The Tiny Canned Ingredient That Doubles As A Flavor-Packed Steak Marinade

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When contemplating a steak marinade, the choices can sometimes seem overwhelming. Should you go with anchovy and herbs, soy sauce and honey, or even Jack Daniels and coffee? One option that deserves consideration is a tiny canned ingredient that, with a few simple additions, doubles as a flavor-packed, quick-to-prepare steak marinade — canned chipotles peppers in adobo sauce.

Chipotle peppers are ripe, smoke-dried, rehydrated red jalapeños that carry a natural sweetness and a noticeable but not tongue-destroying level of heat, while adobo sauce is a classic Mexican preparation typically composed of puréed chilis, tomato, vinegar, garlic, herbs, and spices. A 7-ounce can of La Costeña Chipotles Peppers in Adobo Sauce will set you back less than $2 at Walmart, making this an eminently affordable foundation for a marinade.

For an easy formula for a perfect steak marinade of oil, acid, salt, and flavoring, the peppers and their sauce will bring the bulk of the flavor, and the salt can be adjusted to taste. For the acid — which tenderizes meat by denaturing its proteins — many recipes opt for lime juice. This has the additional benefit of bringing bright, citrusy notes that act as a complementary contrast to the smoky heat of the chilis and the sauce's savory undercurrents. For oil, an extra virgin olive oil will likely have a strong enough flavor not to get lost among the marinade's other ingredients. Blend all these together in a food processor until smooth, then allow your steak to marinade in the results while refrigerated for one to 24 hours.

As with many recipes, sometimes simplicity can be a virtue and using simple ingredients to marinate steak provides flavorful results. That said, for greater complexity, the lime juice can be supplemented with orange juice to give it a fruitier, more citrusy punch, or you can create a deeper, richer flavor by adding a few tablespoons of red wine. No matter how you tweak it, however, the canned peppers and their sauce will remain the star of the show — it's one of the reasons why the steak at the Chipotle chain of Mexican grills are marinated overnight in a chipotle pepper adobo.    

Numerous recipes for this kind of marinade recommend using it on flank steak — one of the eight best steak cuts for marinating, according to both a chef and a butcher, as it benefits enormously from both the tenderization and the flavor imparted. While the price of beef has reached record highs in the U.S., it won't set you back as much as a ribeye or New York strip. Finally, don't underestimate the versatility of your chipotle marinade, as it also works beautifully for making steak tacos or a rich, slow-cooked beef barbacoa.