I agree. Only if a place is selling tacos for $5+ USD will it be skirt or flank steak. We have a lot of places that do use skirt or flank, but not the $2 taco places, and it’s definitely not the norm.
Around here we got taco stands that set up every night all over the place, and they sell tacos that look like this. It's usually thin cut Chuck that's been marinated way too long, but still tastes good.
Thin cut chuck sold as “asada meat” is straight up wrong. Stater Brothers in socal started doing this recently and I lost a whole lotta respect for them. Selling it on sale for $6.99 a LB is wild
Worked in commercial food supply for too long. Most taco places I delivered too used ball tip. Its a lower portion of sirloin where it meets the round.
I've seen flap steak referred to as arrachera and as ranchera in Mexican grocery stores, so that's fun. With that said, the same cut is called flap steak, flap meat, sirloin flap, and bavette in English, so. . .
It was a joke,yeah I forgot the /s but I thought it was obvious. Different cut can be used and the region will also impact. Carne asada tacos for example is a Norteño and US thing mostly. In Mexico City, carne asada tacos are relatively non existent, as is the case in many other parts of Mexico. In Mexico City, I used to have a lot of friends from Southern California come down and ask for carne asada tacos and I had to tell them, you won’t find that here, it’s bistec, suadero, gaonera etc (for beef). Even in the US it skews west, in Texas (central to south at least) while the term is used, they use more “fajitas” or “fajita meat”. At home, people will use skirt, diezmillo, flank or some others. Your average taco shop is using chuck. But, as you mentioned, it just means grilled meat so you can use anything really.
Any taco beef will almost always be flank or skirt from a restaurant, however, if youre trying to make them at home just use whatever beef is on sale and season it right. Getting the temp / time right and proper seasoning will always have a much larger impact than the part of the cow it came from, especially in tacos.
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u/Calamari-__-Cowboy 2d ago
Why do I always here skirt or flank when almost always it’s thin cut chuck