Safeway is now selling fresh flank steak, skirt steak and flat iron steak in vacuum packages - with expiration dates of a month or two in the future. I'm glad that they are available (these cuts have been hard to find at our local Safeway in the past), but I wish they were sold at more reasonable prices. These are supposed to be cheap cuts of meat, after all, but Safeway sells them at $6.50lb! You can often get rib eye steak at Safeway for less than that.

I tried their "Ranchers Reserve" flat iron steak tonight in a recipe for Maple and Soy-Glazed Flank Steak (they didn't have any flank steak). I wasn't happy with the recipe, the flavors were very tame, but the meat itself was incredibly tender - some of the most tender meat I've ever eaten. It's not surprising, as flat iron steaks are supposed to be second only to beef tenderloin in tenderness. But I'm more of a "flavor" person than a "tenderness" person, so this cut didn't really win me over.

One thing that did annoy me was how uneven the two "steaks" were cut. They range in thickness from about 1/6" to 1 1/2".

I probably won't buy this cut again, just because of the lack of flavor, but I will give the skirt steak and the flank steak a try sometime.