The Taco Bell Crunchy Beef Taco. You know the type: Prefab tortilla shell, mystery meat, wilted lettuce, and of course, topped with waxy cheese. Don't forget the hot sauce packets!
In my desire to elevate this lowly food item to greater heights, I decided to re-engineer the fast food taco from the ground up. First, I started with a nice piece of USDA Choice chuck:
I then seasoned the chuck with Rub Company Santa Maria seasoning:
While the meat was coming up to room temp, I fired up the drum. When the coals were ready, I added 3 pieces of oak:
Then put the meat on:
About two hours later:
After another two hours, this chuck is almost done!
I didn't check the temp at all, but relied on "feel" to determine when the meat was ready. After pulling at one of the ends, and seeing the meat could be easily pulled apart, I knew it was done. After I took the chuck off the drum, I wrapped in foil to rest for about 45 mins.
Meanwhile, time to make fresh salsa. Gotta have fresh salsa with crispy pulled beef tacos!
I assembled fresh roma tomatoes, onion, cilantro, jalapeno:
I added them to the food processor, and added ground pepper, salt, some pickled jalapeno, and about 1/8 cup of the jalapeno juice:
Then blended to till finely chopped:
I then poured the salsa into a bowl to allow the flavors to meld:
Next up were the chips. The Missus took care of the tortilla prep related activities for this project since she's so good at that kind of thing:
Time to fry up the taco shells:
Now it was time to pull the beef. It pulled apart easily, and was very juicy:
I then added the pulled beef to a skillet, added some water, then some chili powder:
When the meat had absorbed the chili goodness, I tuned the heat off. Time to make tacos!
I stuffed each shell with a generous portion of meat, then added shredded iceberg lettuce and Colby Jack cheese. I packed up 3 of them for a hungry neighbor:
By this time, I was famished! Time to eat!
The tacos were delicious!
:thumb:
In my desire to elevate this lowly food item to greater heights, I decided to re-engineer the fast food taco from the ground up. First, I started with a nice piece of USDA Choice chuck:
I then seasoned the chuck with Rub Company Santa Maria seasoning:
While the meat was coming up to room temp, I fired up the drum. When the coals were ready, I added 3 pieces of oak:
Then put the meat on:
About two hours later:
After another two hours, this chuck is almost done!
I didn't check the temp at all, but relied on "feel" to determine when the meat was ready. After pulling at one of the ends, and seeing the meat could be easily pulled apart, I knew it was done. After I took the chuck off the drum, I wrapped in foil to rest for about 45 mins.
Meanwhile, time to make fresh salsa. Gotta have fresh salsa with crispy pulled beef tacos!
I assembled fresh roma tomatoes, onion, cilantro, jalapeno:
I added them to the food processor, and added ground pepper, salt, some pickled jalapeno, and about 1/8 cup of the jalapeno juice:
Then blended to till finely chopped:
I then poured the salsa into a bowl to allow the flavors to meld:
Next up were the chips. The Missus took care of the tortilla prep related activities for this project since she's so good at that kind of thing:
Time to fry up the taco shells:
Now it was time to pull the beef. It pulled apart easily, and was very juicy:
I then added the pulled beef to a skillet, added some water, then some chili powder:
When the meat had absorbed the chili goodness, I tuned the heat off. Time to make tacos!
I stuffed each shell with a generous portion of meat, then added shredded iceberg lettuce and Colby Jack cheese. I packed up 3 of them for a hungry neighbor:
By this time, I was famished! Time to eat!
The tacos were delicious!
:thumb:
