 |
| Tacos de Carne Asada |
But if you don't own a ranch, who can afford beef for the grill? I found some arrachera (skirt steak) in the store the other day for $11 a pound. It would have been perfect for carne asada, but who are they kidding? When chicken and pork are under $3 a pound, beef looks pretty unaffordable.
So what do you do if you have a hankering for tasty beef tacos, but you don't have a steak budget? You take a cue from the local bodegas which all sell bags of pre-marinated beef trim at affordable prices. And from the local taco trucks that cook this trim up on their flattops.
I bought some raw beef trim on the cheap after it had been marked down for sitting in the meat case for a couple of days. Like a little age is going to hurt beef! When buying trim, you are going to have to go back through it and remove the obvious fat and gristle. Because the meatcutters are not very discriminating when packing trim, you're going to lose about 20% by weight. But at a third of the price of steak, it's still a win, especially if you have to have beef like Ann does.
I put the cleaned trim in a gallon bag with a tiny bit of oil and a lot of minced fresh garlic, ground Numex chile powder, and Mexican oregano, a pretty classic marinade. It went into the refrigerator for three or four days to do its magic.
A lot of marinades for carne asada call for all kinds of things such as soy sauce and citrus juice. To each his own, but I prefer as close to a dry rub as possible so I can get the best sear on the meat. And I don't want citrus in the marinade, because if it is going to be on the meat for more than an hour or two, the citrus will change the texture of the meat. I prefer a squeeze of lime over the finished taco.
 |
| Searing the Beef |
Even though I cooked the meat on the range top, so it isn't true carne asada, it made a great dinner at a fraction of the cost of grilling steak.
No comments:
Post a Comment