Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Transfer beef into a large sealable freezer bag. Add teriyaki sauce, press out air from bag and seal. Massage beef by turning beef around in the bag, ensuring beef is well coated. Refrigerate at least 3 hours, overnight for best results.
- Heat grill to medium-high heat.
- Drain excess marinade from beef and place on the grill. Grill for about 3-4 minutes, flip, then grill for another 3-4 minutes until desired doneness.
- Garnish with sesame seeds and green onions. Serve with rice or broccoli. Enjoy!
Nutrition
Notes
- Know what you're buying. Flanken (also called cross-cut or Korean-cut short ribs) is sliced across the bone into thin strips, usually around half an inch thick, with four to five small oval bone cross-sections per strip. That's different from English-cut short ribs, which are thick bone-in blocks meant for braising. Flanken goes on a hot grill; English-cut goes in the oven for hours. Ask the butcher for "flanken cut" or "Korean-style short ribs" if the label isn't obvious.
- Marinate four to twelve hours, not longer. The bone slices make flanken act like a thinner cut than it looks — four hours gets the teriyaki into the center, twelve hours deepens the flavor without breaking down the muscle. Past about sixteen hours, the salt and sugar start pulling water out of the beef and the texture goes soft-mushy on the grill. If you started the marinade last night, you're fine. Overnight is the sweet spot.
- Drain and pat dry before the grill. Excess marinade drips onto the flames, flares up, and coats the outside of the ribs in steam instead of sear. Shake the strips over the bag, pat the surfaces with paper towel, and place them on a grate you've already preheated to medium-high. Dry beef on hot metal is the whole game.
- Two to three minutes per side, that's it. Teriyaki flanken short ribs cook fast because they're thin. At medium-high heat (around 450°F), you're looking for darkened char lines on the first side in two to three minutes, a single flip, and another two to three minutes on the second side. Total grill time four to six minutes per strip. Any longer and the beef tightens up.
- Rest before you plate — even for thin cuts. Two minutes off the grate on a cutting board, loose foil tent optional. The juices redistribute, the glaze sets, and the ribs stop cooking from residual heat. Slicing or serving straight off the grill turns flanken gray inside in about thirty seconds.
- Separate the bone segments after cooking, not before. Each flanken strip has four or five small round bones running through it. Once the ribs rest, run a knife or kitchen shears between each bone to portion into individual rib pieces — easier to eat off a platter, better for passing around. Doing this before grilling is more trouble than it's worth and costs you surface area for the sear.
- Sesame and green onion at the plate, not in the marinade. Sesame seeds toasted dry in a small skillet for ninety seconds before scattering; sliced green onion at the last moment so it stays sharp. Neither survives a long marinade — they belong on top, right before serving.
- Serve teriyaki flanken short ribs as the centerpiece of a grilled board, bone-segments-apart on a warm platter with sesame and scallion over the top. They eat best with your hands, one bone-segment at a time.
- Teriyaki flanken short ribs pair with steamed short-grain rice or jasmine rice (the glaze begs for something starchy to catch it), a quick cucumber salad dressed with rice vinegar and sesame, or grilled baby bok choy charred until the edges blacken. A scoop of kimchi on the side leans the plate Korean; pickled ginger and a small bowl of miso lean it Japanese — both work.
- For a full cookout: add grilled pineapple spears (the acid cuts the glaze), corn on the cob, and a cold macaroni salad. For drinks, a cold Japanese lager, a dry riesling, or a highball with Suntory and soda. Cold hojicha if it's the middle of the day.
- Store cooked teriyaki flanken short ribs in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. The glaze actually gets better overnight as the flavors settle into the beef — next-day teriyaki flanken short ribs cold-sliced over rice is a legitimate meal.
- To reheat teriyaki flanken short ribs, a dry skillet over medium heat for 2–3 minutes flipping once is the move — crisps the exterior back up and re-warms the fat without drying out the muscle. Microwave works for lunch speed (30–45 seconds covered), but you lose the glaze snap.
- Cold flanken is legitimately good too — slice the meat off the bone segments, pile it over rice with a little soy and sesame oil, and you've got a next-day donburi. Freezing cooked ribs isn't recommended; the glaze breaks and the thin strips lose texture on thaw.
- Marinated raw ribs can be frozen in the marinade bag for up to 2 months — thaw overnight in the fridge, drain, and grill as directed.