Arizona · Main
Arizona Carne Seca
- Advanced
- 4 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with a warm current of chile, acid holding everything up to the light, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 1kg beef flank or round, sliced thin
- Juice of 4 limes
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tbsp salt
- For cooking: 3 tbsp oil, 1 onion sliced, 2 tomatoes, 3 green chiles, chopped
- Flour tortillas to serve
The skills inside
Sautéing & the shallow fryMarinating: acid, salt and time
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Marinate the thin beef slices in lime, garlic, and salt, then dry them, traditionally in the desert sun, or in a low oven or dehydrator until leathery.
- Shred or chop the dried beef finely.
- Saute the onion, tomato, and green chile in the oil until soft.
- Add the shredded carne seca and cook until it absorbs the flavors and heats through.
- Serve piled in warm flour tortillas.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Marinating: acid, salt and time 70 recipes
- Contact is total: every surface is wetted, and the pieces are not welded into a clump with dry faces where they pressed together.
- The stated time was kept and kept cold, read against a clock, because this is the one technique where longer is a different result rather than a safer one.
- It worked at the surface and no further: cut a piece and the marinade’s colour stops a few millimetres in. A protein gone opaque and chalky to the centre before any heat reached it has been cooked by the acid.
- The texture is still springy and whole, not mushy, mealy, or fraying at the surface when it is lifted.
- Where the next step browns it, the surface was patted dry first: a wet surface cannot brown, and the marinade’s sugars will scorch before the food colours.
Where it goes wrong It was left well beyond the stated time on the assumption that more is better, so acid and salt worked through the thin edges: those cook to cotton and read grainy while the thick centre tastes of nothing at all.
Sautéing & the shallow fry 80 recipes
- Everything sits in a single layer with visible space between the pieces: nothing stacked, nothing touching, or the pan is too small for the quantity.
- The pieces move freely and keep moving, sliding across the pan rather than sticking and tearing when the pan is worked.
- Light even browning arrived at quickly: colour on most faces, not the deep crust of a sear and not grey.
- A thin film of fat with the food glossed by it: no pool left in the pan at the end, and nothing greasy on the fingers or the plate.
- Cooked through but still firm, having spent only a few minutes in the pan: anything that has gone soft has been in there too long.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, the pan cooled, and the food released its water: what was meant to brown in three minutes stews for ten and comes out grey, slack and wet.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
- Also Right
- Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
- From the Taps
- Amber ale
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water, make room
Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.
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