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Is there anything better than a summer weekend? My family just wrapped a perfect summer weekend of baseball, swimming, and a cookout with friends. Of course, it was also Father’s Day, so I had to make a special dinner for my husband. I put together a Mexican-inspired menu of skirt steak soft tacos and Mexican rice.

Although it was his special dinner, I enlisted my husband to grill the skirt steak. Grilling is probably the best way to prepare this quick-cooking steak — which is typically the meat used in fajitas — because it benefits tremendously from intense, high heat.

With its long surface area and heavy grain, skirt steak really soaks up flavor so do not pass up the opportunity to marinate your skirt steak before grilling. My husband loves spicy food and the smoky flavor of chipotle peppers, so I created a spicy-sweet marinade using El Yucateco Chipotle Hot Sauce, brown sugar, lime juice and olive oil. The results were amazing. The acid in the marinade broke down the connective tissue in the skirt steak, making it more tender, and every bite was bursting with flavor.

You may be wondering what a chipotle hot sauce is. El Yucateco Chipotle Hot Sauce is made from naturally smoked chipotle peppers, which are simply small hot peppers, like jalapeños, that have been smoke-dried. This sauce delivers that distinctive smoky flavor that, to me, defines Mexican cuisine.

With a hint of sweetness and a thick, rich consistency, El Yucateco Chioptle Hot Sauce is an ideal marinade for grilling. Yes, hot sauce makes a terrific base for a marinade. It contains enough acid to tenderize the meat while imparting tons of rich, smoky flavor and just the right amount of heat.

I actually doubled down on that spicy, smoky chipotle flavor by mixing some of the El Yucateco Chipotle Hot Sauce with sour cream to create a chipotle crema that I drizzled over the steak tacos just before serving. The mix of the cool, tangy sour cream and the smoky sweet El Yucateco Chioptle Hot Sauce was pretty heavenly.

Skirt steak is often used for fajitas or tacos because you need to slice it into thin strips or else it can be uncomfortably chewy. Give your steaks ten minutes or so after grilling to relax. Then to serve, first cut the long piece of meat into three or four-inch pieces by slicing with the grain. Then, slice those pieces of meat against the grain to create those distinctive thin strips.

I dressed my soft tacos with some red onion, sliced avocado, and cilantro in addition to the chipotle crema, but feel free to vary the toppings according to your family’s taste. Grilled onions or peppers, for example, would be an amazing addition to these skirt steak soft tacos.

By the way, if you are as serious about grilling as my husband is, you should enter to win this $1000 grilling prize pack. El Yucateco Grilling That would make one heck of a late Father’s Day gift! The contest ends soon, so enter today.

So, don’t let that bottle of El Yucateco, whether it’s the new Chipotle Hot Sauce, the classic Red Habanero Hot Sauce or the best-selling Green Habanero Hot Sauce, all of which are available at Lowes Foods, languish in the back of the fridge. Get that bottle out and start using it as a marinade for all your favorite summertime grilled foods. I guarantee that the results will change the way you feel about hot sauce.