How Long You Should Marinate Carne Asada

With the ever-expanding popularity of tacos and Mexican food in general, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to claim that marinated carne asada is the current king of the steak world. Ideally made with beefy steak cuts like hanger, flank, or skirt and rubbed with a tangy marinade, carne asada's mix of meaty, smoky, and spicy is steak in its most explosively delicious form. The best carne asada is tasty enough to carry a taco by itself but it also needs to be tender enough to chew easily without being cut up into smaller pieces. This is why the marinade is so essential.

Flank and skirt steak are flavorful but stringy and tough, so you absolutely need to tenderize the meat before it gets cooked. But marinades don't always follow the more is better rule for ingredients or time. So we asked an expert, the chef of New York's Porter House, Michael Lomonaco, to find out exactly how long you should marinate your carne asada.

It turns out, there is a pretty nice window of time where you have flexibility with marinating carne asada, but Lomonaco did have a clear cut-off. He told us "I like to marinate beef refrigerated overnight but not longer than 24 hours." Lomonaco specified that this time limit was only for wet marinades and added, "A dry rub marinade can go a bit longer — up to 48 hours."

So what is the balance you are striking when marinating carne asada that make the 8-24 hour time period so specific? Well, meat can be both under and over marinated because of how the salt and acid interact with it. Your carne asada marinade does two important things: It seasons the meat by letting salt penetrate through the steak, and it tenderizes by having the salt and acid break down the muscle proteins. Only letting steak marinate for a few hours doesn't give the salt and other ingredients enough time to fully flavor the meat or break down the tissue enough to really make it tender. However, leave the steak in for too long, and those same processes will continue past the point of usefulness, further breaking down the steak until it's mushy and chewy.

The sweet spot is exactly what Lomonaco aims for with his carne asada. The best marinating results usually come in at around 8 hours, when you have fully tenderized and flavored your steak, but further time results in little gain. That said, steak is still pretty resilient and, at 24 hours, it probably won't have started to degrade, so you have a wide range for planning your carne asada where the result will be at its best. From there, it isn't too complicated to cook your steak and get the perfect carne asada every time.