Shredded beef

I had a craving for Chipotle Mexican Grill the other day.  I usually get a burrito with barbacoa, black beans, rice, sour cream, cheese, medium salsa, and guacamole.  Sometimes I will switch it up and get the burrito bowl instead with pretty much the same ingredients.  It is delicious!  Unfortunately, Chipotle does not have a restaurant here in Hawaii.  Why, Chipotle, why??  So, the next best thing is Taco Del Mar, which Andre and I had for lunch one day because there is one by the office.  Sadly, it was not the same.  So what did I do?  Found a recipe online and made the Chipotle barbacoa beef myself! 

Ingredients for the sauce

The recipe I found seemed rather easy.  All you have to do is get the ingredients for the sauce, pulverize it in a food processor or mixer, pour it over the meat in a pot, and proceed to cook for 4-5 hours until the meat becomes tender and falls apart.  See, it is pretty simple!

Dump all the ingredients into a food processor or mixer

There were ingredients I don’t normally use though, like ground cloves and ground cumin.  I think the mix of these spices is pretty much standard in any Latin food.

Voila, the sauce

The other thing I never use in my cooking is chipotle peppers.  What a delightful discovery!  It adds heat and a wonder flavor, especially since the canned peppers are in adobo sauce.  I had most of the can left over since this recipe only calls for a few of the peppers, so I threw it into a salsa I made and WOW, it is probably the best salsa I have ever tasted or made!  (More on the salsa in my next post!)

Beef cubes

After the sauce, you have to brown the beef a bit.  I used my largest Le Creuset pot and browned the beef in two batches.

Brown lightly on all sides

One tip I remember hearing from the cooking shows was that you shouldn’t crowd the pot when you are browning beef.  I guess you need enough room for it to cook, otherwise it will not cook evenly and it will take longer to cook.

Add the sauce

Then once everything is browned, I threw in all the beef and the sauce, covered the pot, and cooked it for several hours.  Definitely allow yourself enough time.  Our whole apartment smelled like a Chipotle restaurant and we were dying to try it!  Unfortunately I started cooking it after I got home from work so it wasn’t ready until about 11:00PM.  Still, that didn’t prevent us from having a couple of bites!

The beef was so flavorful and tender!  I will definitely make this again without a doubt!  Now I can have my own Chipotle barbacoa whenever I want!