Crunchy Tacos

I have mentioned a couple of times how much Russ and I love Jamie Oliver’s new show on the Food Network, Jamie at Home. Well, what I may not have mentioned is that his show comes on at 8:30 am on Saturday mornings. While this may surprise some of you, I am actually a morning person on the weekends (I can’t explain it, but I am… only on the weekends), so I am usually up by 8:30 but Russ is usually still sleeping. It has become our routine to record Jamie at Home and watch it when we are both up and drinking coffee. We don’t have a Tivo or DVR though, so Russ records it to a blank DVD which he sets to start recording just a couple minutes before the show starts. For the first few times we watched Jamie at Home we kept catching the very end of Tyler Florence’s show Tyler’s Ultimate and every time his dishes looked amazing. So, Russ started recording both shows and now we watch both of them once Russ wakes up over a cup coffee – a perfect way to spend a Saturday morning!

One episode that we caught the end of was for his Ultimate Beef Tacos and they looked so delicious that we had to give them a try. Luckily I learned my lesson earlier this year here to always read the recipe through ahead of time. To make the beef tacos you have to sear the meat and then let it simmer for three hours. Well, on a weekend this would be fine, but on a weeknight we would end up eating after 9 pm… I had already gotten the ingredients at the store, so I decided that I would sear the meat at lunch and then let it cook slowly in the crock pot for the afternoon. To make the beef you salt and pepper it on each side and sear it in oil until it forms a crust on each side. While it is searing you add the onion and garlic and let them cook. At this point I then moved the beef, onion, and garlic into the crock pot and added the crushed tomatoes, water, ancho chili powder, cumin, cayenne, and bay leaves. I left the crock pot on low for the afternoon. When I got home I turned it off and let it cool. Then I shredded the meat. I saved the tomato liquid to put the leftover meat back in to keep it moist for lunch the next day. While the meat was cooling I made the salsa. You basically just toss all the ingredients into the food processor and let it go. The only change I made was to substitute two jalapeno peppers for the Serrano (only because the grocery store was out of Serranos). While I made the salsa and chopped some lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and avocado for toppings, Russ fried the tortillas. To make the taco shells you heat vegetable oil in a large pot. You then add one or two corn tortillas to the oil and fry them until they are golden brown. The recipe calls for you to then shape them to fold in half once they are out, but ours folded up on there own while cooking, so we just took them out and put them on paper towels and sprinkled them with salt.

These tacos were wonderful and a nice change from our typical quick and easy tacos with ground beef. The beef had great flavor and texture and while I think our meat got a little over cooked it was still tender once it was shredded. The tacos shells were fantastic with great crunch and flavor. Russ is usually not a fan of corn tortillas and I am usually not a fan of hard taco shells (as I think store bought ones taste stale and have a fake corn flavor… I’ll admit it I’m a food snob at times), we both loved these! The taco shells had great crunch and nice flavor and were the perfect size. We decided not to use the slaw and instead used lettuce, tomato, onion, salsa, shredded cheese, and avocado slices as toppings all of which went really well with the meat. The salsa was so simple to make and very fresh tasting with a nice flavor from the cilantro. The only problem was that the two jalapenos I used had a huge kick to them and made it almost too spicy for me. Next time I’ll cut back on the pepper at first and then taste and add more only if it needs it. This salsa is not a chunky one, but more of a pureed salsa that still has some texture to it (not perfectly smooth). We usually eat chunky salsa, but I have to say I loved the texture of this one and thought it worked really well with the shredded meat and crunchy taco shell. These tacos were a real winner! Russ rates them a 9.