Kazza the Blank One

I haven't made any recipes from this book in a while - first it was Christmas then it was Tassie planning then it was Tassie then it was all just too hard.  But I pulled the book out again last weekend and let it fall open.  Mexican Shredded Beef is what it fell open to, so that's what I made!

All the ingredients laid out.

If I were doing these recipes for myself I'd rearrange things into the order you prep them to make things a little more efficient.

For example, rather than having the ingredients for the spice mix at the bottom but that being the first thing to make up in the instructions, I'd say chop the onion and garlic and start frying that while you make up the spice mix - that sort of thing.  I'm also conscious of the order of chopping things - much easier to chop the onion first then the beef, because otherwise you have to wash up the chopping board or find another one.  Plus, I'm lazy, so things like chopping garlic - meh, I'll just mince it and cook it a much shorter time.  It all depends how much you want to mise en place the thing before you start.  So I'll do up this blog with how I'd do it next time, not how I actually did it.. although it's pretty close :)

So chop up an onion and fry it.  I never follow recipes for this.  I add some water to the pan for the beginning of the cook and use a medium heat so the onion cooks slower but cooks before it burns.  It takes longer but you can be doing other things anyway.  

While the onion is cooking, chop up all the beef into chunks and put in a large bowl.  This was 2kg, but only because we were going to get the suggested 1.5kg but the butcher talked us into 2kg because it was the same price (and it was Sunday afternoon and he was probably trying to clear stock).  If you're worried about how long this will all take you can skip starting the onions until you're ready to go.

Make up the spice mix.  This is 1 tsp each of allspice, ground coriander (which I had to mash myself from seeds), salt, pepper; 2 tsp onion powder, 1 tbsp each of paprika and oregano.  She also wanted 1 1/2 tbsp chipotle powder but we couldn't find that so I just used a bit of chilli powder and a squirt of liquid smoke.

Mix up the spices, then coat the beef in the big bowl.

When the onion is nearly done, add five cloves of minced garlic and cook carefully so the garlic doesn't burn.  Get out a slow cooker and turn it on.  Add the onion and garlic to the slow cooker.

Brown all the meat.

While the meat is browning, add the other liquids to the slow cooker - 3/4 cup orange juice, juice of a lime (I didn't even measure the 2 tbsp she wanted, I just use one lime and be done with it), 400g tin crushed tomatoes, 2 cups low salt beef stock, 1/2 cup of water.  Don't forget the liquid smoke ;)

Add all the meat to the slow cooker as each batch is done.

Slow cook all afternoon.  

There was HEAPS of the sauce so 2kg meat worked quite well.  I imagine it'd be very liquidy otherwise.

Now because the slow cooker won't reduce liquids much you need to do that on the stove.

So pull all the beef out.  I'm pretty sure I washed up that bowl after having the raw meat in it!! ;)

Very very carefully pour all the sauce into a large frying pan or stock pot and reduce the heck out of it

Then mix it all back together again (probably add the beef to the frying pan to warm it up a little since it's been sitting out for a while)

Serve with taco slaw, Mexican red rice, corn, sour cream and cheese.  Or make tacos or burritos or whatever.

The verdict? Yum yum yum.  A little time consuming at the beginning and having to reduce the sauce at the end is a bit annoying (I'd consider doing this on the stove for 3 hours like I do with coq-au-vin).  But ultimately quite simple and delicious.

Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Me: yes!
Stu: yes!