Tag: tacos

September 12, 2023 – Salt, Pepper and Garlic

September 12, 2023 /

There are all kinds of ideas about beef, particularly steak. I think about herb butter or Montreal seasoning to barbeque rubs. One theory that I subscribe to is Samin Nosrat’s ‘salt early, earlier is better’. But, the one tried and true recipe I use is salt, pepper and granulated garlic.

It’s freezer prep time. Last weekend, my neighbors gave me eight pounds of bear meat. They are planning to need room soon. I have been moving this beef head around for almost two years, that is way too long. There was a small amount of freezer burn that I trimmed off. The truth is, that in a month or two, I will probably have another head to store. So, I decided to make this over labor day weekend.

If I had a choice, I probably would skip the head altogether. But, it is our duty as parents and people to carry out cultural traditions and this is one that my wife enjoys. I begrudgingly pick-up the head, clean it and store it until such time that I cook it and we eat tacos. My preference by far and away is the tongue over the cheeks, but I can deal with it once every couple of years.

I was watching some videos recently to see if there were other preparations that I might like better. When I was talking about some of the things I learned, my wife forcefully said no. “Only salt, pepper and garlic that is the way that my grandparents did it.” So, that is what I did. I just rub the outside and pretend that you can get close enough to such a large volume of meat.

This is probably my fifth or six one that I have done. It is hard to remember everything when you only do it once every couple of years. That being said, I have made a lot of different mistakes over the years. The first one is make sure the head is clean. I spend a lot of up front time trying to get the grass out of the mouth and throat. I only made that mistake once.

The second one is there is a lot of mass there. Make sure there is plenty of defrost time. This year, I took it out of the freezer on Wednesday and cooked it on Saturday, but there was still ice along the bottom. Hence, cooking took much longer and still there were parts that were not as done as they should be.

Since the whole head contains a lot of gristle, the preferred method is low and slow. It is hard to do that in eight hours when it is still frozen. Also, most preparations include a braising component. I modified it by chunking up the meat and adding water to the skillet after it was 80% cooked. An hour of extra cooking did a lot to homogenize things but kind of ruins the romanticism of unwrapping the cooked head.

I wish that I had thought of taking pictures of the final product. Something about waiting three extra hours to eat and having people waiting on me made me to forget to do what I wanted. The tacos are simple, corn tortillas, onion, cilantro and the salsa of your choice. Don’t forget to taste the meat for salt before serving.

End Your Programming Routine: As I said, this is my go to preparation for beef. It is pretty much the only thing I do for steak. You can save all the Cajun seasoning, seasoning salt and all that stuff for chicken. Keep it simple for the best results.

May 10, 2022 – Tapped the Keg

May 10, 2022 /

My Cinco de Mayo debut turned more into a Mother’s Day dinner. I had to travel for work on Sunday. And because of Mother’s Day, we did our trap shooting on Saturday. That didn’t leave a lot of time to honor mom and have a fancy dinner party. Even though I don’t consider tacos fancy, the prep work can be extensive.

The meat I chose for tacos was beef. This was not just any cut, this was a challenge. It is cheek meat. I had a 10 pound block of beef cheeks. These are filleted of the head. You can imaging how many head it takes to make 10 pounds. A lot of those pieces are pretty tough and gristly. To make matters worse, the trimming was mostly done, but there were bits of bone, the inside of cows mouth, globs of blood and membrane still remaining. Sound good yet?

I personally don’t care for the meat. Mostly, I have had it when we prepare the whole beef head. I am not real interested in tough and greasy tacos. I can’t say the same for my wife. The fact of the matter is, this was meat that my father-in-law purchased and he liked it too. When we cleaned out his freezer last year, this was one of the items we packed away in the freezer.

I had plans to put some smoke on it, but I plum ran out of time. I made salsa and guacamole and the ensalada (the fixings) for the tacos. The plan was to pair it with the beer. What did I learn about the keg?

I did quite a bit of farting around with the carbonation. I had visions of simply applying CO2 and it would be ready to go. My first go was flat. Then I switched the inlet and outlet fittings to for the gas down the draw tube at higher pressure. I pressurized the keg four or five different days as it was not holding 20 psi. It is holding something less than that but not the full amount.

So, my fittings are leaking slightly somewhere and I didn’t feel like I got the carbonation that I wanted. Everyone else said that it was good, so maybe it was alright. It just wasn’t quite what I had in mind. That being said, I think it is probably worth pursuing some more experimenting and probably some new o-rings

End Your Programming Routine: Believe it or not, I am somewhat of a risk taker. Throwing a dinner with things that you have never done before is risky, especially if you won’t know the final results until you are serving. The tacos tasted great and the beer was a good compliment. I didn’t have the time to make the sides that I wanted, but we had plenty of taco fodder. I think it came out fine, even though I wanted things to be different. And, I will never quit pushing my limits. I find that motivating, inspiring and exciting.