and then I might go with body power huge slice of it and plopped it on top of
the taco
you'll normally find us traveling the world filming for this
YouTube channel and eating the most amazing local food we can find however
we're at home at the moment we're in quarantine totally locked down so we
cannot travel anymore so we thought why not bring the experiences that we've had
in our videos back to our home kitchen and try and recreate some of the food
that we've had in our videos this video is gonna be a really good one one of our
favorite places to travel to is Mexico we were recently there for two months
traveling all around the country and we ate a lot of spectacular food now there
were many dishes during our trip that stayed with us but one particular dish
was this taco meal that we ate in Guadalajara and it was sensational this
is one good-looking plate of tacos and very unique like nothing I've ever seen
in Mexico with this huge lump of cheese on top this is all about recreating that
dish so with all these recreation videos we're trying to recreate the actual dish
we're not just trying to do a recipe that's like it we want the taste to be
exactly like it was when we ate it on the street
that is good and this taco which was covered in a huge slab of cheese so a
super unique taco we just desperately want to recreate because it was a
fantastic meal in Guadalajara I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate
let's get cooking for this one
when making Mexican food you've got to have limes so we've got some limes
for this one so this taco stand was unbelievable it was a huge taco stand
check this out it's right up here and it is packed with people and we loved the
experience and it was super unique with the cheese on top so that was like no
other taco stand we've seen in Mexico and we've spent a good sort of five months
in Mexico and this is the only time we've seen this style of taco so we want
to recreate as close as possible the dish that we had in Mexico but because
we're in quarantine lockdown and we're in New Zealand we can only get certain
ingredients so we're having to work with what we can get to recreate what we had
in Mexico and we're gonna make for this one some steak tacos so at the stand we
had some chicharrón some pork skin and we had carne asada so steak tacos
we're just going to do the steak ones because we can't get hold of the chicharron
we're gonna make up the tortillas we've got some cheese well a substitute
cheese we've got some cheese to go on top we're gonna make up some salsas
we're gonna make up all the sides because these tacos were loaded with
different toppings beautiful meat so we're gonna grill that up this is gonna
be an amazing recreation so let's get into doing all the sides
Thomas has started work on the salsa roja by chopping up the tomatoes and then
popping them into the oven to roast and I remember the salsa roja the red
salsa being super chunky and very fiery look at this salsa roja pretty chunky so
tons of tomato as well as chillies in there just slosh that all over
all right that's looking pretty delicious the stall was really neat
because they had a set up of condiments there was like giant tubs of salsas and
everyone was going crazy over them so we're working on the first one that we
ate we want to create the salsas that we ate on our tacos that particular day so
we're working on the salsa roja first it's going to be made up of some
garlic onions chilies some oregano the tomatoes and a bit of water
the salsa roja is on the go and now it's time to work on the second salsa
that we ate at the stall and that was a pickled onion and habanero chili salsa
just need some of the habanero yeah look at that
okay now that's nice and loaded up with the habanero and I remember it being
very tangy and a little bit spicy now we don't have habanero chilli so as Thomas
mentioned before we're in quarantine and so we're just working with what we've
got in the pantry in the fridge what ingredients we can find when we do get
out to the supermarket now no habanero chillies to be found but we do have some
pickled jalapenos so I'm going to use those and at the stall I remember
this salsa being quite chunky so the raw onions or the onions that they used
were white onions and they were sliced so that's what I'm gonna do now slice up
the onions and then mix in some chillies and add some lime juice
I want to pickle my onions with lime juice but limes are in short supply in
New Zealand at the moment and they're super expensive about fifty dollars a
kilo so these beauties are very precious so
I'm gonna save these for sprinkling over the tacos just before we eat them and to
pickle the onions I'm going to use this bottled lime juice so needs must we'll
get a whole ton of that juice onto the onions and the jalapenos and then I
might also add some salt
the tomato onion garlic mixture has sort of cooked for about five minutes on the
stove and now I'm just gonna blend it up and then it'll go back onto the stove I
also added some dried chilli because it was lacking a bit of heat the salsa that
was being served at this taco stall was a really rich red colour so I reckon it
had some dried chillies in it but we don't have those here at home so we'll
just make do with what we've got
it's time to make the next component of the meal when we were at the taco stand just
before we bit into the taco we peeled it open and we saw that there was this
smooth creamy layer of frijoles on the tortilla oh look at that so there's some
frijoles on there as well I didn't notice that frijoles are refried beans and
they were just smearing the tortillas before they put the meat into the
tortilla with the refried beans now they were using pinto beans very smooth
creamy mixture of pinto beans we've only got black beans to work with so
what I'm gonna do is just cook these on the stove in a pan together with some
onion with some garlic and then just mash the mixture up to create a really
smooth creamy frijoles
now it's time to get sorted with the dough for the
tortilla now this was one of the most impressive things about this stand was
the fact that they had a full-on tortilla production line right there on
the street they're making their own tortillas right here with a special
tortilla press that is really neat look at the masa getting ground up right here
that's unreal obviously we don't have any of that equipment so we're gonna
make do with what we've got the first thing we've got is my hands so we're just
gonna have to do this totally manually so we've got the masa harina so the
correct sort of corn flour there and just a wee bit of water it's very simple
to make tortillas you just need the right sort of flour some water and just
mix it up until it's a nice ball of dough
the dough has come up really nicely oh the smell of it takes you straight
back to Mexico so I've got to break it up into little balls so each tortilla
can have its own little bit of dough so we're gonna go thirds and then halves now
I could definitely do this you know a bit of a boring way with a rolling pin
or something like that or a tortilla press if I had one that's not boring
they're super fun and you'll see tortilla presses all the time in Mexico
but at this restaurant they had that amazing contraption which they were just
shoving all the dough into and then being able to churn out bulk amount of
tortillas so we obviously don't have one of those machines we don't have a
tortilla press either so you could you know substitute with say a rolling pin
or maybe try with a frying pan or something like that but that all sounds a
bit boring to me so I've set up a bit of a contraption outside here sort of the
world's biggest tortilla press so this is the press I've set up so I found a
couple of bits of wood in the garage we've got some baking paper under here
to protect the tortilla and hopefully they won't stick so the idea is to
make the ball into a flat tortilla so I'm just gonna pressure it with my hands and
then I might go with body power see if I can squish that out with my feet into a
nice round tortilla I don't know if this is working let's go with the big reveal
ohhh no it's not really worked there we go oh it's okay it's all right that's
okay it's not quite round but we'll just get some tortillas together like that
and try and perfect our technique
pressing up the last tortilla they're not exactly quite the roundest
tortillas in the world but they've come up quite well
now it's time to get the meat on the barbecue so we've got some beautiful
thin pieces of beef that we're gonna chuck straight on the grill and I loved
watching these being made ohh good sizzle being made at the stand at the stand they were
being cooked over charcoal we've only got gas here so we're just
cooking these lovely thin bits of beef over gas and all we've done is salt that
beef up and they were liberally salting it as they were cooking it at the stand
and the smells in the air while they were cooking the beef oh it's delicious
so like I said earlier they had two sorts or we had two sorts at the
stand we had the chicharron so the pork skin and we also had the carne asada we
don't have the chicharron or access to chicharron so we're just doing carne
asada and this is so nice and thin this is not gonna take long to cook up at all
get this meat flipped up oh yeah nice char marks on there oh this smells so
good I loved watching this at the stand getting cooked up and then getting
chopped up on this huge wooden block but while the meats finishing up we've got
to get our tortillas on so just got our little tortillas that I've just pressed
and we're gonna put them straight on the hot plate and these shouldn't take too
long at all to cook
it's cooked super fast that meat so let's get that off the grill and
now it's time to flip over these tortillas see how they're cooking up
tortillas done meat done let's get this meat onto this chopping board and whack
it up into little pieces now this is one of the coolest bits at the stand where he
was just going at the meat with a cleaver I don't have a cleaver I've only
got a knife so I don't get as much fun as whacking into it with a cleaver but I
want to cut this up into nice little bits so it can all be lined up lined up
into the tortillas to make up these carne asada tacos it's looking very
good this mate super happy with how this came up so very simple meat just a ton
of salt straight on the grill just like they were doing at the stand in
Guadalajara
I'm so excited to assemble the tacos so we've got the carne asada it smells
incredible we've got the tortillas so they're nice and hot still and what I'm
gonna do is take a dollop of this creamy frijoles wow look at that it's super
smooth just like it was at the stall ladle it all over the the tortilla and
then chuck some meat on and then what they did was the final flourish the
taquero went like this with the panela which was the cheese that was being used
he took a huge slice of it and plopped it on top of the taco
it's taco time the main differences are really that the cheese is different
so they were using panela which is a cow's cheese very smooth creamy we're
using feta it's still cows feta so close enough close as we could get the
frijoles uses different beans we don't have habanero we have jalapeno
but on the whole I think it looks pretty dang good
we'll see how it compares to what we had in Guadalajara so such a memorable
experience thank you, we've gotta stack it up so we now need to put on all these extras on our own taco
so I'm gonna go with a whole lot of that salsa roja so the red salsa I've got the
chunky onions with the jalapeno I'm just going in with my hands I'm going in
with hands too cause we're not at a public stall we can just go
hands deep straight into the condiments imagine if
you did that on the street shove your hands straight in there now I was very
generous with the feta I mean these are gonna be huge mouthfuls
look at that I can hardly wrap it I'm just gonna go in for it I need a plate
the longer my mouthful goes on the more that tastes like Guadalajara so straight
away I got a sharp hit from the jalapenos but that chilled out really
quickly cause the other flavors took away that tangy pickled jalapeno flavor
and all of a sudden it tasted like Guadalajara taking me right back I
remember the frijoles being so creamy and that's what that is super creamy the
steak ís tender the cheese lends this beautiful creaminess and it was the
cheese that really stood out at the stall it's like nothing we've ever seen
anywhere in Mexico but man I think we nailed this recreation
this one those onions have come up so well in the lime juice I think now
that I'm eating a bit more they are the thing that's truly taking me back to
Guadalajara that's quite a unique flavor that
combo-ed with the cheese and the meat has come up perfectly just like in
Guadalajara oh
I've got it all over my face
I didn't even put any lime on this oh my god neither did I
I'm coming from both ends
what are we doing get some lime on there
oh and the tortillas the tortilla at the stall were quite
thick robust hmm these are too they are very sturdy tortilla and the tortillas
were very big mmm when their tacos came on the plate I
remember thinking whoa they're pretty hefty really sizeable so this is like
true to the to the stall hmm this has been a really fun one to
recreate so there's gonna be plenty more of these street food recreations happening
right here in our home kitchen remember to hit that subscribe button give us a
thumbs up if you enjoyed the video thank you for watching thank you for
watching we'll see you next time