work as well as the more inexpensive chuck roast. Yessir, this meat is a doozy. So one day last week, the idea popped into my head to use it for carne asada. I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I bought one.

To make carne asada or beef fajitas the proper way you're supposed to have flank steak or skirt steak, cuts of meat that are difficult to find in my grocer's cooler. Even when it's stocked, it is absurdly overpriced. Skirt steak is used for fajitas because it's thin, lean, and stringy. It absorbs marinade well, and becomes tender and delicious, especially when cut into strips against the grain of the meat. Well, the eye of round is lean and stringy as well. Problem is, it's not thin. It's about the same shape and size as my bicep. Not really conducive to throwing on the grill.

Luckily, I have a sharp knife and an imagination filled with beef fantasies. I lay awake at night thinking about it; how I can turn an eye of round roast into a makeshift strip steak. The idea is simple enough- cut it in a spiral fashion, the long way and unravel it as if it were a meaty magna carta. Would this work? Or would I literally butcher a perfectly good cut of meat into oblivion? Well, there was only one way to find out. After a few pints of beer I got my knife out and slapped the meat onto the cutting board.

I wish I had photographed this procedure so that one might have a better understanding of how I did it, but my hands were too messy to hold a camera. It wasn't all that hard, I just sliced and unravelled, trying as hard as I could to maintain a uniform thickness of meat throughout. I like to think I succeeded on this front.

The end result of the butchering could only be described in one way: MEAT CURTAINS. Actually, just one large meat curtain, which I proceeded to cut in two. I then prepared a marinade thusly:

1 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
3 large cloves of garlic, minced
pile of black pepper
dash of cumin
dash of coriander
dash of oregano

I put the meat curtains in two separate ziploc bags and filled with equal amounts of marinade. I froze one of the bags for some other time. The other bag, I put in the fridge overnight. This is what it looks like after taking out of the fridge. The meat is about 1/2"-3/4" thick.


I grilled over an extremely hot fire for a short period of time and then let it rest while I cooked the onions. Then I sliced it (against the grain!) into thin strips.

It came out pretty good. If I did it again, which I probably will, I'd eliminate the red wine vinegar, no need for that. It covers up the delicious lime taste. I'd also cook it hotter, the outside of the meat wasn't quite charred enough, although the inside was nice and pink.

So there you have it, a way to make the boring and unversatile eye of round cut into something more exciting. I would venture to say that it's more tender and juicy than your average flank or skirt steak, and cheaper as well.