Being married to a Mexican, I often get requests for Mexican dishes. These dishes are often things that I have never ever made before. I have certainly had the pleasure of tasting them before, but I didn’t grow up with them like he did. I mean, I grew up on the Schilling Taco Seasoning packets, ground beef and the pre-shaped hard taco shells. It doesn’t get more guera than that! It makes it hard to know how to reproduce the flavor that’s associated with that nostalgic feeling of eating this stuff growing up.

This weekend, the hubby and I decided that Carne Adada sounded like a great idea, but neither of us had a clue as to how to make it. So, he enlisted the help of some of his friends and family members, and this is what we came up with!

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Lawry’s Season Salt and oranges as the part of the marinade seemed to be the common denominator. We jazzed it up a bit with the lime, coriander, cumin, and chili powder.

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I really wanted to try to get flank or skirt steak, but oddly the grocery store didn’t have that. We ended up having to settle for thinly sliced chuck roast, which was okay. That’s the cut of meat they were using for their own, pre-made carne asada that was ready right there at the meat counter. We didn’t want the pre-made stuff though – we wanted to do this on our own!

In addition to the seasoned salt and pepper, we added the chili powder,

cumin,

and coriander,

making sure that the meat was well seasoned.

Then we started work on the marinade, which was really quite simple. Just garlic

and lime and orange juice!

We thought adding onions in between the meats as it was marinating might be a good idea.

So we layered the meat and onions in our marinating dish.

Pour the marinade over the meat and onions





Cover this and let the acid in the citrus juice work its magic! We let it sit for three hours, but next time, we’re going to keep it overnight. I’d say that 3 hours is the BARE MINIMUM for this kind of cooking.

For the toppings, we decided to keep it simple, and top our carne asada tacos with some grilled peppers and onions.

This turned out to be quite a bit of peppers and onions, so I sauteed them up in 3 batches, so the pan wouldn’t be too crowded. If you crowd the pan, the veggies will end up steaming in their own juices, so I find that a screaming hot pan with a little bit of olive oil gives you a good sear on the veggies without making them too soggy. We kept the seasoning simple with a little salt, pepper, and Mexican oregano.

Grill the meat, and don’t be afraid of over-cooking it too much! This will probably be the only time you will ever hear me say that, but it really worked out well. We got good grill marks on it, then kept them under the broiler while the other pieces cooked up, checking on them periodically making sure that they didn’t turn into leather.

They got close to being jerky-like, but the meat would have been much chewier than it turned out if we didn’t cook it so long.

Enjoy!

Carne Asada Printable Recipe