How to Grill Skirt Steak: Inside vs Outside, Heat, Timing

Colorful Mexican fajita platter with grilled meat, vegetables, tortillas, and sauces.

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Skirt steak splits into two different cuts that cook differently, and the two sources behind this guide land on two different heat strategies for handling them: Weber’s Preparing Skirt Steak grill-skills page and matching Skirt Steaks with Red Chile Sauce recipe, plus Meathead Goldwyn’s Best Steak Fajitas Recipe at AmazingRibs.com. USDA figures come from the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Inside Skirt vs. Outside Skirt

AmazingRibs is the source that draws this distinction directly. The outside skirt, Meathead writes, “comes from the diaphragm between the sixth and twelfth ribs” and “is thicker, more tender, and more uniform than the inside skirt.” His recipe specifically calls for outside skirt steak, noting that home cooks may need to special-order it from a butcher since most of the outside skirt supply goes to restaurants — it can also arrive with a membrane attached that needs to be removed before cooking. Weber’s pages don’t separate the two cuts by name, but its trimming and high-heat instructions apply to whichever skirt steak is on the cutting board.

Trimming and Prepping

Weber’s preparation guide lays out skirt steak’s prep in four steps: trim away most of the fat clinging to both sides of the steak (fat left on causes flare-ups over direct heat), cut the steak into roughly foot-long lengths so it’s easier to maneuver on the grate, and season it generously, pressing the seasoning in with your fingertips so it doesn’t fall off during grilling. Weber’s Red Chile Sauce recipe adds a coating of oil and a room-temperature rest of 20 to 30 minutes for the seasoned steak before it goes on the grill.

Two Very Different Heat Strategies

This is where the two sources genuinely disagree. Weber’s standard method uses direct high heat at 450° to 550°F, grilling the steak with the lid closed for 4 to 6 minutes to medium-rare, turning once or twice, then tenting it with foil to rest.

AmazingRibs pushes considerably further. Its “afterburner” method uses a wire grate set directly on top of a lit charcoal chimney starter — heat far more intense than a standard grill grate produces — and cooks the steak in a couple of minutes total, turning every 30 seconds or so until it’s deeply seared. Meathead’s own description of the technique: the flames coming off the chimney looked “like the afterburner of a fighter jet.”

A Temperature Gap Worth Flagging

The afterburner method targets an internal temperature of about 125° to 130°F in the center — a number that sits below USDA’s minimum. The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service’s Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart sets whole beef cuts, including steaks, at a minimum of 145°F (62.8°C), followed by a rest of at least 3 minutes. Weber’s recipes are built around reaching a safe medium-rare through longer cooking rather than an explicit pulled temperature, and its instructions don’t specify an internal number either — so whichever method is used, checking with an instant-read thermometer and understanding that 125–130°F falls short of the USDA figure is worth knowing before deciding how far below 145°F to go.

Resting and Cutting

Weber’s recipe has the cook remove the steak from the grill and tent it with foil to keep warm — a short rest before serving. Because skirt steak is coarser-grained than flank steak, cutting it across the grain afterward matters even more for tenderness; AmazingRibs’ fajita instructions call for cutting the cooked meat “across grain (opposite the direction the fibers run)” into strips before serving.

Marinating Notes

Weber’s Red Chile Sauce recipe treats the room-temperature rest and the pureed chile coating as functioning together rather than as a true soak — the steak sits coated for 20 to 30 minutes rather than being refrigerated for hours. AmazingRibs’ fajita version leans toward a citrus-forward marinade built around fresh orange juice, lime juice, garlic, cilantro and a touch of cumin, matched to the fast afterburner cook. Either approach works with the trimming steps above; the marinade choice doesn’t change how the fat needs to come off before the steak hits the heat.

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