Experience a truly delicious and surprisingly simple meal with our Teriyaki Air Fryer Cube Steak recipe. This marinated cube steak offers an incredible balance of tender, succulent beef with perfectly crisp edges, making it an instant family favorite. It’s a fantastic, protein-packed dinner solution that’s ready in a flash, utilizing fresh cube steak for the best flavor and texture, far superior to its frozen counterpart.
If you’re on the hunt for an economical yet immensely flavorful meal, give this air fryer cubed steak a try! Bursting with protein and typically served over a bed of fluffy rice, it’s a wholesome, low-fat option that everyone at your table will adore. This recipe proudly joins our growing collection of easy air fryer recipes, proving just how versatile this kitchen appliance can be.
Air Fryer Cube Steak: Your New Favorite Weeknight Meal
Our journey into the world of air frying began with exciting Ninja Foodi recipe creations, including a memorable bacon-wrapped air fryer steak. The discovery of tenderized beef, commonly known as cube steak, at a remarkably low price, opened up a new realm of culinary possibilities. After experimenting with various preparations, we found that marinating it in teriyaki sauce yielded the most exceptional results, leading to this fantastic recipe.
Since then, our air fryer adventures have expanded to include cooking everything from frozen steak in the air fryer to a myriad of other quick and delicious dishes. We love sharing our culinary breakthroughs, so keep reading for all the details on how to perfect this air fryer cube steak!
Pro Tip for Optimal Results: Whether you’re using a Ninja Foodi with its attached lid or a Cosori air fryer, always preheat your appliance. Placing food into a hot basket is crucial for achieving that desirable crispy exterior and ensuring even cooking. Learn how to properly preheat your air fryer to maximize crispiness. For your convenience, we also recommend grabbing our printable free air fryer cooking time chart to keep handy on your fridge.
Air Fryer Cube Steak: Perfectly Tender Without Flour
One of the beauties of this recipe is that it requires no additional coating like flour. You can simply season the cube steak, or, as we highly recommend, marinate it in your favorite sauce. While a lightly breaded pork cube steak can be delicious, a good marinade infused with a thick, flavorful sauce will impart unparalleled moisture and tenderness, ensuring every bite is fork-tender. This method also keeps the dish lighter and gluten-free.
Cooking Cube Steak in a Ninja Foodi
Rest assured, the brand of your air fryer doesn’t significantly impact the success of this recipe. However, if you’re using a Ninja Foodi, you’ll want to utilize the “Air Crisp” function with the attached lid. The Ninja Foodi’s versatility even allows you to pressure cook cube steak, offering an interesting comparison for tenderness, but for speed and crispiness, air frying is our preferred method here.
For those unfamiliar, cube steak is typically a lean cut of beef, often top round or sirloin, that has been tenderized by machine or hand to create small indentations, resembling “cubes.” The pieces we often use, like the one pictured here, come from buying meat in bulk from a local farm. This ensures we always have plenty of quality beef on hand, making a variety of easy beef recipes a regular part of our meal rotation.
Achieving Perfectly Tender Cube Steak
A flavorful marinade is, in our opinion, absolutely essential for cube steak. While a steak dry rub can certainly add flavor, a thick liquid marinade truly permeates the protein, breaking down fibers and enhancing its natural tenderness to an incredible degree. This makes a significant difference compared to methods like our gravy-based slow cooker cube steak, which, while delicious and popular, tends to be higher in calories and requires a much longer cooking time.
If you have the luxury of time, our slow cooker cube steak recipe consistently receives rave reviews for its melt-in-your-mouth tenderness. However, for a quick and equally tender outcome, the air fryer combined with a good marinade is unbeatable.
The Secret to Delicious Teriyaki Cube Steak
When it comes to marinades, teriyaki sauce is always our top choice. Perhaps it’s a nod to growing up in Hawaii, but for us, it’s simply the best sauce for adding depth, sweetness, and umami to any meat. We applied the same winning concept when developing our popular air fryer teriyaki chicken dish, and it works wonders for cube steak too.
Here’s what you’ll need to create this fantastic meal:
- Cube Steak: We use already tenderized cube steak, typically four pieces to serve a family. If your steak isn’t pre-tenderized, don’t worry! You can easily tenderize it yourself using a meat mallet (see instructions below).
- Teriyaki Sauce: A good quality bottled teriyaki sauce works perfectly for convenience. However, for an even fresher and customizable flavor, you can whip up your own using our homemade teriyaki sauce recipe.
- Important Tip: When choosing a store-bought brand, opt for a thick teriyaki sauce, not a thin, watery one like plain soy sauce. The thicker consistency adheres better to the meat and imparts more flavor.
If you need to tenderize your steak, place it between two sheets of parchment paper and pound it with a meat tenderizer mallet until it’s about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick and shows visible indentations. For a super-fast preparation without extended soaking, simply sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides, spritz with olive oil spray, and follow our air frying times below. However, for optimal tenderness and flavor, marination is highly recommended.
While milk is often used to tenderize and prepare steak for chicken-fried steak, we find teriyaki sauce offers superior flavor while achieving a similar tenderizing effect. It helps to mellow the robust beef flavor and infuse it with delicious Asian-inspired notes. Either way, allowing the steak to soak for a few hours is preferred for the most tender and flavorful results. Once your cube steaks are beautifully marinated, they’re ready for a remarkably quick cooking process in the air fryer. The exact cook time can vary slightly based on your preferred level of doneness.
Optimal Air Frying Times for Cube Steak
We typically aim for a medium-rare to medium doneness, as this keeps the cube steak wonderfully tender with just a hint of pink in the center. As shown in the image at the top of this post, five minutes of air frying yields a perfectly done steak with minimal pink. If you prefer your steak closer to medium-well, an additional minute, totaling six minutes, should achieve your desired result.
Keep in mind that the thickness of your individual cube steak pieces will influence the cooking time. Our pieces, as seen below, are moderately thick. We generally cook two pieces at a time to ensure proper air circulation and even cooking, which means cooking in batches. This works out well, as the cooked steak benefits from a crucial five-minute resting period before slicing.
Step-by-Step: Cooking Teriyaki Cube Steak in Your Air Fryer (No Flour Needed!)
Follow these simple steps for perfectly cooked, tender cube steak:
- Prepare the Steak: If your cube steak isn’t already tenderized, place pieces between two sheets of parchment paper and pound with a meat tenderizer until desired thickness and texture are achieved.
- Marinate: Place the cube steak pieces and your chosen teriyaki marinade (or dry rub) into a bowl. Ensure the steak is fully coated. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for a minimum of two hours, ideally three to four hours, for maximum flavor penetration and tenderness. If using a dry rub, pat it generously onto both sides of the steak.
- Preheat Air Fryer: Preheat your air fryer to 380°F (193°C) for 5 minutes. This is essential for a crispy finish.
- Load the Basket: Place two pieces of marinated cube steak into the preheated air fryer basket, ensuring they don’t overlap. Allow any excess marinade to drain off before placing them in the basket. Cook in batches if necessary, to avoid overcrowding.
- Air Fry: Close the air fryer drawer and cook at 380°F (193°C) for 5 minutes. This timing will result in a tender steak with a slight pink center. If you prefer no pink, cook for 6 minutes.
- Rest: Once cooked, carefully remove the cube steak from the air fryer and allow it to rest for at least 5 minutes on a cutting board before slicing.
Allowing the steak to rest is a crucial step that prevents the delicious juices from flowing out when sliced, ensuring every bite is moist and flavorful. Patience here is key to perfection! We love serving this air fryer cube steak diced into bite-sized pieces over brown rice, alongside vibrant air fryer vegetables and fluffy Ninja Foodi rice.
You might notice our cooking temperature is a bit lower than some other air fryer recipes. We consciously choose 380°F (193°C) over 400°F (200°C) to allow the steak to cook slightly longer at a gentler heat, which helps it stay incredibly moist and tender on the inside, without drying out the exterior.
We’re confident you’ll love this recipe, and if you’re like us, you’re always thinking about your next meal! Since we still have plenty of beef from our annual bulk purchase, we highly recommend trying our killer air fryer steak bites for another fantastic beef option.
Air Fryer Cube Steak with Teriyaki Marinade
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Equipment
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1 air fryer
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1 Bowl
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Meat Tenderizer Mallet (optional)
Ingredients
- 4 pcs cube steak
- 6 oz teriyaki sauce, or other marinade of choice
- Olive oil spray (optional, for non-marinated steak)
- Salt and pepper (optional, for non-marinated steak)
Instructions
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If you have regular steaks you want to make cubed, place them between two pieces of parchment paper and pound with a meat tenderizer mallet on both sides to tenderize.
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Put cube steak pieces and marinade in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate for 2-4 hours to allow flavors to meld and tenderize the meat.
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Preheat your air fryer to 380°F (193°C) for 5 minutes.
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Place 2 pieces of cube steak into the air fryer basket (allowing excess sauce to drain back into the bowl first). Ensure they are in a single layer without overlapping. Cook in batches if needed.
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Close the drawer and cook at 380°F (193°C) for 5 minutes. This will result in a steak that is slightly pink in the middle. For a more well-done steak with no pink, increase cooking time to 6 minutes.
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Remove the cooked cube steak and allow it to rest for 5 minutes before slicing and serving. This helps retain the juices.
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Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Additional Info
Frequently Asked Questions About Air Fryer Cube Steak
Cube steak is typically a cut from the top round or top sirloin of beef. Its distinctive name comes from the small, cube-like indentations found on its surface. These indentations are created using a mechanical meat tenderizer or a mallet, a process designed to break down tough muscle fibers and make the meat more tender. While you can buy it pre-tenderized, it’s also easy to prepare yourself at home.
To tenderize cube steak using a mallet, place each piece of steak between two sheets of plastic wrap or under parchment paper. Use the pointy, textured side of your meat tenderizer mallet (not the flat side) to pound the meat. Work from the center outwards, hitting firmly but evenly to create divots across the surface. This action flattens the meat slightly and breaks down tough connective tissues, resulting in a more tender steak when cooked.
Yes, cube steak goes by a few other names, particularly in certain regions. In some Southern states, you might hear it referred to as “bucket steak.” The origin of this name is debated but could stem from the way it was traditionally sold in cardboard buckets. Some people also use the term “cubed steak” instead of “cube steak.” Regardless of the name – cube steak, cubed steak, or bucket steak – all refer to the same tenderized, pounded pieces of beef that are perfect for quick cooking methods.
Yes, soaking cube steak in milk can indeed help tenderize it. The enzymes in milk, particularly lactic acid, can help break down the meat’s fibers, resulting in a more tender texture. However, we often prefer using a flavorful marinade like teriyaki sauce instead. Teriyaki not only tenderizes the meat effectively but also infuses it with a rich, savory-sweet flavor that complements the beef beautifully, toning down some of its stronger, beefy notes. For best results with either method, allow the steak to sit for at least 1-3 hours submerged in the liquid, with the bowl covered and refrigerated.