The Andrew Extravaganza

Shout out to a certain anonymous customer of the Latino persuasion: put that curious combination of perspiration and cumin scents in a spritzer bottle and you'd have Calvin Klein by the short and curlies. Despite the gagging reaction induced by his stench, I owe that guy and his unique cumin aroma a thank you because he reminded me to write this little entry. Gracias ese.

A few months ago, HEB had chuck roasts on sale dirt cheap, so we loaded up and put a few in the freezer. A chuck roast isn't exactly the finest cut for roast, so it usually finds its way to a crock pot recipe that is low maintenance and tasty enough, but pretty boring overall. I wanted to try something new, so I decided to go the Tex-Mex route. I've now made this recipe a few times, experimenting slightly each time. I think it's delicious and very versatile.

Before we get into it, let me introduce you to two key ingredients:

Salsa Casera, a chunky tomato salsa with moderate heat.	Salsa Verde, a tangy tomatillo salsa with decent heat provided by serrano peppers.

The Herdez brand is distributed by Hormel and I've seen them in HEB stores and we carry them at Dollar General for 75 cents per 7 ounce can. These two salsas are very good, and will provide the backbone for the flavor in the roast.

Ingredients: 1 7oz can Herdez Salsa Casera 1 tsp Garlic Powder 1 tsp Onion Powder 1 Tbsp ground Cumin 2 to 4 lb chuck roast 1 14.5oz can stewed tomatoes 1 7oz can Herdez Salsa Verde A little tomato sauce (optional)

Procedure: 1) Heat the over to 300 degrees. In a small bowl, combine the Salsa Casera, garlic powder, onion powder, and cumin to make a dark paste. Have a roasting pan or even just a 13x9 inch baking dish handy. Place the roast on a large piece of aluminum foil, spread the salsa paste all over the roast, turning it to get all sides coated. Wrap the roast tightly in foil and place in the baking dish. Roast that bad boy in the oven for about 3 hours (maybe a little longer for a larger/thicker roast). Check on it after about an hour or so. When you start to see the roast's juices spilling out of the foil wrap and into the dish, add a little water to the bottom of the pan.

2) Once the roasting phase is complete, take the dish out of the oven and allow the roast to cool a bit. Once cool enough to handle with your hands, poor off all of the liquids from inside the foil and the baking dish. You're going to be keeping this liquid, so poor it into a large measuring cup or just a regular old bowl if you must. Now take the meat and shred it into small pieces. Use a fork and/or your hands to accomplish this task. Discard any giant fatty pieces, but be sure to pull off every scrap of legitimate meat.

3) Into a good sized saucepan, empty the cans of Salsa Verde and the stewed tomatoes. If you want to, add a little tomato sauce too. I had a little leftover from making rice and it seemed like a decent addition to the mix. You'll want to use a potato masher to mash the stewed tomatoes into smaller pieces. Once that's done, turn on the heat to medium. Let that stuff start to get happy (as a certain Food TV douche bag might say).

4) Skim the fatty/oily layer from the reserved meat juices. It will be the light colored layer at the top. A big spoon will work fine in this pursuit. You don't have to be perfect, just get most of the oil. Once you've got that done, pour the rest of the liquid into the saucepan. Go ahead and throw your shredded meat in there too. If you want some extra heat, you can add a serrano or jalapeno pepper sliced in half lengthwise. You'll get a nice added heat as you simmer it. But by no means is more heat necessary.

5) At this point, you're just simmering over medium to medium low heat for a long time. You're stirring occasionally, but mostly you just want to get the water boiled off, reducing it and concentrating the flavor. How far you reduce is up to you. After a bit, taste the sauce part and see if you need to adjust the flavor with more cumin or garlic powder, maybe even remove that optional chile pepper if you’ve got it hot enough now. You probably shouldn’t need to add salt because those salsas are loaded with sodium.

Serving possibilities: This one I haven't tried, but I bet it would be good: Don't reduce too much, just let it simmer on low for a while to get the flavors mixed nicely. Sautee some fresh corn cut off the cob and maybe some bell pepper too. Add that to the pot, do some more simmering, and then serve over white rice and I bet you have a delicious sort of Tex-Mex gumbo.

Or stick to what I've done and keep reducing at medium heat until the meat is still wet looking, but clearly the liquid has been boiled off to the point that you don't see any pools. You just have wet meat with tomato bits here and there.

From one 2.2 pound chuck roast I used the meat to produce the following: two soft tacos, two giant burritos, two chimichangas, 3 large plates of meat served over mexican rice, and 6 floutas. What I'm getting at is this recipe provides a lot of meat and it is very versatile, it works well in any dish because it has a very potent flavor; it will stand out among the filler of a burrito, or it will be content to go solo in a flouta. Sour cream, guacamole, and the beef make the perfect trio in soft taco form; the creamy, gentler flavors of the sour cream and avocado make the perfect counterpoint to the flavorful, slightly spicy meat.

Give it a try. It sounds like a lot of work, but you can make it and keep leftovers in the fridge to be used over the course of the week. Reheating, you lose nothing quality-wise, that’s the beauty of the stuff.