Flap steak is an often overlooked, budget friendly sirloin. On the grill or cooked indoors, make this recipe for a delicious grilled steak!

What is Flap Steak?

Flap steak is a delicious, budget friendly cut of sirloin beef. The cut is much thinner and longer than a top sirloin, because it comes from the bottom sirloin butt, which is near where a beef tri-tip comes from. 

If you’re having trouble finding this cut of beef in the meat section, it might be labeled as bavette sirloin or bavette steak.

Ingredient notes

This recipe calls for a dry rub of sazon seasoning for the flap meat. Just before serving, you’ll drizzle it with a flavorful, blended cilantro chimichurri sauce.

As mentioned earlier, if you don’t want to use sazon, feel free to use any dry or wet seasoning of your choice.

Preparing and Cooking Flat Meat

Just like skirt and flank steak, flap meat should be marinated with either an all purpose bbq dry rub or a wet steak marinade. It’s best cooked quickly on high, dry heat, either on a grill or under an oven broiler.

For the best flavor and texture, cook the meat to rare or medium-rare. If you cook the steak much longer, it becomes chewy and tough.

Finishing Sauce

If you aren’t a fan of cilantro, you may want to use something other than cilantro chimichurri. You could make homemade A-1 steak sauce by combining 1/2 cup tomato ketchup with 2-3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce.

Or go bold, with something like creamy Jalapeno sauce or pesto alfredo sauce! Even some fresh homemade pico de gallo would be delicious on a southwest flap steak.

Want some other ideas for grilling beef?

You can never go wrong with a bacon wrapped filet mignon! Another quick recipe to make is grilled flank steak. You can enjoy it as is, or use it to make flank steak tacos.

This post, first published on Kevin is Cooking on Sept 2, 2013, was last updated with new content on Aug 28, 2021.