The only prep work that this recipe required was to marinate the flank steak overnight. Compared to others though, this marinade was simple to make and the prep time was only about 15 minutes. The first step was to peel and chop the garlic cloves. Now, I've never had to peel garlic before, but from what I hear, it's annoying as hell to do. To thwart that, I used a technique I learned from this video. To effectively smash the bulb, I placed it under a cutting board, and used a meat tenderizer to apply the load. The result is below.
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| Smashed cloves of garlic |
Then, I covered the bowl with the same cutting board, shook it ferociously, and spent a few minutes picking out the cloves from this mess.
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| Somewhere in there is enough garlic to last the average man a long, long time |
Once the cloves were chopped, they were mixed with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to produce this lovely marinade.
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| Carne asada marinade |
I couldn't find one big (3-4 lbs) flank steak at the store, but I used two "smaller" ones, and the result was the same. I put them in one of the roasting bags like I used for the mojo pork, poured the marinade in, and really made sure to rub the marinade all over the steaks, tossing each one so that the marinade didn't ignore the steak on top as they sat in the bag overnight. After that, the steaks went into the fridge, where they stayed until I flipped the bag about an hour before I started to cook.
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| Peek-a-boo! |
The next day, I took the steaks out of the fridge, tenderized them, and put them in the oven to broil for about 20 minutes, or until they were cooked to about medium-well. This cook time can vary, depending on how raw or done you want your carne asada to be.
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| Flank steaks right before going into the oven (or right before they make the transformation to carne asada, depending on how you look at it) |
Once the carne asada was in the oven, I turned my attention to the rice and beans. Instead of making the rice from scratch, I was lazy and bought a package of Mexican rice. I cooked it according to the package directions, and simply "cooked" the beans in a saucepan to warm them.
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| Pretty easy to make Mexican rice when its in a package |
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| Canned pinto beans, the easiest thing I've ever cooked |
A few minutes before the carne asada was done, I turned the oven heat down to 400 degrees, and put my tortilla in the oven for about a minute. At this point, everything was ready, and it was time to construct the burrito.
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| Carne asade (it's a lot funnier when you read it in the Taco Bell chihuahua voice) |
There are several variations of the order in which you can construct your burrito, but I went with the order that Freebirds uses. I started with the warm, pliable flour tortilla.
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| Step 1. Heat tortilla |
Next, I added rice to the middle, trying to somewhat have it aligned down one axis of the tortilla.
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| Step 2. Add rice |
The next step was the cheese, a mix of colby and jack.
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| Step 3. Add cheese |
Then came the beans. And I promise you, I added the chopped up carne asada and some salsa, I guess in the excitement, I forgot to take pictures of these steps.
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| Step 4. Add beans. <Not pictured> Step 5. Add meat. Step 6. Add anything else you want in the burrito |
With everything in my burrito that I wanted, I folded and rolled it according to the diagrams in the recipe, and it was time to enjoy.
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| Mission style burrito...w/ ears!!! |
Just like with the food from New Orleans, I knew that I would enjoy this. There wasn't a recipe for the burrito, because like the jambalaya, you can put whatever you feel like in the burrito. The carne asada was really the only thing that I had never made from scratch before. It was very juicy and, according to the website I got the recipe from, authentic. The amount of carne asade I made (about 4 lbs) was enough for five fully stuffed burritos so I enjoyed this one several more times after Sunday. Looks like we're a very solid 4/4.
-MB
