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Machaca

Beef salted, dried hard, and then pounded until the fibres separate into fluff.

Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef.

Ingredients

Method

  1. IT IS POUNDED UNTIL THE FIBRES SEPARATE INTO FLUFF, and that pounding is what the name describes and what the whole process exists for. Dried beef is a hard flat board and inedible as it stands. Beaten with a mallet, or the flat of a heavy knife, or between two stones, it progressively comes apart along its grain until it is a pile of loose dry threads with the texture of coarse wool. In that state it rehydrates in seconds in a hot pan, and that is the point: a week's worth of beef that keeps without a fridge and cooks in two minutes. Torn by hand or chopped instead, it stays in chewy slabs that never soften.
  2. IT IS CUT WITH THE GRAIN AND NOT ACROSS IT, which is the opposite of every other instruction about beef. Cutting across the grain shortens the fibres and makes meat tender, which here would mean it falls into dust under the mallet. Cut along the grain into long strips, the fibres stay full length and separate into threads rather than crumbs.
  3. IT IS SLICED THIN ENOUGH TO SEE LIGHT THROUGH. Three millimetres at most. Thicker, and the outside dries to leather while the middle is still moist, and a moist middle in a dried meat will spoil within days however good the outside looks. A very sharp knife, and the beef half-frozen to make it possible.
  4. THE SALT IS A CURE AND NOT A SEASONING. Three tablespoons to a kilo and a half, rubbed in and left an hour before any drying starts. It draws water out of the surface and makes the first hours of drying safe; salted lightly as if for the table, the meat spends too long damp.
  5. THE TEST IS THAT IT SNAPS AND DOES NOT BEND. Eight to twelve hours at 60°C in an oven on its lowest setting with the door propped open, or two days in hot dry air. A strip that bends still holds water in the middle. A strip that SNAPS cleanly is finished, and will keep a month in a sealed jar.
  6. The beef wrapped and put in the freezer 1 hour, until firm but not solid -- this makes thin slicing possible.
  7. Sliced WITH THE GRAIN into long strips no more than 3 mm thick, thin enough to see light through.
  8. Rubbed all over with the coarse salt, the lime juice, pepper and oregano, and left 1 HOUR.
  9. Patted dry and laid in a single layer on oven racks, not touching.
  10. Dried at 60°C -- the oven's lowest setting -- with the DOOR PROPPED OPEN on a wooden spoon, for 8 to 12 HOURS.
  11. TESTED: a strip must SNAP cleanly when bent. Any flex at all means longer. Cooled completely.
  12. The dried strips laid on a board and POUNDED with a mallet or the flat of a heavy knife.
  13. Pounded and worked until the fibres SEPARATE into loose dry threads like coarse wool. The hard edges pounded last.
  14. Any remaining hard pieces picked out and pounded again.
  15. Stored in a sealed jar. It keeps a month at room temperature and goes into eggs, soups and tacos.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Mexico · All recipes