Marinate Steak In This Spicy Condiment For A More Tender Cut

We're no strangers to using spicy sauces as steak marinades — catch us soaking our beef in Taco Bell hot sauce to get it more tender. On that same note, we also love a good Asian sauce to flavor our steaks and help tenderize them, such as using Vietnamese nuoc cham, which is a traditional dipping sauce. At the intersection of piquant and Asian sauces is sriracha, the spice and tang of which are legendary. Flavored with red chilies, vinegar, garlic, salt, and sugar, sriracha comes to us from Thailand. We're here to tell you that a few hours in a bath of fiery red sriracha can result in more tender, exquisite steaks, thanks to its distinct blend of marinade-worthy ingredients — and the choice of flavor profile is yours. 

There are countless steak marinades out there, but many of them have something in common: they consist of a fat, a salt, an acid, and plenty of aromatics. Not only do marinades promote flavor, but the acidic ingredients also help break down tough protein strands that might otherwise keep your meat chewy. In sriracha, the potent kick of vinegar makes an exceptional marinade for steaks ... and they'll taste great, to boot! While we marvel at various social media reels showing home cooks marinating a thick plank of steak in sriracha for a full week or so, your average cut is not going to stand up to that treatment ... and why would you do it, anyway? A few hours in a sriracha bath in your fridge is going to tenderize your steak beautifully without worrying about inducing mushiness.

We've seen steaks simply doused in the contents of a sriracha bottle and cooked up with positive effects, but we might doctor the recipe for even better final results. The addition of a neutral oil to your bowl, for instance, will promote better browning on the grill or in the pan, we think is always a good thing. We also like to amplify the acid in our marinades for the most tenderizing action. To this end, we'd add some citrus juice and zest to our marinade. Lime is the most traditional choice, given sriracha's origins, but orange could also sing with sriracha.

There's already sugar in sriracha (unlike sambal oelek, its close relative), but additional sweeteners will pair beautifully with the spicy kick of the sauce and contribute to that vaunted "swicy" taste. Some brown sugar ought to go fantastically in your marinade, but honey is another great choice with more complex flavor. Keep in mind that the aforementioned citrus juice can play a part in adding sweetness, especially if you opt for orange juice.

All that's left to do when it comes to building the perfect marinade is to really punch the salty and aromatic aspects of our beef bath. Soy sauce is always welcome in a steak marinade, but Worcestershire will work well if that's what you have accessible. This is a great moment for some coarse sea salt in your marinade, and many home cooks have that in their spice cabinets. You can add extra garlic or augment your marinade with ginger, cumin, Dijon mustard, and/or rice wine vinegar for a big flavor.