Monday, July 11, 2011

Three great meals, part 3

  The final piece of this project was actually go be enjoyed with a couple of friends that came over with their kid. It also, however, meant that I didn't have enough meat for everyone and I had to augment with some tri-tip. I suppose it would make a good comparison. I can generally buy tri-tip at $2.79 per pound at the cash and carry down the street. The only problem is that I need to get 16+ pounds at a time. It's 5 big tri-tips. My family can really only eat half a tri-tip if we're serious about it.
  But either way the tacos consisted of corn tortillas, salsa, cheese, avocado, and romaine lettuce. Good salsa is essential for such things. My store purchase choice would be Emerald Valley in your favored level of heat. But I have some small shop salsa from Manuel's in Aptos, ca. (Wow. They've got a nice webpage. Never had to look it up because we've had the menu memorized for the past 22 years.) Besides going through about a pint of salsa when we're there as a family they sell it for $5 a jar. It sound like a lot for salsa but it's pretty hot salsa and a jar will last you for a bit, even with 4 people digging into it.
  My tacos came out pretty good. These only have the Bottom Round:

  Also enjoyed with it was some homemade Cascade Pale Ale. Good stuff.

  Comparatively the tri-tip was still more tender but significantly less flavorful. The ability to get on all sides of the thin strips of meat helped the marinade penetrate the meat of the bottom round. This cheap meat had a good smoky salsa flavor and was easy to bite through without dragging half your taco out of the shell on each bit. Overall great success.

  As I'm reading about how butchers use meat I see a disproportionate amount of highly usable meat like this being ground up with large quantities of fat to make ground beef. However, this meat is highly usable in its low fat and natural cut. Don't fear the cheap meat. It can all be used well.

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