How to Make Flank Steak in Adobo and Texas Breakfast Tacos

[Music] today on cook's country julia and bridget make a lone star state favorite flank steak and adobo adam reveals his top pick for inexpensive blenders and ashley makes julia the ultimate texas breakfast taco that's all right here on cook's country you probably remember the alamo but have you ever heard of the chili queens in 1836 during that famous battle women and some men known as chili queens set up stands in alamo plaza and fed the soldiers spicy stews from big copper kettles and after the railroads came to nearby san antonio in 1877 tourists sought out the stands where a bowl of beans and chili plus a tortilla cost just a few cents now the chili queen served all kinds of mexican fare and they were written about in near mythological style according to a clip from the san antonio daily express in 1894 the chili queens were ever attentive always jolly bright bewitching creatures today the chili queens are long gone but we're here to carry on that tradition with a hearty rich chili of flank steak in adobo now the dish we're making today is actually called arrachera in adobo i love a dish that i can roll my rs for but basically it's steak that's stewed in a chili-based sauce and it's sweet and it's a little bit spicy and smoky and a little bit fruity too and julia's going to show us how to make it that's right and if you ask 10 different cooks how to make this dish you'll get 12 to 13 different answers because there's so many styles and they're all delicious but we honed in on the style we like the best all right which we think is more authentic okay and it all starts with dried chilies this is the star of the show anchos and pasillas now these aren't spicy but the ancho is very sweet and raisiny the pasilla is a little bitter and earthy so the combination's good and to bring out their flavor you really have to toast them in the oven so before we toast in the oven you want to get rid of the stem and the seeds to get rid of the stem sometimes you can pull it off and you want to cut in there and that way you get all the seeds out we want to control the spice in the heat so that's why we're going to take them out in total we have one and a half ounces of ancho and one ounce of fascia the seeds are almost glued on yeah that means it's going to have good flavor all right there's that one now these are the pacia they're a little easier because they're really concentrated at the top of the chili so i'm just gonna again cut it open and pull out that pod of seeds so here we have all of our chilies that have been stemmed and seeded we're gonna toast them in a 350 degree oven for about five minutes to really bring out their flavor sounds good [Music] all right so the chili is roasted in that oven for just five minutes they're good and toasty and fragrant it was a beautiful smell and now i put them in a big bowl with some warm tap water for five minutes that's to soften them take them out of the water a little water clinging to the chilies is totally fine there we go right into a blender jar a lot of the adobo sauces we tried included some tomatillos and we really liked that fresh fruity light flavor but even better use tomatillo salsa so this is three quarters of a cup of jarred tomatillo salsa next a little chicken broth just add some good liquid this is three quarters of a cup of chicken broth now a little bit of orange juice which you commonly find in some mexican sauces this is half a cup of orange juice lime juice of course this is a quarter of a cup of fresh lime juice just a little bit of sugar it goes a long way okay a third of a cup of brown sugar this is a teaspoon and a half of dried oregano last but not least one teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of black pepper in the blender it goes we're gonna blend this until it's very smooth and that can take up to two minutes all right all right so that's been about two minutes give me a rest of that oh oh oh yes yeah you can see how nice and smooth and thick that is that's perfect all right we're gonna set this sauce aside for now and go on down here and talk about the meat so flank steak is very traditional this is a two and a half to three pound flank steak sometimes you find nice big guys like this sometimes you have to buy two little guys okay first thing we're gonna do see if you need to trim any fat this little bit of fat i'm not going to trim off that's going to add good flavor sometimes you get a lovely fat cap that'd be a bit much all right so now i'm just going to cut it into one and a half inch pieces you kind of just cut it in one direction and then you cut it in the other and you got nice big stew-sized pieces and now i'm just going to spread these guys out quick pat dry and then we're going to season with half a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper okay there we go now i like to move the meat around just catch up any of that seasoning that's been lost so it sticks to the meat doesn't get left behind on the board like with most stews or braces we're going to brown the meat that gives a nice fan it gives a nice depth of flavor to the sauce so over medium-high heat i'm going to add just a tablespoon of oil and i'm going to wait till that oil is nice and smoking before i add half the meat all right the oil is smoking so now we're going to add half the meat we don't want to crowd the pan because we want it to brown really nicely and get that good fond and we're going to brown it for six to nine minutes till it's good and golden on all sides so we're going to set it aside and brown that second batch sounds good all right so this second batch of beef is ready to come out tons of color tons oh yeah that's a good looking pot right there so there's a good amount of fat left in the pot that's perfect for sauteing up the aromatics okay i'm gonna turn the heat down to medium and add one chopped onion to that i'm gonna add half a teaspoon of salt and this will take about three to five minutes to soften and get lightly browned all right so it's been about five minutes you can see those onions have gotten smaller they've shrunk they got nice and brown now time to add some garlic this is a whopping eight cloves yeah and we're also gonna add a tablespoon of ground cumin we're just gonna cook this for about 30 seconds until yeah you can smell it you can really smell it now it's turning into good chili time for the adobo sauce thank you so right into the hot pot out of the blender i'm going to use this little spatula to make sure i get it all in there there we go all right going to stir this in you can see how it looks thick it's not going to reduce too much thicker consistency in the oven because so much moisture is going to come out of the steak so in goes the browned flank steak and any juices that have accumulated while it was sitting oh and that's it bring this to a simmer i can see it simmering right there around the edges and now we're going to cook it in the oven which again we love doing with braises because the heat's more even you don't get hot spots or scorched spots on the bottom of the pot that's right so i'm gonna cover it and i'm gonna put it in the oven for about an hour and a half until that flank steak is tender sounds good i'll get the door for you oh thank you all right so while that adobo is in the oven and we're gonna make some tortillas so it starts with flour this is two cups of all-purpose flour to this we're gonna add one and a quarter teaspoons of salt we're just gonna whisk this together now we're going to add the shortening or lard and i have five tablespoons here so i'm just pinching the lard between my fingers and working it into the flour we're just looking for it to be evenly incorporated don't want any big pieces of lard you can see the texture has really changed it just looks like coarse crumbs mixed in there and that's what you're looking for so to this we're just gonna add some water we found using warm water makes it a little easier for the dough to come together this is two thirds of a cup of warm water now i'm gonna use a spoon i'm just gonna get this dough to come together in the bowl now that the dough is coming together i'm just gonna use my hands and knead it still in the bowl to try to get up any of those little flowery bits try to get them incorporated the other trick i do is you can turn it onto the board flatten it out and put the scrappy bits right in the center and you sort of knead them in and as i need it i'm just going to scrape up any bits that are on the counter and knead them right in knead this for a little bit until it makes a nice smooth ball that means the gluten has been developed make a nice chewy tortilla all right so that looks good beautiful i'm going to cut it into 12 even pieces that represents 12 tortillas bench scraper is great for doing this i'm just gonna eye it and now the fun part wanna join me yes make it a ball all right so you can do it in your hands you can also do it right on the counter you're letting the dough really stick to the board that makes a nice perfect ball nice so obviously we just really worked the gluten in these things they're going to need to relax for about 30 minutes before we can roll them out into a good flat tortilla so i'm just going to cover them with plastic wrap so they don't dry out that takes about half an hour we're going to let them rest in the refrigerator you can smell the flavor coming out of the oven per can oh all right ready i am voila look at that color it's so deep and dark in there oh it smells so good you smell the chilis you smell the onion a little cumin yes so this is ripping hot so we're gonna let it cool obviously before we eat it but i'm gonna show you how to test for doneness one way is you pick up a piece of meat you put the fork on it and you can see how much resistance there is perfect all right we're gonna let this lava hot adobo cool for a little bit while we make some tortillas all right work for my supper all right so we have two boards set up here a little bit of flour on our work surface here and grab a dough ball and now we're just going to use a rolling pin and roll it out to a six inch tortilla and i like to start by using my hands really just press it out while it's nice and easy to manipulate and again we're looking for about six inches and more importantly you really want them to be even so they cook evenly in the pan gotcha all right and so now to store them we're going to put them on these little pieces of parchment paper that i've cut to six inch squares so that's kind of a good judge as to how big it is and we're just going to stack them on a plate sounds good there we go a roundish tortilla all right so we're just going to finish these up and then we're going to cook them off all right so cooking these is really easy a nonstick pan is good because it won't stick how about that how about that i greased it just a little bit with some vegetable oil and i put it in there medium high heat you can see it's starting to bubble oh it's doing that flip it over oh that little bit of golden browning it's perfect all right i'm gonna cook that on the second side it's about a minute each side you're cooking them one at a time but they go super fast they do all right so it's been about a minute on that second side oh you can see some nice browning it's puffing that's cooking the inside if you don't let it puff the inside stays a little too raw that's right all right and this is a tortilla warmer it's great for keeping those tortillas nice and warm for serving that looks good on both sides right into the tortilla warmer that's our last guy oh goodness so good oh give you a little extra sauce thank you it's not just flank steak i want in adobo exactly so here we're gonna have a little bit of queso fresco beautiful and of course just a little cilantro this is beautiful are you jealous of me right now i'm about to tuck in yeah okay look at that meat it's falling apart i gotta say it wouldn't be the same without homemade tortillas really are worth it but the flavor of that sauce it's nice and thick and smooth it's not too sweet it's not too acidic and you can really taste the chilies that was true really well balanced that's that nice fruity kick too that's those ancho chilis well this amazing dish it all starts with a rich adobo sauce toast ancho and pasilla chilies in the oven soften in water then blend with salsa verde orange juice spices and more sear flank steak and then cook onions along with garlic and cumin add the beef and sauce back to the pot and cook it all until tender meanwhile make tortilla dough with flour shortening and water then grab a friend to help roll out and cook the tortillas serve it all with queso fresco and cilantro so from cook's country and a couple of chili queens it's flank steak in adobo [Music] dr jonas salk used one during his development of the polio vaccine and we use it to make frozen margaritas it's the blender and adam's here to tell us more [Laughter] you know we've tested expensive blenders in the past but we wanted to find out what a hundred dollars would buy us in the world of blenderdome so we have seven different blenders here price cap of a hundred dollars low price was about 60 they're all from popular manufacturers and let me tell you about the tests okay they did not include a polio vaccine but they did include margaritas there you go and kale smoothies and making mayonnaise and pureeing tomato soup and crushing ice basics that you would expect out of a good blender exactly now there was a lot of variation in terms of the performance a lot of that had to do with the design of the jar when you're blending food you're forming a vortex which is like a little tornado inside of that jar so the food gets whipped up pulled back down onto the blades that's what makes for efficient blending okay the diameter of the jar has a lot to do with that this one was about the biggest diameter we had it was five and a half inches and that means that the food gets splattered onto the edges and unless you stop and scrape it down it doesn't have optimal contact with the blades much better was this guy here this is about four and a half inches across the middle the food doesn't go as far out you get a tighter vortex smoother smoothies smoother soup better crushed ice don't forget the margaritas don't forget the margaritas only three of these blenders did all right on the mayonnaise test mayonnaise is a little tricky because the eggs and the oil have to be emulsified at a fairly slow even pace testers used a tachometer to measure how quickly the blades spin in rpms or revolutions per minute a lot of these guys just spun way too fast even at the lowest speed close to 10 000 to 14 000 rpms the machines that did a better job with the mayonnaise spun more like 8 500 rpms at the lowest speed the second factor in terms of the mayonnaise test was the position of the blade relative to the bottom of the jar in this one for instance the blade sat too high so the eggs and the oil got trapped underneath without really contacting the blade or mixing in okay testers also paid attention to the usability and design they wanted clear controls they wanted nice light jars that were easy to attach to the blender detach from the blender easy to pour from they paid a lot of attention to noise i want you to give this one a try this red one yeah all right [Applause] can you imagine making a smoothie in the morning with that i'm awake and all the neighbors know it too street it sounds like you're going into a dentist office yeah in an airplane testers used a decibel meter this is one of the loudest blenders that was not a selling point the uh the winning blender was a lot quieter the last thing that testers tried was cleaning them and to find out whether they retained stains or odor testers pureed chipotle peppers and raw garlic let it sit around for a while cleaned it out of the jars and then did the old sniff test and the good news is that the winning blender did not retain odors very good news and in fact this is the winning blender this is the black and decker performance fusion blade it's about 80.26 it had the narrowest jar of all of them about 4.25 inches across the middle clear easy to use controls it did almost as well as a lot of the higher priced blenders and it was nice and quiet it didn't keep any odors or stains this is a fine blender for less than 100 bucks well there you go for less than 100 bucks you can get a great blender and it's the black and decker performance fusion blade blender for 80. 80.26 [Music] down in san antonio they are crazy for breakfast tacos and the thing that distinguishes a breakfast taco from one that you'd eat for dinner is that you eat it in the morning now sometimes they're filled with breakfast foods like eggs or sausage but oftentimes you can find them filled with traditional meat fillings like you would eat for dinner and they're a delicious way to start the day and today ashley's going to show us how to make them at home that's right i am now people in san antonio are so crazy about tacos that they even sell them at the gas station that's a little crazy right so let's get started i'm going to show you first the salsa roja which is the red sauce start by stemming one roma tomato and i'm gonna core the center of it out here and now chop this here and we have one pound total of the tomatoes add two cloves of chopped garlic stir it until combined and now i'm gonna microwave these tomatoes for about four minutes we wanna remove excess liquid so that the salsa won't be too thin so the tomatoes are gonna start to steam and the liquid begins to pool at the bottom of the bowl [Music] four minutes later and let's take a look at all of that liquid that's a lot of liquid and now i am gonna add these tomatoes to this blender here to this i'm gonna add one jalapeno that i have seeded and chopped and two tablespoons of cilantro one tablespoon of lime juice one teaspoon of salt and just for some controlled heat a quarter teaspoon of red pepper flakes just gonna process this until smooth which will take about 45 seconds let's take a look take a little whiff of that oh that smells good you can really smell the jalapeno and the cilantro coming through much better too than just opening up a jar of salsa and i like the texture it's nice and thick so it'll stick to the taco no t-shirt dripping promise okay let's take a walk on over to the stove now we're going to start focusing on the filling of our breakfast tacos and the first thing we're going to do is cook eight ounces of chorizo now chorizo is mexican style sausage it's not cooked so you do have to cook it so i'm gonna add that chorizo over medium heat and if you notice i took the casings off of the chorizo and i'm just going to cook this until well browned all over which will take about six to eight minutes [Music] it's been eight minutes and this chorizo is looking beautiful it looks awesome it smells good too i'm gonna continue to build the filling so this is one small onion that is finely minced and here we have one more jalapeno that i also took the seeds out of and chopped cook these for about four to six minutes until the vegetables are just softened while these are cooking let's step over here hey eggs eggs it's breakfast time let's have some eggs so if you notice we have quite a bit of eggs in here this is 12 large eggs a whole carton a whole garden and i'm gonna add a half a teaspoon salt and a quarter teaspoon pepper and i'm gonna whisk these until the mixture is completely yellow and that's gonna take about one whole minute okay looks beautiful to me looks good and even let's get scrambling all right so i'm just gonna add these eggs to the skillet now you still have the heat over medium heat yes low and slow for these scrambled eggs and if you notice i switched to a rubber spatula i did notice yes i'm going to continually move these eggs around the skillet until they start to clump and until the rubber spatula when i drag it through the center leaves a nice clear lane that's how i know they're almost cooked but not totally and that's going to take about one and a half to two and a half minutes okay now there is a range in there because depending on the skillet and the pan you use they all have different dimensions in the bottom exactly so it's really important to pay attention to the visual cues as opposed to just the time range or heat level in this recipe okay ooh i'm starting to see a trail yes the eggs are on their way to being cooked now if you notice they still look pretty wet so that's going to be an additional just 30 to 60 seconds reduce the heat to low and i'm going to cook them just moving them ever so slightly until they start to clump more but they're going to still look wet a lot of times we cook eggs so much to the point where they look so dry because they're overcooked nothing worse than a dry egg exactly so here they're almost close i'd say we have about 10 seconds left all right yes so if you see it looks still slightly wet so let's stop cooking these eggs and let's eat i like it okay so i'm gonna slide this over so in that tortilla warmer we have some homemade flour tortillas oh and these homemade flour tortillas are awesome oh i love the rustic good homemade tortilla for the toppings we have the salsa that we made earlier some shredded monterey jack cheese i love when you get the cheese on a hot taco and it just starts to melt a little bit mm-hmm slice scallions and some lime wedges my favorite flavors all right [Music] man so good the chorizo is really flavorful with the eggs i like the little bit of onion and quite a kick of jalapeno which i dig but not too much and i love the texture of the eggs they're nice and moist they're not dry and rubbery and that flour tortilla ashley thank you these are awesome oh thank you so to make your own texas style morning start by making a salsa roja using fresh tomatoes that you microwave drain then blend until smooth for the tacos make a flavorful egg scramble starting with chorizo onion and jalapeno once the eggs are added to the pan cook them for about two minutes on medium and turn the heat down to low to finish serve with a homemade flour tortilla and you're raring to go you can find this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at our website cookscountry.com thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 153,325

Keywords: tex mex, tex mex recipes, tex mex food, texas breakfast tacos, flank steak in adobo, mexican food, breakfast tacos recipe, taco recipe, breakfast recipes, adobo recipes, steak recipes, how to make adobo, breakfast tacos, cooking, cook's country, cooks country, america's test kitchen, americas test kitchen

Id: FgBYyrTJ4Hs

Length: 23min 4sec (1384 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 09 2019