And that’s recipe’s plural! Today not only am I going to share with you some rocking Carne Asada style taco’s, but I’m also going to triple down and show you two more recipe’s.

While we’re making these sultry tacos, I’m also going to show you how to make some homemade flour tortillas using bacon fat (or butter for you healthier folks / vegetarians). For those few vegans who might view my posts: I’m still working on the ratios of shortening / other substitutes - I don’t post recipes that haven’t personally tested.

Lastly, the third recipe is going to be some tasty “Guac” / avocado Salsa. It basically a modified guacamole recipe turned into a savory salsa. I was going to share this with all of you last week, but it was a lengthy written post. I'm running on the end of Tuesday for this post, so buckle up Buckaroo!

The Meat / Rub: 

The seasoning mix includes equal parts fresh cracked pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and 2x New Mexico red chili powder.

For each steak I used approximately an 1/8 of a cup of each spice + ¼ cup of red Chile for a total of 1 and 1 /8th of a cup. After the seasonings are mixed up, apply by hand and top off with a few splashes of low sodium soy sauce – just enough to evenly coat the meat.

If you’re not a big waster of bags like me, you then want to wrap and seal the meat in plastic wrap or aluminum foil. Alternatively (and my favorite way) is add the meat, dry ingredients, and then the soy sauce mix to a zip style bag and shake/rub until the meat is evenly coated. This creates way less mess and makes it easier to marinate. Remove the air from the bag and seal. Regardless of which method you use, marinate the meat for at least 2 hours in the fridge or overnight – I’m not your head chef.

Once the meat has finished marinating, preheat your grill to 400 F / 204 C. Place the meat directly on the coals and flip once browned on the bottom. Cook until juices start forming at the top of the meat,pull. Allow to rest for 5-10 minutes before cutting. You can also use a temperature probe if you want a bit more control over the meat temperature. Top with fresh squeezed lime juice and chopped cilantro.  

The Tortillas:

4 cups of flour

1 1/2 tsp of baking powder

1 tsp of sea salt

1/4 cup of bacon drippings

1/4 cup of butter (melted)

1/8 of a cup of lard

1 ½ cups of buttermilk

Combine dry ingredients via whisk. Add bacon drippings and melted butter.Whisk until batter is evenly lumpy, then fold in lard. Add buttermilk slowly / stir until it reaches a dough like consistency. For buttermilk substitution see below*On a lightly floured surfaces roll out dough and kneed for approx. 2 minutes. Should be smooth and firm.Allow to rest in a bowl covered for one hour.

Once rested, preheat a nonstick or cast iron pan to medium high- closer to high. Pull off chunks of dough and form little balls. It should yield approximately 12- 16 balls depending on size. On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough balls to approximately a 1/4 to an 1/8 of an inch. While preheating your pan, stack the smashed out tortillas in a staggered formation on a plate off to the side. Once your pan is preheated, place the tortilla in the pan, and wait for small bubbles to form. Flip and cook for an additional 30-60 seconds. Your looking for nice browning , but not burnt ass tortillas. Enjoy!

*Buttermilk substitution: 1 tsp of lemon juice in whole milk- mix and allow to sit for 5 minutes.

**Tortilla recipe modified based on Southern Cast Iron magazine's recipe** 

“Guac” / Avocado Salsa:

Chop and blend the following items:

2-3 avocados

4 roma tomatoes

1 onion

1 green bell pepper

1 red bell pepper

2 jalapeno

8 oz of fresh roasted and peeled Hatch, New Mexico green chile

1 teaspoon of sea salt, pepper, garlic, onion powder, cumin, red chile powder

1 hand full of fresh cilantro 

1 fresh squeezed lime.

You can also add in more chile, jalapenos, and chili powder depending on how spicy you want it. I've had some great results throwing in a few tablespoons of chipotle sauce as well. If you’re looking for more of a chunky style guacamole, skip the blender and chop finely and mix with a fork. Personally I like the blend step when I’m making a ton ahead of time and want to vacuum pack it and freeze for later.

Now that we have the recipe out of the way, let’s show some progress pics!

Marinating the Meat

Before we get started on the tortillas (which are quite a bit of work) we need to marinate the meat. I prefer at least 2 hours, but you can marinate the meat overnight in the fridge to save you some time. Pictured here are two, roughly 3 pound (6.6 kilo) size pieces of flank steak that have been seasoned with our rub and marinating for almost 3 hours. I’ll be using one of these flank steaks for tacos and the other for a Japanese style curry.

This is where the work begins!

I didn’t have a tortilla press at the time, so instead of fucking around with corn tortillas I decided to do flour instead. Next time I’ll do corn tortillas I promise! There are ample debates on the internet about flour vs corn, but I find both of them equally tasty. In New Mexico we use both for different things. Making your own flour tortillas can be a lot of guess work, in fact most abuelos you meet will tell you it’s “a little bit of this, a little bit of that.” So far this has been the most consistent recipe I found for the ratios. It’s still not as flaky as I’d like, but it’s comes pretty damn close. First you want to mix your dry ingredients and whisk. Mixture includes 4 cups of flour, 1 tsp of baking powder, and 1 tsp of fresh cracked sea salt or kosher salt.

I knew I was saving that bacon grease for something!

Now add the rendered grease ( 1/4 cup of bacon drippings, 1/4 cup of butter (melted), and an 1/8 of a cup of lard(optional). Whisk / mix until it's evenly crumbly.

The messy part is coming up!

Next add your 1 ½ cups of buttermilk... slowly. You essentially want to mix the dough as you pour in the milk. If you don’t have buttermilk like me, try this handy substitution: 1 cup of whole milk + 1 tsp of lemon juice – rest for five minutes at room temp, then use. You can mix this by hand, or with a sturdy spatula or spoon.  

Not quite a pizza...

Lightly flour the surface and roll the dough out. Knead for about 2 mins. The dough should be smooth and firm.

Time to rest!

Once the dough has been kneaded, rest for one hour. 

As I mentioned this is a long recipe, but we’ve got the big time wasters out of our way. So what’s the next step? 

Gauc salsa! 

As this point I’m just washing my rabbit food / aka salsa fixings.

Into the blender… 

This was a gun and run shot and blurry as hell. Sorry for the potato quality pic.

Tada!

All those ingredients managed to fit inside this quart container. Time to break out those chips…

I’ve got big balls, and he’s got big balls...

It’s been one hour and our tortillas are ready to go! Pinch off the dough and form little balls. After subdividing, It should make approximately close to 12-16 tortillas, depending on how big you like to make your balls…I mean tortillas. I’m going for 6-8 inches in diameter for my tortillas, which I hear is pretty average…

Time to smash your balls! 

I’m sorry…I can’t stop…it’s late… Preheat your pan on medium high heat – no oil. I hear a seasoned cast iron works best, but I’m pretty lazy with a nonstick. As I mentioned previously, you’ll want to smash them out to about a 1/4 to an 1/8 of an inch  on a lightly floured surface. This is accomplishing easiest with a good rolling pin, but I prefer to finish them up by hand…That just didn’t sound right… fuck it, we’ll do it live. The thinner the better they cook in my opinion… Personally I think working them by hand at the last step softens up the butter / grease in the tortillas.

The tasty reject

What am I talking about? None of these are rejects.. Every single one of these beauties will be absolutely delicious… These are handmade, can you tell? That supposedly increases their intrinsic value. Maybe I should open up an Etsy shop and sell handcrafted artisan tortillas for 40 dollars each. If they’re messed up, even better! I can increase their value by saying they’re unique and have the artists’ touch or something...

Back to the food: Once the pan is preheated start tossing the raw tortillas on, only one at a time in the pan. When they start bubbling, flip and cook for an additional 30-60 seconds. You want them to brown, not burn - a few little black spots is totally fine though).

All finished up!

I put the prettiest one on top, can you tell? You can fuck up a whole recipe and still make it look good when you’re writing a food blog… In all seriousness though, these were pretty damn good tortillas. Hell, In New Mexico half of our bread isle consists of different types/brands of tortillas. While we have a good selection, nothing is better than the homemade ones.

Fresh roasted veggies on the grill are the best!

Next we want to preheat our grill to 400 degrees freedom units / 204 C. Once your coals are ready to go, it’s time to roast up your veggies. Here I’ve got another red and green bell pepper. Once they are roasted all the way around, wrap in foil and allow to rest /steam for at least 15 minutes – it’ll allow you to peel them easier.

Remember that flanksteak? I member…

The coals are searing hot, It’s time to throw your meat on the grill. Gif stabilized since I forgot to eat earlier and hold a camera like MJF when I'm low on blood sugar... Jokes aside I’ve heard the Michael J. Fox Foundation has done tremendous work for Parkinson’s disease. I really need to start using that tripod that’s in the corner collecting dust…  

Back to the food: At this point I've already flipped the meat once, and waiting for the juices to start pooling on top - then it’s time to pull (for medium-ish rare). Once it's finished cooking, allow to rest for 5-10 minutes before cutting.

A good reason to let your meat rest

I’ve known this for years, but it took some cooking shows a while to figure this out. If you cut it fresh off the grill that meat is just gonna lose all those precious juices. On the plus side the meat continues to cook for a few additional minutes. It’s why you see some prime rib roasts recipes recommend you pull the roast at 130F/54.4C , even though technically medium rare is  few degrees higher. The bigger the piece of meat, the longer it will cook internally. Even for a 1 inch (2.54 cm) steak I recommend resting the meat for at least 5 minutes after it's been cooked.

Sultry Taco fixings!

While my meats resting I’ve put together my taco fixings on the ugliest flatware set imaginable... Despite my repeated attempts in purchasing new flatware that would complement my culinary skills and abominations, these are the only plates that haven’t managed to chip or break.

Two Tickets to Meat Mountain!!! 

I really need to start tagging my posts with this… Here is our flank steak all cut up opposite/across the grain. If you don’t do this, your meat will end up hard to chew. Right before serving, I sprinkled the meat with fresh lime and chopped cilantro. Some of the meat on the bottom was rarer. All of it was delicious.

Bonus fry Bread!

Thinking about using that leftover tortilla dough the next day? Make some tasty fry bread! Simply take those uncooked tortillas that you smashed out and fry in vegetable / canola oil @ 350 F until golden brown (make sure to tap them on the top every so often so they get a splash of hot grease on both sides). Not only are they great for tacos, they’re also very delectable with honey, or powdered sugar and cinnamon. If you folks are interested in a step by step recipe, I’d be happy to feature it soon. 

Until then, I hope you enjoy and let me know if you have any questions!

@usernamerelevantsoon