- Hey, what's up Pitmasters.
ArnieTex here and today we're going to make some simple,
juicy, tasty, tender, and delicious fajitas.
Normally, what I say is,
if you want a tender fajita, buy a tender fajita.
But that's for another video.
Today, I'm going to show you three tips for grilling
perfectly tender and delicious fajitas.
I'll show you how to marinate them,
to break them down for tenderness,
and entire grilling demonstration
of them cooked to perfection,
and how to slice them perfectly for tenderness.
This is the real, South Texas style, tender fajita.
Let's fire it up!
All right. So let's get started.
First of all, this is how they come.
This is a true fajita.
What I have always found is that the end here,
the very long thin part here,
the toughest part of the actual whole strip,
I call these tiger stripes.
When you see these stripes on a fajita,
it looks like marbling,
but it's really not internal marbling.
It's just on the outside.
So that makes it kind of tough.
We're going to cut this piece off
and we're going to focus on
the center section of the fajita.
Which I think this end is a more tender
all the way right up to about here.
Generally, this part of the fajita is the best part.
It's a little more tender than the other end.
So let's just cut this into a couple of strips.
This is the way they come from the meat market.
They tend to be very,
they leave a lot of little skin and fat on there.
So let's get some of that off real quick
and a good sharp knife always helps.
Now, in the old days fajitas were very cheap.
They used to throw these away
or use them for ground meat, you know.
Then all of a sudden they got very, very popular.
And they got expensive.
When you see the stores and the markets
using the term fajita for meat,
like flat meat and flank meat.
That is not true fajita.
It is simply for marketing purposes
in order to make a little more profit
on that particular cut of meat.
Because fajitas have become so popular,
particularly in Mexican restaurants,
the prices went up really high.
Now the fajitas have a real tough little membrane here.
I definitely like to get rid of that one.
What I want my rub,
I want the marinade to penetrate good here.
So I'm going to get rid of this stuff right here.
This top fat here,
you can just peel it right off sometimes,
or you can just trim it like I'm doing right here.
You want to get all this off.
It's a little too thick, little too tough,
for the salt to break it down
and for the marinade to break it down.
This is one way to tenderize fajitas, by the way.
All right. I don't like to scrub
all of this loose fat off.
I like to leave a little bit of that on there
because its flavor.
When you're cooking the fajitas,
some of that fat drips onto your coals,
and manages to add just a little extra element of flavor.
So don't cut it all completely off.
All right. That one's ready to go.
Okay, so we have these two strips of fajitas here
and like this one, because it's quite a bit thinner
over on this end, I find that it's easier to
not over cook this and get it just right
and get this part just right, if I just cut it off.
So we'll trim that off.
This one here, you can see that
it's nice and even pretty much all the way across.
It's not perfectly square, but it's pretty close.
It's just a little thin on the edges,
but those crispy little edges are actually really delicious.
So as long as you don't overcook this,
that's not going to be too bad at all.
So let's go ahead and drop these in the marinade,
get them marinated for about three hours.
Then we'll go outside and cook them
and show you how to cook a really great,
juicy, delicious, wow, fajita.
Now there's all kinds of different things
you can put in the marinades.
There's all kinds of ingredients.
You know, in researching for this video also,
I mean, I saw a lot of different stuff
that to me, here in South Texas, is like not
a normal fajita flavor. But as I always say,
"Ain't no right way. Ain't no wrong way."
I like to taste the meat, personally.
I like a simple marinade
that doesn't have too many weird
or exotic things in it
because I want to taste the meat.
But I do want it to be soft, tender, and juicy.
So with this marinade that we're making here today,
that we're sharing with you,
it's simple but effective and it works.
And it adds an amazing flavor to the fajita.
That's really all this marinade takes.
This is simple, easy to make.
And this is good for about two pounds of fajitas.
One good, nice, thick strip.
(splashing)
Okay. We've got our marinade made.
It's been sitting for about 30 minutes
while we got our fajitas trimmed and prepped.
We'll go ahead and put our fajitas inside.
And that's another reason I like to kind of trim them down.
I like to make sure there's plenty of room
in the bag for them to sit flat.
And that way the marinade can get
both sides at the same time.
Now, in this case, we have a little extra, that's okay.
Okay. We got them in the bag.
We're going to take this marinade.
We're going to drop it in here.
All of it, every little bit of that goodness there.
You want this thing to be nice and flat.
You want to get as much air as you can out of it,
zip it, nice and tight.
Then we're gonna let it sit in the refrigerator for a while.
And about every 20, 30 minutes,
if it's a short marinate time like today,
three to four hours,
you want to go in there about every 30 minutes
and flip it and flip it and flip it.
While it's marinating, just flip it like that.
Now, I like to put it into a little Tupperware box
because sometimes these bags leak.
All right, folks,
we're going to put these in the refrigerator.
We're going to get our barbecue pit ready.
Y'all stay tuned.
These are the fajita. They're still in the bag.
They've been marinating for three hours.
There's no exact time,
but anywhere from four to eight hours is usually good.
We've got them out of the marinade.
I gave them a light, little rinse.
I didn't really, really rinse them, like, super hard.
I just kind of wanted to get all the big, heavy junk off
and so I'm going to pat dry them a little bit.
There's already a little bit of oil on the fajitas
from the olive oil.
So we don't really need to re-oil them
or put any other kind of binder.
Generally, I do like to pat dry them a little bit
because that dry meat will brown a little better.
It'll get that char and that maillard reaction
a little bit quicker and a little bit prettier,
if they're dry.
Now in this case, they're marinaded.
This is a pro tip:
It's really hard to get a nice char
and a good color on a marinade of fajitas sometimes,
because they're so full of moisture.
And as long as they're sweating out moisture,
they're not going to brown very well.
So let's see how they turn out today.
We're going to go ahead
and put some of this WOW! seasoning on both sides
and you can be kind of generous with this stuff.
Remember we did not put salt in the marinade.
It was only the WOW! seasoning
and a little bit of that soy sauce.
So we can get kind of generous with the WOW!.
I personally prefer to put the rub on
right before cooking or a little bit before cooking,
when it comes to marinated meats.
Now, if I'm not marinating,
I like two to four hours.
I'll season them up,
stick them in the refrigerator
and then take them out.
All right. We're going to see them both sides.
And that's it, folks.
We're ready to go out,
fire up the Weber Kettle grill,
and start cooking some fajitas.
So, let's go outside and get that fire going.
All right, fajita lovers, we're back.
We're ready to start cooking.
Our fire is raging hot.
I don't know if the camera will pick that up or not,
but we're sitting at about 550, 575,
almost 600 degrees.
A little bit hotter than I really wanted,
but here we go.
We're going to give that grate one last little clean up
with a little onion here.
Want to make sure it's nice and sanitary.
(whistles) That is hot.
Raging hot.
All right, cool.
We're also going to take this little said onion,
drop it in here on the side.
Give it a little extra flavor in here. There we go.
Okay. We're going to take the biggest piece here.
We're going to plop that right here in the middle.
(whistles) I love that sizzle.
And we've got this other smaller piece here
and this piece right here.
We're going to put them right over the fire.
Sometimes I like to put it on the other side,
let the meat sweat a little bit.
Try to get some of the moisture out,
but this fires raging hot.
I don't think I need to sweat it a whole lot.
It's going to cook fast, really fast.
All right. It's been like maybe a 1:10 seconds, 1:15.
We need to flip these meats.
Look at that beautiful little char
we're getting right there. Just gorgeous.
You can tell that it's hotter right there in the center.
Just by the way that fajita looks right there.
One of the things you can do,
towards the edge of the fire,
you can tell it's not going to be as hot on the edges.
You can tell by that piece there,
you want to flip these;
Instead of flipping like this, flip it this way.
So that this edge that was here
goes to the outer edge here.
And I should have done the same thing with this one.
And I don't know if I did or not, but maybe I did.
And one of the things you want to do
is you want to watch that meat.
You know, when you're cooking this hot,
trying to get that char,
trying to get that color on your meat.
You're going to see a little bit of moisture
pop up on the top of your meat.
You can see this one's getting really moist,
that's the heat pushing the moisture up through the meat.
You want to watch that.
Flip it again.
(whistles)
I call this the Flippity-Flip method.
My son said that should call it
the Flip, Flip, Flip method.
But I like Flippity-Flip.
I think Flippity-Flip sounds cool.
Don't be afraid of a little fire.
You can see it sizzling.
We're getting some color there, looking really good.
Of course the wind and the smoke has to be blown
in your face, otherwise it's not really a barbecue.
That's just the way it is, man.
Okay. I can tell it's a little hotter in the middle,
way hotter actually.
So I'm going to continue to flip
this piece of meat here.
Get the color that I want
This one's not getting the color, but it's cooking.
So I'm going to trade places for a little bit.
This will keep cooking anyway.
We want to make sure that gets some nice color too.
Not just that one piece right there.
So you want to keep flipping
and flipping and flipping.
And I asked my wife to bring me my Thermo pen.
I normally liked to cook my fajitas
right around 140, 145-ish.
I try not to go past 150,
but I will tell you that sometimes
when the fire is this hot,
you are going to get a higher temperature
and that's okay.
Doesn't mean it's done.
It's 121 degrees right now. We're not quite there yet.
So we're going to flip this again.
We're going to flip this one again.
Don't be afraid of a hot fire.
All you have to do is remember
that you got to flip, flip, flip.
Call it the Flippity-Flip.
It's really hot over here.
So I'm going to swap this one this way.
That one over there, put this one back in the middle here.
Keep this over here.
This was a small piece,
so it's going to get done a little bit quicker.
We're going to look at that. (whistles)
Thing's hot. Definitely hot.
This one's 148 degrees.
I'm going to call it good.
We're going to put it in the foil over here.
Flippity-Flip, Flippity-Flip.
Generally, if your fire's not this hot,
that's when you're going to see a lot more moisture
on the top of your meat.
When the fires this hot,
I'm not giving it enough time to sweat it out.
I'm flipping and flipping and flipping.
So I'm keeping all that moisture inside.
That's a good thing.
Alright. I'd say we're very close to being done done here.
Not quite.
148, 146
Let's set it up over here where it's not so hot
so I can take a closer look at it.
Wow.
That fire's raging hot.
138,
140,
41, 45, 45.
I'm going to let that sit there a little bit longer.
This one I guarantee you it's done.
Yeah. That's 155, 160.
That one's done too.
Done, done.
So I'm going to take this one out.
Let it rest inside the foil here.
And here's, you know, if you notice,
I've put this one away from the fire for just a little bit.
You don't want to burn it.
You want a nice char like we're looking at there.
Sometimes you can back it off for just a minute or so.
Just to stop the charring process.
You don't want to burn them.
You just want that nice, pretty color.
Pretty char, Oof.
Thing's a little too hot.
152. We're done.
All right, I'm going to run my little table here.
I'm checking this one.
It's 157,
52,
58.
Y'all probably can't see me doing that,
but I'm checking it over here on top of my little table.
Yup. We're done. (whistles)
Really nice, hot fire.
(chuckles)
It's so hot, my eyes are watering.
One of the things about a really hot
and fast cook like that,
that just breaks my heart a lot of times,
is, I got a beautiful fire there
and nothing to put on it anymore.
So what I like to do sometimes,
I just go ahead and shut it down.
Shut it up on top.
Shut it off on the bottom.
Choke all the air out. It's gone.
I will reuse that charcoal on my next cook.
It's going to die.
And so I'll have a little extra charcoal.
I call that being efficient with your charcoal.
Anyway, folks, we're going inside.
Slice these up
and get a big old taco going.
Now, generally for tacos, you want them
to be about four inches long.
So I'm going to cut this one right in half here
and I'm going to slice crosswise.
(chopping)
And there's no exact width or thickness
that you want to cut them.
I mean, generally,
the feeling that they're a little bit firm,
you can cut them thinner like that.
If you feel like they're really, really soft,
or if you just like bigger, thicker slices,
you can cut them thicker.
There's that one there.
All right, so we're going to go ahead
and keep slicing these fajitas.
Make sure you cut across the grain
and you can cut them at an angle like this on the bias.
All right. So there we have those.
We have these.
Let's go ahead and cut these up too.
(chopping)
Let's see if they're tender or not, honey.
Oh yeah.
They're tender. Wow!
Just tender, juicy, moist.
And of course delicious.
I'm going to get some of these fajitas.
I had them here in the foil
and I'm going to make me a really nice,
big taco, the South Texas way.
All right. All right,
all right, all right, here we go folks.
Look how moist and juicy these things are.
Just amazing.
- (Maria) You can cut them thinner.
- You can cut them thinner, but
- (Maria) You didn't. - why? (chuckles)
Alright, normally we just make a little smaller taco,
but for the video,
we're going to make it nice and pretty for you.
We're going to put a little bit of bell pepper in here.
I have yellow, I have green, and red.
Just to add a little more, Wow, in there.
A little more pizazz.
We're going to put a little bit of pico de gallo
on here. (whistles)
Look at that, fresh, homemade pico de gallo.
Try not to put too much juice
or your tortilla is going to fall apart on you.
All right.
Give me a jalapeno.
I love jalapenos on my barbecue.
Actually, anything hot.
We're going to put this on here.
(whistles) That looks gorgeous.
I'm not a big cheese fan on fajitas,
but once in a while, it's okay.
Let's sprinkle a little bit of cheese on here.
Get us a little bit of avocado on there.
One final shake of WOW!
Boom.
That's what I call a South Texas taco.
Fajita taco.
I, I don't know where to bite this thing.
So I'm just going to take a stab at it.
(chewing and humming)
(chuckles)
(humming)
I'm saying wow.
For many different reasons.
Wow, that jalapeno is hot.
I need a cold beer. (chuckles) - (Maria) (chuckles)
The flavor's fantastic.
Man, even the cheese is good in there.
There's a Llano pepper, I mean, the bell peppers
add to the flavor of the pico de gallo.
That whole combination is just, wow.
Keep the camera's rolling. I'm going to eat.
(chewing and humming)
Wow.
Only thing that'll make this taco even better.
Got to wash it down with something ice cold.
Ah, this taco was amazing.
The fajitas are amazing.
They're soft, they're tender.
If I had left them in another couple of hours,
they'd be melt in your mouth.
They're not quite there,
but if you give them a little more time with that marinade,
they'll be fantastic.
Guys and girls,
we want to thank you guys so much for watching.
If you liked this video,
hit the like button down below.
Make sure to like, comment and share.
Tell your friends about it.
Tell them that this is the best fajita
they're ever going to have.
Get you some WOW!,
get you some Pitmaster class.us.
Keep the smoke light,
make it work.
OH!
That is really good,
really, really good.