This amazing Chipotle Carne Asada Recipe is an easy carne asada marinade recipe. It's a delicious blend of sweet, spicy and oh, so flavorful! This carne asada recipe is perfect for carne asada fries, tacos, burritos, and nachos. It's a restaurant-quality recipe made at home.
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Your friends and family are going to love this thinly sliced carne asada steak, seared beef, made with a sweet and spicy marinated and served with warm tortillas, avocados, and fresh salsa. Be sure to watch the attached video in the recipe card on how to make carne asada tacos, they're so good.
What Is The Best Cut Of Meat For Carne Asada?
Carne asada is traditionally made using skirt steak or flank steak. The two cuts are very similar and can be used interchangeably. The two meat cuts do have a few differences.
What Cut Of Meat Is Carne Asada?
Carne Asada is beef. The cut of beef you use should be flavorful, but it doesn't need to be tender. Carne asada is usually made from skirt steak but you can also use flank steak or sirloin steak.
What's The Best Carne Asada Meat?
- Skirt steak--or sometimes referred to as tenderloin steak, has even more intense beefy flavor than flank steak. It does contain more tough muscles than flank steak, though, so it should only be cooked to rare or medium-rare for the most tender texture.
- Flank Steak--is a more lean option and has a great, intense meaty flavor.
- Sirloin Steak--Lean, juicy and moderately tender beef that is very affordable. This steak has no bones and very little fat, making it taste delicious any way it's cooked. To make Carne asada, cut thin cut strips of sirloin steak. It can be nearly as tender as a filet mignon, making it an excellent value.
The reality is any of these cuts can work great. If your grocery store already has carne asada cut and ready to go, use that. If not, any of these other options will work great.
How to Cook Tender Steak
- The best way to get a skirt steak tender is to cook it quickly at a high temperature to break down the fat and seal in the natural juices. A great steak marinade will help to make your steak extra flavorful and juicy but be there's no need to marinate for more than 24 hours.
Sweet and Spicy Marinade
This easy beef marinade only takes a few minutes to put together. When there's a big sale on carne asada at the supermarket, we love to load up on it, made a couple of extra batches of this marinade and freeze it for later. It's such a treat to pull this out of the freezer during a busy weeknight. It's easy peasy and so incredibly delicious!!
It ain't pretty but it does a great job tenderizing the meat and infusing it with so much flavor! This marinade recipe makes quite a bit too. You can add up to another pound of beef in this marinade.
Also, pro-tip, to keep things a little less messy, use thongs to pull the steak from the marinade.
This sweet and spicy Chipotle Carne Asada recipe makes the best Mexican food!
How much taco meat per person
- When planning on how much raw meat to plan per person, plan on 1/3 pound of meat per adult for and 1/4 lb of meat per child.
This carne asada recipe can be made into several different meals. Here are a few we love.
Ways to enjoy Carne Asada
- Tacos
- Burritos
- Fries
- Nachos
- Quesadillas
- Burrito bowls
- Salad
What to serve with Carne Asada
- Cilantro lime rice
- Black beans
- Ranch Salsa
- Lime Juice (small chunks of fresh lime)
- Pico de Gallo or Fresh Salsa
- Cheese
- Sour cream
- Diced onion
- Avocado
- Pico de gallo
- Fresh Lime Juice- just a squeeze
Ingredients in Chipotle Carne Asada
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-2-3 lbs Carne Asada sliced meat
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-3 Tablespoons Adobo Sauce Just scoop it from the can. If you like your meat extra spicy, use the -Chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce (you may want to wear gloves if you have sensitive skin. Just scrape the seeds out of the pepper and mince the peppers.
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-1/4 cup Lime juice (or the juice of 2 large limes) You can also sub half orange or lemon juice. Some people use soy sauce in their carne asada recipe but this one is more sweet, spicy, and salty.
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-1/4 Cup Brown Sugar- light brown sugar is great
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-1/4 cup Avocado Oil- or olive oil works fine too.
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-1/2 cup fresh cilantro (finely chopped)
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-5 large garlic cloves (minced)
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-1 tsp chili powder
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-1 tsp salt
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-1/2 tsp pepper
Tips for making Chipotle Carne Asada Recipe:
- Add all the ingredients of the marinade to a Ziplock bag, No need to get your hands or another dish dirty. (If your family doesn't like any chunks, you can also add all the marinade ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth before adding it to the meat.)
- This is also such a great beef recipe to freeze. If you find a great deal on steak, thinly slice it, make a big batch of this beef marinade and put it into sealable containers or bags and freeze it. I like to divide it up into portions that accommodate my family for a meal. It makes dinner time so easy when you have a freezer meal waiting for a busy night or lazy weekend.
- You can cook it on the outdoor grill or on the stovetop. If you decide on grilling meat, it's amazing, a little charred with those beautiful grill marks. It's a little faster and saves the mess of a pan. Just be sure to not over-cook it. There should be some pink in the middle.
- We've tried it both ways, many times, and to be honest, we like it on the stove-top the best. We like to drizzle a little avocado or olive oil in the pan and sear the meat for a couple of minutes on both sides. I la-love the little bit of caramelized marinade that happens on the bottom of the pan. You can use a cast iron pan, grill pan, or a non-stick pan. I usually use the non-stick pan just because I'm a little lazy and don't like cleaning pans.
- I've played around with this recipe a lot and have marinated the steak anywhere from 2-24 hours. It's great when it can marinate a little longer but even if it's just for a couple of hours, there's still so much flavor. The marinade has chunks of garlic and chipotle peppers. In fact, as I'm cooking the steak, I like to be sure and rub as much of the caramelization from the bottom of the pan onto the meat. Just use your thongs and slide the meat around a little to grab all those delicious bits.
- It's amazing to get a burst of roasted garlic or chipotle pepper in your bit of taco or however you choose to eat this. This is a perfect recipe for the home cook and can be mastered in no time.
- A lot of steak marinades call for a bit of soy sauce, not this one, it's more of a sweet and spicy and loaded with garlic steak marinade.
Chipotle Carne Asada Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 lbs Carne Asada sliced meat the marinade recipe will be enough for up to 4 pounds of beef
- 3 Tablespoons Adobo Sauce Just scoop it fom the can. If you like your meat extra spicy, use the Chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce (you may want to wear gloves if you have sensitive skin. Just scrape the seeds out of the pepper and mince the peppers.
- 1/4 cup lime juice (or the juice of 2 large limes) You can also sub half orange or lemon juice.
- 1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
- 1/4 cup Avocado Oil
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro (finely chopped)
- 5 large garlic cloves (minced)
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1 tsp tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 1 med lime Add lime juice to the meat after it's cooked
Instructions
- In a large ziploc bag, combine the adobo sauce, (chipotle peppers too for extra spice), lime juice, avocado oil, brown sugar, finely chopped cilantro, minced garlic, chili powder, salt and pepper.
- Mix and then add the meat. You can use pre-sliced carne asada, flank steak, skirt steak, sirloin steak or tenderloin. They're all good options. You can use the pre-sliced meat or slice your own thinly.
- The best way to cook this recipe is on the stove-top. Drizzle a little olive oil or avocdo oil in a large non-stick saucepan (a cast iron pan or a grill pan works great too) and sear the meat, on medium-high heat, on both sides. The amount of time will depend on how thick your meat is. I prefer the meat to be cooked medium rare to medium -- a little pink in the middle. Sear the meat for 2-3 minutes per side making sure you salt and pepper both sides as it cooks.
- Let me meat sit on a plate after it's cooked for about 5 minutes. This way it will let the juices redistribute in the meat. Slice the meat and then toss it in the meat juices from the platter.
- Serve this Carne Asada Recipe on tacos, nachos, burritos, or Carne Asada fries. Enjoy!
Video
Nutrition
Here are some other great beef recipes you'll love
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This amazing Chipotle Carne Asada Recipe is an easy carne asada marinade recipe. It's a delicious blend of sweet, spicy and oh, so flavorful! This carne asada recipe is perfect for carne asada fries, tacos, burritos, and nachos. It's a restaurant-quality recipe made at home.
Lilly
At First I wasn't sure to use this recipe because it didnt seem to have a marinating time. However, I marinated it for like 3 hours, and the flavor was AMAZING! Best Steak I have made 🙂 Thank you so much!!
The Carefree Kitchen
I'll go make the marinating time more visible. Thanks for letting me know. Yes, 3 hours is great. I usually tell people 2-24 hours. It makes such tender and juicy Carne Asada!
The Carefree Kitchen
I'd love to hear if your family liked this as much as mine!!