Want Perfectly Caramelized And Tender Steak? Add A Splash Of This Juice To Your Marinade

While there are several common tips for making juicy steak at home, looking for ways to give the dish a unique twist can also be worthwhile. For example, although steaks are known for naturally forming a nice crust when seared, caramelizing the meat with a sugary ingredient can provide a strong, sweet flavor unlike other versions of the dish. This can be achieved by simply slathering the steak with some salt and granulated sugar before grilling it, but marinating steak using pineapple juice is a similarly great choice according to Dagan Lynn, executive chef at Beef. It's What's For Dinner.

The two main reasons why pineapple juice is great for steak marinades are its sweetness and the presence of the enzyme bromelain, which makes it a great tenderizer. More specifically, bromelain is capable of softening the muscle fibers of meat, resulting in a softer, less chewy steak. "Pineapple juice also adds subtle sweetness," Lynn shares, "which can be balanced with other flavors in your marinade." In other words, pineapple juice is great as one part of a marinade to give the meat a sweet interior and an exterior that is as tasty as it is tender. Before you go ahead and start whipping the marinade up, it's worth pointing out that pineapple juice marinade can actually be too effective and prevent your steak from forming a strong, crispy crust. Luckily, it's easy to avoid so long as you know what you're doing.

In order to get the most out of your steak, adding a few key ingredients alongside the pineapple juice is a wise choice. While there are many sweet ingredients that can be added to a steak marinade, Lynn recommends combining either pineapple juice or crushed pineapples with an equal serving of barbecue sauce as well as some ancho chili powder, sweet onions, and garlic to create an especially hard-hitting dish. "I blend everything together in a food processor, and use half of the marinade for the steak," Lynn says.

When using something as potent as pineapple juice, the meat only needs to be marinated for 15 minutes to 2 hours in the refrigerator. "After the steak is done marinating, I throw on the grill and serve on bolillo rolls with some of the reserved marinade sauce, fresh pineapple, onions, and lettuce." Pineapple juice can be incorporated into many different marinades, so don't be afraid to experiment.

With that being said, it's important to pick the right cut of steak for the job. A long pineapple marinade is an especially poor mistake when working with filet mignon due to the bromelain enzyme, and ribeye steaks should never be marinated before they're grilled. Luckily, Lynn pointed us in the right direction regarding which steak cuts will benefit from this type of marinade. Flat iron steak would be a great choice, as would tougher steak cuts like the flank and skirt steaks.