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I got this recipe from Charlie Ros5e many years ago.
It's super simple and delicious. I don't know where Charlie got it,
I don't remember exactly when it was, sometime in the late 1970's,
and I remember clearly the night he had me up to the Berghaus to
make it for me.
The notes I made as I scribbled this down don't have a name for this recipe,
but from my travels in Mexico I know that shredded meat is called machaca,
so that's what I'm calling this.
This is a combination of the literal transcription from my original notes,
and additional details that I've learned over the years that I've prepared it.
Now that I'm thinking about it, you should probably adjust the cooking times down by 1/3.
The Berghaus is up around 8,000 feet, where the boiling point of liquids is a lot lower, so it
takes longer to cook. The volumes and times are the original recipe, so adjust accordingly for
your altitude.
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- Take 8 chicken thighs or 4 chicken breasts and drop in a pot of boiling water deep enough to cover the chicken.
Simmer for about 45 minutes.
- Remove the chicken and shred the meat with a pair of forks.
Give the skin to Freja (Rest in peace Freja, Charlie's wonderful dog).
Put the bones back in the broth.
- Simmer the broth down to 1/2 or 1/3 original volume.
- Heat up 4 tablespoons of shortening in a cast iron frying pan. If you want it to taste really authentic,
and aren't too concerned about your waistline, you should use lard (manteca).
- Add 2 tablespoons of red chili powder (molido) and toast. Be very careful here not to overcook the chili.
It should just take a light toasting, not cooked to a a brown sludge, just enough to bring the flavor out.
- Add 1 teaspoon of cumin.
- Add the shredded chicken.
- Add 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper, or to taste.
- Add some broth, about 1/2" deep and simmer, approximately 15 minutes or so.
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This goes great just as it is wrapped in warmed soft white flour tortillas,
or you can also use it for traditional tacos or burritos. Here's how we like to eat our
machaca and carnitas:
- Uncooked flour tortillas, if you can get them.
Toast the tortillas on a griddle until they start to puff up.
Don't overcook them, you don't want them crispy because you're going
to roll the other ingredients up in them.
- Chicken machaca or shredded pork carnitas.
- Black beans. If you use canned beans, heat them and ladle the beans out of the juice into the tortilla - you don't want a mushy tortilla roll.
- Mexican (Spanish) rice. We like Zatarain's, if you can find it.
- Shredded Mexican cheese.
This is typically a combination of cheddar, jack, asadero, and quesadilla-style cheeses.
- Salsa. Either fresh Pico de Gallo or one of the
Herdez canned salsas. Yeah, I said canned salsa!
Canned Herdez salsas look really yucky on the shelf, but they are really good!
- Shredded lettuce. This is really important!
- Put a moderate amount of everything onto a tortilla, in the order listed, and roll it up like a burrito.
- I won't tell you to "Enjoy!" If you've followed along so far, you ought know what to do next.
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