Machaca con huevo

As tradition built it

Machaca con huevo

Norteño breakfast

Ingredients

• 500g beef, flank or skirt, cut into thin sheets
• to taste salt
• 6, lightly beaten egg
• 1, chopped onion
• 2 serrano chiles, chopped chile
• 12 flour tortillas

Method

1. Cut the beef into thin sheets, salt it, and sun-dry until hard, historically hung on mesquite branches.
2. Once dried, pound and shred the beef on a metate or in a molcajete until it separates into fine threads.
3. Fry the shredded beef with egg, onion and chile.
4. Wrap in flour tortillas.

Notes

No source consulted gives an exact drying time for the beef; that gap is stated here rather than filled with invented precision.

What a modern chef changes

Mechanical drying, hand pounding kept

Rung 2

Method

1. Run a dehydrator at 55 to 60°C for 6 to 10 hours on very thinly sliced, well-trimmed flank or skirt steak, an honest mechanical stand-in for open desert sun-drying, though it will not fully reproduce the flavour real sun and dry desert air give the meat.
2. Pound the dried beef by hand rather than shredding it in a food processor, since the mechanical bruising lets it rehydrate evenly once it hits the pan.
3. Toast and grind the dried chile fresh in the spice grinder rather than using a pre-ground jar, folding it through the egg at the very end so its aroma is not cooked away.