7 Hour Tacos

My house is FREEZING in Winter - the only heater I have is a piddly little portable one and I live in one of those single front terrace houses that has a lot of cracks and gaps and fireplaces and whatnot. Therefore, any excuse to run the oven for a while is pounced on eagerly. And what better excuse than that most awesome of delicious food stuffs, tacos?


I stole the marinade for this from Tyler Florence's Fajita recipe, and the salsa is adapted from a recipe I found on Taste.

TACO MEAT

• big piece of beef - I use chuck steak usually, or sometimes skirt steak - about a kilo. Cut off as much fat as you can because no one likes greasy meat. Ew. 
• juice of 1 orange and 2 limes
• 2- 4 tbs olive oil (Tyler's recipe says 4, I used 2)
• 2-3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 3 chipotle chilis in adobe sauce (see below)
• handful of roughly chopped coriander leaves
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp salt

These are chipotle peppers - I buy them for about $6 a can in the Adelaide Central Market at one of those fancy gourmet shops. In the past I have substituted fresh chili with a bit of smoked paprika.

Throw everything except the meat into a blender or food processor and smoosh it until it is smooth. Mmm, doesn't that look yummy? Okay, bear with me - it will get better.

Marinate the meat for four hours or so - you could probably leave it overnight, though the citrus juice might start to "cook" the meat. I don't really know if that happens with beef, to be honest. Once you're done marinading place the meat in a casserole dish with a lid and cook in a low oven (about 140-150 degrees celsius) for about 5-7 hours, until the meat is falling apart and can be easily shredded with forks. There will be a period where it just looks like it's turned to rubber, but resist the urge to turf it. You'll get there. The time will depend on your oven - mine is crap, so I usually have to give it 6-7 hours to get it perfect.
Note: You can do this in a slow cooker, though I've found it tends to make the meat a bit too liquidy and mushy.

When it's cooked it will look vaguely like dog food and taste AMAZING. You can serve it with all your usual taco fixin's - we like salsa, sour cream, cheese, lettuce, and avocado.If we could fit more things in there, we would.

SALSA

• 2 tomatoes, seeded and finely diced
• 1 red capsicum, seeded and finely diced
• 1 green capsicum, seeded and finely diced
• 1/2 red onion, finely diced
• handful of finely chopped coriander leaves
• 1-2 tbs olive oil
• juice of 1 lime

Mix all the ingredients together and let sit for 30 mins or so to meld together.

This stuff is so good - I could just eat it by the spoonful, and then feel all smug because it's, like, healthy and stuff.

The blue bowl has frijoles in it, but I'm not including the recipe here because I haven't tweaked it to my liking yet. I'm still playing around with it. The meat and salsa makes enough to feed at least 6 people, maybe more if you don't pile and squeeze as much as humanly possible into the taco shell the way I do. And the best thing about it is leftovers for the next day!